Boscawen John: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Boscawen John: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8065. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT Party opposes the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill and will be voting with the Green Party and the Labour Party against it. One of the privileges of coming to Parliament is that one works with many different people from both sides of the House. Our position is different from that of the Maori Party but I regard it as a privilege to have worked with Rahui Katene over the last 12 months on the Finance and Expenditure Committee both on its deliberations on the emissions trading scheme and on that select committee generally. I am sorry if she takes exception to the comments made by Rodney Hide earlier today but he was simply reiterating what the Minister of Maori Affairs Pita Sharples had told the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce at a breakfast just yesterday. It was indeed Pita Sharples who said that the Maori Party was advised that agreement had been reached just 18 minutes before this deal was announced. That was at 12 minutes past 3 on Monday. Those were the words that Pita Sharples said to the people at the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce breakfast yesterday. 
This has been a reckless process. We have discussed that at length. It gave me no pleasure whatsoever to vote against the National members on this bill. At the select committee Rahui Katene the Green Party Labour and I voted to allow those submitters who had something substantial to say to have the right to say it. We voted for their right to say it and that vote was won by 7 votes to 5. Five National members were defeated in that vote and I give some advice to those members and to the new backbenchers in particular: losing a vote is an unpleasant experience and they run the real risk following the 2011 election that it will happen a lot more frequently if they are in Opposition. 
I now turn to the issue of the $110 billion. This issue was seized upon by the Labour Opposition to discredit this bill. The bill had to be discredited but to quote the $110 billion was the wrong way to do it because there are many other ways that one can discredit this bill without misrepresenting the facts. The Minister for Climate Change Issues the Hon Dr Smith is quite right. Essentially the way the emissions trading scheme operates is that New Zealand receives an allocation of emissions units based on our historical emissions. We do not know what that allocation will be post-2012 but given that an agreement comes out of Copenhagen or subsequent negotiations we will be given a target to reduce our emissions and we will be given an allocation of units. That allocation of units will be based on what our historical experience has been; it will be some percentage of our historical experience. That allocation will continue for a number of years—well beyond 2050. 
Under the Labour scheme the allocation of those units was to be reduced to zero in respect of all sectors by 2030. So at that stage New Zealand would have had surplus units and would have been able to sell those units to emitters. Essentially it amounted to a huge tax scam and I think Dr Smith talked about the Government receiving a lesser amount of revenue—those were the words that Dr Smith referred to—under the National scheme. Under the Labour scheme it is a fact that the Government was going to earn windfall gains of $2 billion a year from 2030. Accumulating those gains through to 2050 would have resulted in a massive tax windfall of something like $50 billion. The Labour Opposition trying to seize upon that to discredit the scheme used compound interest to take the figure to $110 billion. 
It is interesting that the Labour members focused on the fact that that took the projected deficit from 8 percent of GDP to 15 percent of GDP. They may well have ignored the fact that just 3 or 4 weeks ago Treasury made projections that took New Zealand’s debt out not to 15 percent of GDP but to 220 percent of GDP—10 times the figure that the Labour Opposition has waxed lyrical about over the last 3 or 4 days. The reason that New Zealand’s debt is projected out to 220 percent of GDP is the result of the massive failed policies of 9 years of Labour Government. 
I could not believe it when Hekia Parata talked about her constituents in Gisborne and Porirua. She said they were already struggling to pay their power bills. Well I ask Hekia Parata and all the members of this House what we will achieve by artificially increasing the price of electricity for every New Zealander by 10 percent from 1 January 2013 when it does not cost the companies that sell that electricity in respect of hydroelectricity anything more to produce. We are giving them a windfall gain of some $200 million or $300 million. I have made that claim 3 or 4 times today and it has not been refuted by anyone. Why is that? It is because it is true. It applied under Labour’s scheme; it continues to apply under National’s scheme. 
Rahui Katene talked earlier about the savings in electricity and petrol. She talked about the longer-term contributions they would make. Those contributions expire on 31 December 2012 so if Rahui Katene was talking about the savings in electricity for a period of 3 years I wish her luck but I got the impression that she was talking about the situation longer term and there are no savings there. All of the members in this House have condoned a tax on every New Zealander in respect of one of the most basic commodities: electricity. It is little wonder that the Maori Council is railing against this bill. 
We heard from the Federation of Maori Authorities which said this bill represented the greatest confiscation of Maori wealth since the 1800s. I will explain why that is so. It is because Maori have many thousands of hectares of forest land that could be converted into pasture. Trees could be felled and we could convert that land into pasture and dairy farms and we could create some wealth for New Zealand. And if we created some wealth for New Zealand we would actually set about reducing that projected deficit that Treasury makes of 220 percent of GDP down to something much more manageable. But the Maori foresters who have that land are denied that opportunity under the emissions trading scheme because if they fell the trees and convert that land into pastoral land to create greater wealth for New Zealanders they are faced with a penalty of some $20000 a hectare which makes it inefficient to do so. So in the absence of a change of approach in Copenhagen or subsequent agreements doing that will be inefficient because those foresters will be taxed and there will be a massive devaluation of Maori forest land. It would have happened under the Labour scheme and that has not been fixed under National. 
Rahui Katene talked about how Maori will do by having the free emissions units allocated to quota holders as opposed to fishers. I accept that but I explain to this House to all Maori and to all New Zealanders that that will apply only up until 31 December 2012. Why is that? Because there is no free allocation from 2013 onwards. The farmers get it and we can be thankful that both Maori and non-Maori farmers will continue to get an allocation of free units well into this century. But fishers will not. The fishing industry is trade-exposed and it is energy-intensive. The Minister for Climate Change Issues knows that because when he was in Opposition he wrote about that in his own National Party minority report just on 1 year ago. 
I sat up in the gallery 2 years ago and listened to the debate on the Electoral Finance Bill knowing that the Labour Government was going to vote into law a totally undemocratic change. Nothing can be more frustrating than speaking against this bill highlighting its deficiencies and knowing that in a very short time exactly the same thing will happen but it will be done by the National Government. Thank you.