Seymour David; Shaw JamesDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Mr Speaker. The ACT Party stands strongly opposed to the zero carbon Act policy to this commission and to its report. Why? There are basically three reasons and three big problems with this initiative. The first is that the way it tries to micro-manage and plan the economy well into the future is completely indefensible. I just heard the Minister of Energy and Resources and the Minister of Climate Change get up and say that these actions will save the economy 2.3 percent in 2050. Really? Can any of them name any economists in the past century who have been able to forecast GDP 29 years out to the nearest 0.1 percent—Hon David Parker: Rodney Hide. DAVID SEYMOUR: —and actually all of the assumptions have been—and David Parker says Sir Roger Douglas". He's probably the only one and he doesn't agree—he doesn't agree. Sir Roger Douglas wouldn't agree with them either. But the fact is that like all of the assumptions that are put into this plan they do not hold water. The micro-management the banning of technology is the wrong way to reduce emissions because this Government now has two contradictory climate change polices. One is the emissions trading scheme which sets a cap on total emissions. If the objective is to reduce total emissions in New Zealand the right thing to do is to set that cap auction off the units let people respond to the price signals and make choices about how they live and do their work and build their businesses within that constraint. The second policy which works against it is the zero carbon Act which requires a plethora of new bureaucracies and micro-management that will try and control each sector and say there should be 13 percent fewer cows the type of car that you can import should change in this year and you should cook your burgers at a restaurant with this type of energy source. All of that micro-management not only will turn out to be wrong because the predictions of the future technologically so often are but also they are pointless because to the extent that any of them do reduce emissions they merely free up carbon units that somebody else can use under the same cap. So there are two contradictory and pointless policies that this Government has. Added together they don't work. The second problem is the total disconnect from the rest of the world. This report issued today says that we should not in New Zealand be able to use foreign carbon credits. Really? So what it is saying is that the Government would like New Zealanders to pay people in Hawke's Bay to sell up their sheep and beef farms and plant a monoculture of more pine trees that turn into wilding pines and a future ecological disaster. Instead of being able to pay Brazilians to reseed the Amazon or at least pay them to stop burning it down was that really the right answer for someone who wants to think global and act local? It is completely wrong that our competitors around the world will be able to do that and buy cheaper carbon credits exposing New Zealand business. That's the third problem—that the goals are set by New Zealand as if we are totally isolated from the global economy and climate. It says that New Zealand agriculture and New Zealand business and New Zealand transport and energy must reach certain goals set in legislation regardless of what the rest of the world does. So they are happy to say that if the rest of the world decides not to meet these targets New Zealand should destroy its economy and the way of life of its people to reach these targets that nobody else is seeking and therefore New Zealand has no impact. That is why we oppose it and those are the three things that are wrong with it. But I'd just like to quickly ask the Minister a question. Does he think—not the commissioner—the way that select journalists were given access to the material beforehand and the 40 minutes that other journalists were given to read the material before questioning the Prime Minister was adequate? Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): The lock-up was provided in much the same conditions as the Budget lock-up. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): So we have to take that somewhat non-committal response that he does think it's OK—one of the most significant economic and environmental policy changes in a generation and he thinks the conditions were fine. I'm glad the press gallery got an answer from James Shaw on that. Does he believe that the 24 hours that the commissioners were given to look at the draft were adequate or is he denying that that happened? Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): No I just don't know the source of those rumours."