Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to debate the Government's decision to declare a climate change emergency. National is fully committed to efforts to address climate change. We are committed to the Paris Agreement and to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 but declaring a climate emergency is nothing but virtue signalling. Symbolic gestures just don't cut it—by declaring a climate emergency when there is consensus on what needs to be done. We need to drive our emissions down. A climate emergency won't change our approach to this. Last year National supported the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. The bill put into legislation a goal of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050 and it established the Climate Change Commission. Lower emissions is the organising principle of the Climate Change Response Act as it should be. To lower emissions we need an effective plan based on practical sensible solutions not extreme policies such as declaring a climate change emergency.The test for this Government is: do their policies reduce emissions effectively? Only effective policies can help keep temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Centigrade as required by the Paris Agreement and deliver net zero emissions by 2050. The task before us is monumental. Net zero emissions in 30 years is hugely ambitious especially for a country that earns half of its income from the primary sector. We simply cannot sink investments into ineffective policies. New Zealand will run out of money long before it reaches its targets if we commit to policies that simply don't work. Our policies must lower emissions or be dropped. What does a commitment to effective action look like in practice? Well we see the solution in three parts. First we must test every policy. We must know how many tonnes of greenhouse gas as a policy we take from the atmosphere taking into account downstream effects to decide whether to go on with the policy or not. Every policy should be tested and each policy should be tested again after it is launched—and not just once but regularly because reducing emissions is not just where to cut emissions but how much. For every policy the first tonne of cuts is usually the cheapest. Further cuts in emissions become more expensive. Each policy has a point at which the next tonne is no longer competitive with other sources. Our ambitious targets mean we need to know when each policy has reached those critical points. The second aspect of effective action is that policies should demonstrate a minimum level of effectiveness before they are funded. In practice minimum effectiveness will be a cap on the number of dollars the Government will commit to spend on a policy to cut a tonne of emissions. Policies that do not reach the minimum threshold of effectiveness should not be funded and the money saved should go to other more effective policies. This cap would certainly rule out the Government's 100 percent renewable electricity goal which actually has been costed at around $1280 per tonne. New Zealand can make great progress towards emissions targets simply by redirecting spending from bad policies to better and more effective options.Third effective action means we must look at all of our options for reducing emissions. We must consider those options on a level playing field. That means accessing options on their merits according to whether they cut emissions and at what cost. The test for how we reduce our emissions should be based on not preferring one technology over another or whether it is in the right sector. Right now across Wellington hundreds of officials across four agencies are all working on one thing. They are writing rules on how we should live our lives. They want to tell you what car you can drive what days you can drive the size of your house how much energy you can use and where you buy it from and how many flights you can take. They have a name for this programme. It's called transition or transformation and it's hiding in plain sight. Official and Ministers refer to it all the time.Just recently the Governor of the Reserve Bank delivered a speech called Progressing climate action by driving transformational change." Last year the Minister of Energy and Resources gave a speech to the gas industry forum called "Towards zero carbon." In it she said—and I quote—"As we reckon with our global confrontation with climate change it is clear the old ways or running our economy and paying our way in the world will need to change. We are on the precipice of a major economic transformation. … we need to change our economy at a larger scale and at a faster pace than that of any economic transformation in … history." The Government has never made the case for transformation. It has not said what it means. It has not demonstrated it is necessary to cut emissions. It has not shown its benefits justify its costs. There is no mention of transformation in the purpose statement of the Act or the targets of the Act. As I've noted the legislation does say that our goal is to lower emissions not transformation. The case for transformation must be made. It cannot be assumed. Yet it is being assumed. Transformation is being treated as though it follows directly and automatically from climate change. It does not. National believes that success means delivering on our emissions targets without sacrificing the things that help make life worth living. Success means meeting our responsibilities fully and genuinely while still driving the car we want still leaving the heater running on a cold day and still taking that once-in-a-lifetime overseas trip. Success means not having the climate change Minister telling us how to live our lives to cut emissions—because that means failure in every sense.Command and control over every part of our life means not only losing the material things that we all enjoy; it also guarantees failure to meet our emissions targets. We cannot cut emissions as effectively and affordably from the top down. With all due respect to James Shaw the surest way not to make real progress on emissions is to put control of a massively complicated problem in the hands of someone who's never more than three years away from an election.We have to be smart enough to not even try that approach. Sadly for all this talk from this Government about a climate crisis it's doing nothing more than making it up as it goes along. They've chosen to fly blind. They've hardly even checked the cost effectiveness of their introduced emissions policies. This is inexcusable when there is so much at stake. Whatever happened to this generation's nuclear moment? If the Government is serious about climate change it must be transparent and well organised with its analysis.To summarise National is committed to doing what works on emissions. That is what our legislation and our international agreements require. Doing what works is the only way we can achieve our targets and it will save us from big government trying to rule our lives. National believes we can fully meet our emissions obligations if we're prepared to look at the options based on whether they're affordable and effective. National believes that if we can meet our targets without changing our lives we should and we can if we are prepared to do what works to lower emissions. Declaring a climate emergency is nothing but a hollow symbolic gesture if there is no intention to act in the best interests of New Zealanders. Thank you Madam Speaker."