Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): It is a pleasure to participate in this special debate on an issue that concerns so many people so deeply. I would like to commend those members of the House particularly Kennedy Graham who has worked assiduously to bring about a report and cooperation on an issue that is so important to him. Many members toil away for a long period of time without advancing any issues they care about at all. Kennedy Graham is far from being one of those for this particular achievement alone.The report that we are asked to debate and comment on gives us effectively a series of choices as a country depending on our level of ambition for reducing carbon emissions and asks how much of our current and future lifestyle we are prepared to give up in light of potential technological advances that may make it easier to eat our cake and have it too. I would make the argument that we should first focus on doing those things that we should do because they make sense anyway. Let me just give you half a dozen examples of things that the Government of New Zealand and this Parliament could do now that would reduce New Zealand's emissions and have other benefits that would make New Zealand a better place.The first example I will share with you is making it easier for people to share rides. At present in New Zealand it is legal to share a ride with another person unless you charge them money. As soon as you charge somebody money to share a ride you have to face $1500 of regulatory costs—soon to be only $600 the Minister tells me—and that is prohibitive for people who want to get into the business of having more than one person in a vehicle. This is one of those examples where it makes sense to do it anyway. Because if you drive down the Southern Motorway at 7.30 a.m. on a weekday and probably soon on a weekend and you count the cars opposite you which are almost stationary you will find that every fifth one if you are lucky has more than one occupant.If we could just get a small increase in the number of people sharing rides then we could dramatically increase the vehicle occupancy rate we would reduce congestion and also we would reduce the carbon intensity of travel. So I would put it to the House that one of the most urgent things that we should be doing is making it as easy as getting a driver's licence to become an Uber driver or a Chariot driver or a Lyft driver and we should have thousands of students all over New Zealand who if they are still driving to university are making money and picking up a few people on the way. That is not going to solve the whole problem but it is something that could be done very easily. It would barely even require legislation.Something more ambitious that we should do anyway that would also have major benefits for reducing New Zealand's emissions from transport at least is we must start pricing road use in an accurate way. One of the things about being a member of Parliament is that you have to catch an awful lot of flights and I marvel at the fact that almost every time I get on a plane the number of passengers is exactly the same as the number of seats on the plane—incredible; how do they do it? When there are times of great demand such as Monday morning—Hon Judith Collins: Not if it's United.DAVID SEYMOUR: Ha ha! I have to say the Minister of Energy and Resources just said Not if it's United." which is true. But I just want to make the point that they are able to coordinate supply and demand and reduce overcrowding by varying the price according to the time of day and the time of the week. On our roadwork networks we have the same price to drive at any time and so you have empty roads for half the day and chaos for the rest of the day. We must follow Singapore we must follow Stockholm we must follow London and actually look to price the use of roads according to the level of congestion at that particular time.That is something that would address one of the most urgent problems we have in New Zealand particularly in Auckland and now in Wellington of congestion but it would also significantly reduce the amount of idling and the amount of emissions that we have. It would encourage people to use other forms of transport. At the moment if you are sitting on a bus good on you; but if you are behind 50 vehicles that are paying the same road-user charge as you are then you are getting ripped off.Another thing that we could do is to address our agricultural emissions. Again a very simple thing that New Zealand could do if it wanted to reduce its emissions—not something that would change the whole game but these things add up; it is something that we could do that would actually be beneficial anyway—is get rid of the State ownership of Landcorp. It is extraordinary that in 2017 the taxpayer of New Zealand is supplying cheap capital to people who want to do dairy conversions. If we are worried that our dairy intensity has become too great then perhaps one of the things we should consider is to stop subsidising it with taxpayer money.I would actually go one further and as I suggested at the beginning of last year I would use some of the proceeds of that sale to pay off Government debt and I would use the rest to set up a special grant-making trust to fund people who wish to create wildlife sanctuaries fencing out the pests that predate on our native species and planting more native trees which also act as a carbon sink. So that is up to three things we could do that would be relatively easy.But here is a fourth—it is a little bit harder but it is still the right thing to do. After 16 years of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act the jury should be in. Waving normal competition law to create one giant cooperative has not delivered anything like what was promised in the days of heady rhetoric at the beginning of this millennium. We were promised that we would have a global marketing champion and giant that would move us up the value chain and make New Zealand farmers rich. Well New Zealand farmers have done pretty well mainly because they have worked so hard but we have hardly created a Network of Early-Career Sustainable Scientists and Engineers of the South Pacific. If anything we have mainly managed to boil a huge amount of water using a huge amount of coal and gas and send a huge amount of powder to the huge market that is China. I do not think that is value-add. I think what we need in New Zealand is to look at the firms that are doing value-add in dairy of smaller volumes of greater value such as Open Country Dairy such as Synlait and so on.The other thing that we could do is create a regulatory environment that is more conducive to technology. I will just give you this one simple example: a current energy bill is in danger of applying the regulations normally applied to electricity distributors to anyone in New Zealand who wants to charge electric vehicles. So it makes sense to be regulatory—to be responsible in regulation anyway—but it is another thing that we should be doing to have a forward-looking regulatory regime that makes it possible for us to uptake new technology and ride-sharing is an example of that. There are examples of that in financial technology and there are examples of that around charging networks for electric vehicles.I am not going to engage in the level of ambition and how much we should be prepared to chop our nose off to spite our face and how much cost we should be prepared to take to fight climate change—that debate has been well-covered by other people—but what I would say is that as a party ACT is in favour of addressing those issues that are costless to do may have other benefits anyway and cumulatively added together will significantly reduce our emissions and achieve the goals that people like Kennedy Graham would like New Zealand to achieve. Thank you Mr Speaker and thank you for this wonderful debate."