Bennett Paula: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett Paula: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11395. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Climate Change Issues): This is just a response to a couple of things. One in response to the member David Clark is that certainly 75 percent of submitters supported the one-for-two measure going. In general what we got from business was that they wanted certainty. That was the most important thing and most definitely their ideal was that it was phased out over time—over 3 years and beyond to be quite honest. From their perspectives it gave them time to budget it meant that they could really look longer term and for a lot of them—we did look at all the options to be quite frank. I think I had three that I looked at very carefully: one was just all over in one shot to 100 percent; another was phasing out over 2 years; and then there was the 3-year option. Businesses were certainly interested in the 3-year option and the biggest reason that we went with what we did was in line with dairy to be quite honest. Dairy farmers do take a percentage of cost because of their transport and electricity usage and also because of Fonterra. Fonterra has still got a couple of coal-fired drying units in the South Island in particular that really do make it one of the biggest business emitters. It would pass that cost I am sure on to farmers and so we wanted to be considerate of that. At this time when we can see so many under so much financial pressure we did not want to be putting undue pressure on them in addition to that.The other thing is in response to the member Dr Megan Woods who earlier asked a couple of questions around the price caps and the price floor. Certainly the advice I have had on the price floor was that it is highly highly unlikely that the price will go down again and that is because of the markets how many are out there and the different prices that are going on. To the kinds of questions that the member had on when we will look at the cap again and when we will look at a whole lot of other measures: to be quite frank a lot of that is about when the world starts coming a bit more on board. At the moment as members know we have got only a few countries that have got an emissions trading scheme (ETS) and some different states in America.What I will say is that when I was in New York for the signing of the Paris Agreement there was a lot of talk about emissions trading schemes what they meant and the lessons that they learned from ours. Members in this House and in this debate have raised the point that ours ain’t perfect and there have certainly been times when the price has been so low that it has actually made no difference to be quite fair. So we have learnt some lessons—we have learnt lessons in what we will accept as units. We have learnt some lessons and we will take a hit for that I suppose in this debate but at the end of the day (a) we will not make them again and (b) I hope that we can pass on some of those learnings to other countries that are now seriously looking at introducing an ETS. But while you have businesses that are seriously trade exposed—I must admit before I started learning about this I was in one boat about how you wear the cost of what you do and you make decisions like that. Some of our businesses may not be perfect but actually the way they produce some of their goods is more efficient and less emission-polluting than some of their counterparts overseas and putting so much cost on them that they close down here would not mean that we would not have those goods still manufactured but that they would be manufactured in a less healthy way if you like—or a more polluting way—overseas and actually do more damage to our planet.I want to encourage other countries to look at an ETS. I want them to learn from some of the things that have happened as we have progressed it. It started under Labour and I am sure the architect who is not here right now would have a look and say there are things you would do differently. But we need to encourage other countries to equally take this really important step.