Williams Andrew: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6228. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. As we have already said in this House—and our leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters spoke on this a couple of months ago—New Zealand First does not support this emissions trading scheme or this Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. 
Basically the emissions trading scheme is just another tax on the people of New Zealand and the businesses of New Zealand. New Zealand First does not subscribe to a Wall Street takeover of New Zealand. The Merrill Lynch money traders of this world should not be standing to gain hugely from any sort of emissions trading scheme. We have money-launderers around the world in the likes of New York London and Shanghai and they are the ones who stand to make more money from any emissions trading scheme that is put in place. I can recall that when I was in the export field the big thing at the time was international standard ISO 9000 another scheme that was going to supposedly be the big bee’s knees of everything. New Zealand companies and corporates—and corporates all over the world—were going to become international standard ISO 9000 accredited. It was going to mean that you met all these new various standards and schemes in terms of all sorts of things including environmental controls on your companies to ensure that you were a good corporate citizen in the environment. 
Again it was a bit of sham because everybody did it but at the end of the day nothing really came out of it. It was just a way for the people who were running the standards scheme who were also the people who were coming and doing the audits on the companies and the corporations to make a huge amount of money. But at the end of the day it really did not have any great outcome for New Zealand New Zealand exporters and New Zealand corporates. We said at the time that it would simply have been better if New Zealand companies had had better internal audit systems rather than having to spend a huge amount of money on this tradable scheme around the world in order to have international standards. 
This emissions trading scheme and what we are looking at today serve to turn environmental protection into a carbon credit bank; to make environmentalism a speculative business. In other words they are issuing tradable credits verging almost on a Ponzi scheme so that good money that is taken from New Zealand ends up paying for the wrongs of other countries and other polluters around the world. There are much better mechanisms for New Zealand than uncontrollable financial machinations such as an emissions trading scheme. This could end up costing this country more than $2 billion—$2 billion that New Zealand simply cannot afford—again to be a supposed world leader in the emissions trading scheme. Why would New Zealand put itself out on a limb put more than $2 billion into something when we simply cannot afford it at this stage and when so many other countries are not having a bar of it? 
These funds should be retained in New Zealand as is New Zealand First’s policy in order to provide funds to tackle our own emissions and our own pollution here in this country. We should be applying environmental levies here in New Zealand to ensure that New Zealand is kept 100 percent pure. 
I lodged a written question today to the Associate Minister of Transport as an example. It asked what the percentage breakdown is of New Zealand’s bus and truck fleet in each of the Euro 1 Euro 2 Euro 3 Euro 4 and Euro 5 engine categories and what initiatives the Associate Minister is taking to introduce available technologies to reduce diesel emissions from the older Euro 1 and Euro 2 powered buses and trucks. 
It is amazing the response from the Minister. This was a response to a letter from a constituent last week. It said “I understand that air pollution is important but I am currently looking at the process of amending the 2007 vehicle exhaust emissions rule. However I understand the previous Minister of Transport and officials of the Ministry of Transport have already advised you that it is not the role of the ministry to test products regardless of their potential benefits. I am also told that you have been advised that there are no funds available to carry out any testing or research in this area.” 
So here we have New Zealand citizens New Zealand corporates trying to look at ways that emissions can be controlled and trying to get on top of something like that. Diesel emissions are a major problem for this country and old buses and old trucks are polluting our environment. We are basically being told that it is not really something that the Government has any interest in. So in other words what we are seeing is that on the one hand the Government wants to get into all these various schemes to send New Zealand’s money offshore to Ponzi schemes around the world in emissions trading. But here in this situation where people come out with practical solutions to address our own emissions in this country the Government really does not want to give much credence to it at all. 
New Zealand First maintains that the State must strike a balance between economic progress and appropriate environmental goals. The emissions trading scheme does not decrease emissions; it just trades them and moves them around to those economies that can afford to buy carbon credits. The emissions trading scheme devised by this Government is totally unsustainable. It is nothing more than another tax on the people and production of New Zealand. New Zealand First does not support this bill and once again we are seeing good New Zealand money going down the drain.