Mackey Moana: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mackey Moana: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6870] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I would say that I am happy to stand and take a call but I am actually not at all happy to stand and take a call on this Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill. I am not sure whether I am disappointed and angry more about the way that the Government has conducted the negotiations on this issue or about the product that we are now debating.  
I think one of the saddest things about today and about this legislation is that the Minister for Climate Change Issues Dr Nick Smith who is in charge of the bill was once the great proud beacon of the Bluegreens. This National Minister once stood up and talked proudly about his passion for the environment. He talked proudly about the work he was doing within National to ensure that environmental legislation with integrity was bought in. Now this Minister will be for ever remembered as a sell-out. He will be remembered as someone who brought into this House terrible flawed legislation that does nothing except transfer the cost from polluters— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: A month ago you were in my office agreeing with it. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Dr Nick Smith that I will get to that; he should not worry. The bill does nothing but transfer the cost from polluters to taxpayers. Nothing could be more telling than the fact that the Minister did not even talk about the environment in his speech. He did not even talk about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Yes I did. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: No he did not. All that the Minister could talk about was his hollow justifications for why his blue-green credentials have been completely destroyed. I think that is sad. Once upon a time Dr Nick Smith was seen as someone who was genuinely trying to bring a change to National.  
When we were in negotiations towards the beginning of this year Dr Smith told us that the entry date for the agricultural sector was not a bottom line for him and that if it was the bottom line for us then that was fine. Then he went back to his caucus and his caucus reined him in. David Carter had been going around telling Federated Farmers that the agricultural sector would never come in and the Government would be able to delay it and delay it. My local Federated Farmers branch told me that. When Dr Smith told us in those negotiations that the agricultural sector was not a bottom line and that he was happy for it to come in in 2013 I thought: “I bet he has not talked to his caucus about that.” and that is exactly what had happened.  
One of the really flawed parts of this process is that members have not even read this bill. We got it seconds after the Minister started his speech. How in God’s name are we expected to give speeches on such important legislation when the bill has been sitting in the Bills Office all day today? The Government would not release it so that the Opposition and the public could take the time to scrutinise it before members were debating it. Charles Chauvel went to a briefing last night where members were not even shown the bill. They were given a copy of a draft; the bill was not even finished. We are being told that some clauses will be introduced during the Committee of the whole House stage. Even the Finance and Expenditure Committee will not have the chance to look at those clauses. I think that this is an absolute travesty.  
I say to Craig Foss that it is not true that Labour introduced its emissions trading scheme legislation under urgency. Yet again National is rewriting history because the facts do not suit it. The facts do not back up what it is doing with this bill. I want Dr Nick Smith to release those Cabinet papers so that the public can know what the cost will be. I think that Dr Smith should release those Cabinet papers and explain to New Zealand taxpayers why he is telling them: “They pollute you pay.” because that is what Dr Smith is doing with this legislation.  
We have just had the report back of the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee. Everyone on the committee worked very hard but that committee was an utter waste of time. Dr Smith has no one to blame but himself for the fact that he has faffed around for nearly a year and now this legislation will be forced through in a few months. Those of us who were members on the committee did not even know what we were meant to be doing. We had terms of reference that covered everything. Apparently the committee was not meant to re-examine the science but it did and we spent a lot of time on that stuff. Just when we were starting to get down to debating some of the real issues and talking about how we could address them suddenly the Government members had obviously been told to hurry up and finish as they had to get it over and done with. The committee was shut down. That is reflected in the minority reports where we say that we cannot have confidence in the report because we did not even have a chance to talk about most of the issues. We were feeling our way around blindly because we had no legislation. The submitters did not know exactly what they were submitting on. They were just concerned that the process meant more and more delay.  
National members say that Labour was not prepared to compromise at all on our scheme. I ask Dr Paul Hutchison whether he has read the Labour Party minority report where we deliberately outlined all the areas where we thought that we could bridge the gap between National and Labour on the emissions trading scheme. We get it that we lost the election. We get it that National campaigned on changing the emissions trading scheme and we are fine with that. As long as the scheme continued to have environmental integrity we were happy to support it.  
