Hughes Gareth: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7155. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. In this general debate I want to celebrate yesterday’s news that Petrobras will not be drilling deep in our waters this summer. And I want to celebrate those young Kiwis who give me hope because they believe we can tackle climate change. 
First up I want to congratulate Te Whanau-a-Apanui and their members—for example Elvis Teddy who put his body on the line and put a line in the sand and said no to deep-sea drilling in his backyard. I want to congratulate and say thank you to people like Dayle Takitimu who said: “We will now and forever stand up against government recklessness if it threatens that environment and the livelihood of future generations.” I want to thank Greenpeace and the hundreds of thousands of people who signed its petition to say yes to clean energy and no to deep-sea drilling. I want to thank the 99 percent of submitters to the exclusive economic zone regulations who said that the risks of deep-sea drilling were so high that it should be a prohibited activity. Unlike the Government benches the Green Party believes that deep-sea oil drilling is not our future. It is at the frontiers of technology and incredibly risky and if we saw a blowout like we have seen across the Ditch and like we have seen in America the oil spill would be catastrophic for our fishing our tourism and our aquaculture. It would be catastrophic for our environment and our economy. 
We know that in New Zealand for all that risk we would see hardly any taxes and hardly any royalties—because we have got the fourth-lowest Government take in the world—and hardly any jobs for New Zealanders and we know that the profits would flow offshore. I think it is important to recall that although the Government has picked deep-sea oil drilling as its big economic winner for the economy it was the Prime Minister who slavishly rolled out the welcome mat for the Brazilians. The Government gave them and other companies tens of millions of dollars’ worth of subsidised seismic surveys. We saw the Government literally amend the law with permissive exclusive economic zone legislation and we even saw the Government call out the navy to protect the Brazilians from a single iwi fishing boat. Now the Government’s plans are in tatters. Petrobras has surrendered its permit. Anadarko has announced that it is not going to be coming to New Zealand this summer. Now it is time that the Government goes back to the drawing board. 
Why does the Government not look at clean energy? Why does the Government not look at manufacturing job solutions? This is what the country needs. This is what Pure Advantage those business leaders in New Zealand has said. We have a niche—an economic niche—when it comes to renewable energy like geothermal energy. They do not say we have a niche in deep-sea oil drilling. After all renewable energy is always going to be cleaner and safer than fracking or deep-sea oil drilling. The Government’s “drill it mine it frack it” plans are in tatters. They are symptomatic of the dirty old politics and the polluted ideas of the current term. This term the Government has taken a decidedly hard-line anti-environment path. The Government says that the “clean green” brand is simply fake like the McDonald’s slogan “I’m loving it.” But you know what? Kiwis really do love our environment and Kiwis do want to protect it. So while the National Government this term is acting like environmental vandals burning the furniture to keep warm it is trashing our brand and our environment. This is our basis in prosperity and our economy. 
But I do not want to be too pessimistic because I want to talk about what gives me hope and it is Te Whanau-a-Apanui who give me hope. They get that the environment is important to us and to our economy. It is the business leaders at Pure Advantage who give me hope because they get that tackling climate change is good for business. It is the youth who give me hope because they get that it is their future at stake. This weekend we have got 600-plus young Kiwis and Pasifika converging on Auckland for Power Shift the climate change conference and we have got a handful of youth delegates over in Doha. These guys are inspirational because despite what the Government is doing—which is relentlessly attacking the environment attacking the scientists disgracefully weakening the emissions trading scheme walking entirely out of the Kyoto Protocol—these guys are not giving up. These guys say that since the Government has clearly shown that it is not going to act on the fundamental environmental economic and most of all moral challenge of our time they are going to act. 
I believe that we can put our science-based global long-term interests first above the short-term narrow vested corporate interests that we see from the current Government. I think New Zealand does matter to the world and I think we can be leaders. After all the answers are obvious they are available now and they are going to benefit our economy. Ultimately tackling climate change is about jobs energy efficiency smart farming and clean energy. Tackling climate change the big issue of the day is about the economy.