Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you. So there is a problem to solve when it comes to reducing New Zealand's emissions from liquid fuels and that is: how do we reduce emissions from the transport sector? Well if you've filled up your car your ute or your truck at the fuel bowser at any time this year you'll know that it's costing you tens or potentially hundreds of dollars more for a big truck or a big rig and a part of that cost is actually the emissions trading scheme. You pay for your emissions which is about 20c a litre for a litre of diesel or petrol under the emissions trading scheme. If you have to pay an extra 20c a litre it makes you really seriously think about being fuel-efficient driving less being really really careful with that right foot on the accelerator and making sure that you get the most out of every tank. Now when we think about solving the problem of reducing emissions from the transport fleet biofuels and a biofuel mandate would be very very far down the list. [Notices incorrect speech time remaining on Chamber clock]Point of order Madam Speaker. As much as I like the idea that I have an infinite amount of time to speak on this bill—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Ah thank you. SIMON COURT: —I've just noted—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Yeah thank you. SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Speaker. So don't say that the ACT Party isn't a ruled-based party. The ACT Party believes that the rules of the House should be followed and even we should be subject to those rules. Look there's a problem to solve when it comes to reducing emissions from the transport fleet. But the ACT Party does not believe that the biofuels mandate is the way to do it. There are a number of issues with this bill. Firstly the industry that is supposed to supply the biofuels—the petrochemical industry—actually has already been delayed by a year. If the Government had stuck to its own time frames and passed some legislation that could have potentially given them a two-year run-up to install new pipelines and new storage tanks and to deal with distribution logistics and supply issues in order to bring biofuels from refineries in Asia and Australia into New Zealand. But the Government has taken so long to bring this piece of legislation to the House that even with a year's extension that's not going to be enough time for the liquid fuel industry to gear up and start delivering biofuels at the quantities that they need to to avoid penalties. There are other practical issues. It's not just the lead time and it's not just the fact that the emissions trading scheme already puts a price on emissions that actually creates an incentive to use less fuel and become more efficient in your transport business or your personal life but we've got issues with the feedstock. Now a number of members including the Greens and National have raised the issue of where the feedstock comes from to make biofuels. Well if they're intended to be made in New Zealand we've heard from the climate change Minister and others that you could go around all the pine forests collecting up the pine cones and the slash after a timber harvest after a pine tree harvest and take it back to some central processing facility and turn that wood waste into a biofuel. Barbara Kuriger: Create gold at the same time. SIMON COURT: Yeah. Now it's true that you can turn wood waste into a fuel. That is a useful supplementary fuel if you're say drying timber at a big timber mill but it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that we can possibly coordinate the collection of pine cones and sticks off the forest floor to replace liquid mineral fuels in any way. Then we've got the issue with the feedstock from South-east Asia. Now if you go on Google Maps and you look at the island of Borneo you'll see that about 90 percent of it has been cleared of its native vegetation where species like the sun bear and where the orang-utan of Borneo live. It's been cleared and it's been replaced with palm oil plantations. Those palm oil plantations provide not just a feedstock for food products but they also provide a feedstock for agriculture and other consumables. Now if biofuel supply out of South-east Asian and other refineries contain palm oil from plantations that are grown where once mighty forests stood where many many threatened species once lived species on the verge of extinction—if the New Zealand Government if the Labour Party thinks that wiping out old-growth tropical forests that once homed precious animals like the orang-utan and sun bear is the way to save us from climate change then there is no hope for the environment. We've lost all hope. Then we think about timing. Here's a problem: the biofuels mandate comes in and applies from some time in 2024 but by 2025 the Japanese and Korean and European car-manufacturing companies who came to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee last year to tell us why the Clean Car Standard was such a bad idea—what they told us was that their factories in South-east Asia in Japan and in Korea will be producing more battery and hydrogen electric vehicles between 2025 and 2028 than we could possibly use and that by 2030 they'll pretty much be producing nothing else and yet this Government wants the fuel industry to invest tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure that might have a five-year or a six-year lifespan. It's completely unrealistic to ask investors in plant and equipment—major supply chain logistics—to make that investment and try to recover it in essentially an unknown but very very short space of time. I would say to those businesses to hold on because there will be a change of Government and this bill will go in the bin—so hold on. Then we think about what the alternatives are because we've had a number of Government members challenge ACT on what are the alternatives. Well here's what ACT would do. Firstly we'd let the emissions trading scheme do its job. The emissions trading scheme puts a price on petrol and diesel at the pump of around 20c a litre. If you think that 20c a litre isn't enough of an incentive to change the way you drive to reduce the amount of fuel you use then this Government doesn't understand the cost of living crisis—20c a litre means a lot to people who have to fill up their cars to get to work on any given day. Then you think What else would ACT do?" Well we've actually got a member's bill—a member's bill in my name—in the biscuit tin called the Climate Change Response (Offshore Mitigation) Amendment Bill. It's the offshore mitigation bill and what that would allow is three things. It would allow New Zealand businesses that have an obligation to reduce their emissions to reduce them using accredited approved overseas mitigation schemes just like the one in Fiji that I heard about the other day which was restoring mangrove forests in Fiji. They provide climate resilience they absorb carbon and it's a form of international climate diplomacy. ACT's Climate Change Response (Offshore Mitigation) Amendment Bill would allow threatened species threatened environments and rare and precious ecosystems to be restored in other countries that we do business with and that we trade with at lower cost than having to pay all of these charges and taxes under this current Government scheme. It would establish long-term enduring partnerships between businesses in New Zealand and communities in vulnerable places—places where their environment has been severely damaged by unsustainable land development practices. That includes places like Fiji where mangroves have been cleared for tourist developments and places like Borneo where old-growth tropical forests have been cleared and the habitat of orang-utan and other threatened species has been destroyed. That's what ACT would do. It's practical because climate change is a global problem. Reducing emissions is something that can have a global effect. It doesn't matter where you reduce emissions because if this Government and New Zealanders are serious about climate change they'll be just as happy to support an emissions reduction restoring the old-growth forests of Borneo giving a home to the orang-utan and the sun bear and restoring the mangroves of Fiji as they will paying a tax and paying over four times extra for a litre of biofuel to satisfy this Government's "zero carbon at any cost to the Kiwi" approach to solving climate change. ACT will not support this bill. We've got a better bill."