Bishop Chris: Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7936. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National): In a previous contribution on a different bill I talked about the two types of members’ bills there are. There are the sorts of political bills out there—the bills that essentially exist to get the name of the bill into the parliamentary ballot. I think Jacinda Ardern’s proposed bill about child poverty eradication would fall into that category. No one is really opposed to eradicating child poverty—eradication and reduction I am sorry: the Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill. No one is opposed to eradicating child poverty. In fact everyone in this House is all in favour of eradicating child poverty but of course that bill literally just sets up a commission to examine the issue. It is a bit like her bill to get the Law Commission to draft a bill to legalise gay adoption—you know the point of the bill is just to have the bill.So there are those sorts of bills and then there are the serious bills. The House on a members’ Wednesday does consider serious bills and I would classify the bill that the House has considered a few moments ago about solar energy the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill as one of those serious bills. It was well-intentioned—I understand it was defeated at first reading but it was a serious bill to deal with quite an interesting issue in the electricity market.So how would I classify this bill? Well I would say it is more sort of a halfway house bill. It is quite a political bill and it is quite a simple bill. I have to say that James Shaw is a well-intentioned guy and I think the bill is well intentioned and it is a somewhat interesting issue that the House is dealing with.Mr Tirikatene just before made reference to fiduciary duties and trusts having to act in the best interests of beneficiaries. I am not sure that was wholly on point with the bill but I do agree with him that the purpose of the funds that the Government has—like the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and the ACC fund—must be to maximise returns for taxpayers and maximise returns for the people of New Zealand. I do agree with the comments of my colleague David Seymour about how if we were to pass this bill it would unnecessarily shackle the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation with that very tricky dual mandate. It would make it difficult for them to discharge their responsibilities.The House only last month I think considered Government legislation to allow the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation to use something called fund investment vehicles—or FIVs in investment parlance. That was a technical change to allow the guardians to use those vehicles to maximise returns for taxpayers. Everybody in the Parliament was at great pains to talk about the importance of the independence of the Superannuation Fund how wonderful the Cullen fund was and how Michael Cullen had the enormous foresight to set up this independent fund that would be at arm’s length from politicians.Hon Phil Goff: And all of those things are true.CHRIS BISHOP: Yes—Phil Goff says all those things are true. Well those things are true—that is exactly right. Michael Cullen also incidentally did not support the Government resuming contributions to the Superannuation Fund or he did not support the Government borrowing billions of dollars to put into the Superannuation Fund. In fact he explicitly said that when he legislated for it at the time which is contrary to Labour Party policy currently. They tend to go back and forth on that depending on who the leaderis and that changes about once a year. But anyway that is just a side point. The critical point is that everybody was at pains to talk about the independence of the fund and how it was important that politicians were at arm’s length from it and that is exactly right. That is exactly the point and that is exactly why this bill should be defeated. Thank you.