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: That’s our bottom line. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is our bottom line: an economically sensible scheme with environmental integrity. Labour would have been happy to support such a scheme and I believe that we could have got there. I believe that we could have got there.  
I say to Dr Paul Hutchison who was in none of the negotiation meetings that we had but who seems to talk as though he knows exactly what went on that he has no idea of what went on. We had a very good meeting with the Minister in the week before the announcement of the deal with the Maori Party—a very good meeting. We discussed a lot of issues in extensive detail and we discussed how we could get past them as my colleague David Parker has said. We indicated the areas that we might be able to compromise on but we said that we needed to see the Treasury papers. We needed to see the officials’ advice we needed access to the officials and we needed to run some of those economic models past them to see what the cost to taxpayers and to the economy would be before we could say that yes we would absolutely agree to the scheme. The Hon Dr Nick Smith said that he understood that.  
So imagine my surprise when I got off a plane in Wellington on Monday and turned on my BlackBerry to find out that even though that very morning Labour had sent through the memorandum of understanding—where we thought we needed to go to from here—before Dr Smith went to Cabinet a deal had been done. Labour members were not told. Dr Smith did not even pick up the phone to call Charles Chauvel to tell him that it was all over. He did not even do that.  
Dr Nick Smith then went on the radio and made up a story that apparently he had given us a deadline which he had not and three Labour members who were at that meeting will say that he absolutely had not done that. Why would we have sent through the memorandum of understanding with the next steps to Dr Nick Smith if we had deliberately breached some kind of deadline? We had not. He then invented a story that he had had a conversation with David Parker which did not happen and then he reverted. It is unbelievable that a Minister of the Crown would act in that way.  
Labour wanted to work with National to get an enduring emissions trading scheme. We see that as being absolutely in the best interests of New Zealand. We were more than prepared to compromise. We thought that the discussions were ongoing. We were happy to be part of those discussions provided we had access to the officials and the advice. We told the Minister that and then he went out and announced another deal that has no environmental integrity whatsoever. 
Hon Member 
: Cobbled together. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It has been cobbled together. The Minister has not even told us that the negotiations are over and now he has tried to accuse us of acting in bad faith. I think that the public will judge that comment from the Minister for what it is which is absolute absolute fiction.  
The Minister then tried to say that the difference between National and Labour is so small that we should just get over it and support his legislation. But Labour does not think that one of the biggest transfers of wealth from polluters to taxpayers is a small issue. We do not think that giving incentives for big polluters to go on polluting and in fact to increase their pollution is in the interests of the environment or the New Zealand taxpayer. If we go by what David Carter said he sees this stuff being phased out over 90 years. That is what we are looking at with this emissions trading scheme. For the Minister to say that he thinks we are being unreasonable because we do not think that Kiwi taxpayers should have to pay for increases in greenhouse gas emissions is absolutely ridiculous.  
But perhaps the most disappointing thing about this entire experience is the position of the Maori Party. Rahui Katene was a very very good member on the select committee. She was passionate about protecting the environment. She was adamant that the Maori Party would never ever support an intensity approach without a cap. The Maori Party said so in its minority report. It stated that it would never support an intensity approach without a cap. We had Craig Foss running around in the select committee. He was talking to the Maori Party chief of staff and trying to make sure that the Maori Party did not put its name to that statement in the report but it did. It stated that there should be no intensity approach without a cap.  
Te Ururoa Flavell gave a speech earlier. I wonder whether he even knows what he has signed up to. He said that he would not support something that would allow emissions to increase. Well I say to Mr Flavell that that is exactly what this legislation does. He said that he would not support a weakened emissions trading scheme. That is exactly what this legislation does.  
I do not know whether the Maori Party members have their heads in the sand whether Dr Smith has told them things that are not true or whether they have some sweetheart deal that they are not telling us about. I think that the taxpayers who will have to foot the bill for this scheme deserve to know because this is a weakened emissions trading scheme. This will increase our greenhouse gas emissions and that is not good for the environment. The people whom Mr Flavell talked about low-income New Zealanders will now have to foot the bill for the big polluters. They will now be allowed to continue to pollute with absolutely no restriction.