Woods Megan: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: 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:11406. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a short call on the third reading of this bill. It was comforting to hear the Minister say that this is one thing that the Government is going to do to combat climate change. Although Labour is supporting this legislation we do look forward to a suite of measures that are going to meaningfully address New Zealand’s emission reductions and how it is that we are going to meet the targets that we have set ourselves especially when we consider that we are going to have to get more ambitious.One of the features of the Paris Agreement is that ambition is built into it and the ability to ratchet up each country’s contribution will increase—each meeting on meeting. At the moment New Zealand’s rather timid contribution of 11 percent on 1990 level reductions from 2021 onwards is something that we are going to have to get more ambitious about. We are going to have to front up to the international community and we are importantly going to have to show that we are meeting our targets. We are currently not meeting our targets. We are not on the kind of transition pathway to a low-carbon economy where we can or will meet our targets.This piece of legislation—although it is something we welcome let us bear in mind the 0.07 percent reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions from this piece of legislation. That is what the Ministry for the Environment has calculated. So let us get real about what this legislation does and does not do. It is a good thing. It needed to happen. But make no mistake: this is not a plan to limit climate change. So when the Minister says that this is over one thing we look forward in the coming days and weeks to hearing the Minister roll out her comprehensive plan for how New Zealand is going to reduce its emissions. We would welcome seeing a real commitment to carbon budgeting but the fact that the National Government voted against aligning our targets and our emissions trading scheme just here tonight in the House does not give me great faith.But most other countries set carbon budgets. If we think about it as a household—if we want to save money what do most people do? They set a budget. They write it down. They make a commitment. That is how they meet it. New Zealand does not do that and guess what? It fails to meet its targets too. It is no great surprise. It is just something that we do have to address and we have to address it fast.In the Committee stage of this debate I thought the Minister in one of her responses made a very telling contribution and it is within the regulatory impact statement. The reason for the long phase-in period of this through to 2019 is to protect dairy. It is to protect dairy—its industrial gases not its agricultural gases. Dairy is still being protected in terms of agricultural emissions but in terms of its industrial usage what we cannot do is address our greenhouse gas emissions while we continue to favour one sector and subsidise that through other productive areas of our economy. Our economy is out of kilter because this Government has not used the levers that the emissions trading scheme gave it to transform our economy to diversify our economy to add more value and to move to the kind of 21st century economy that New Zealand is going to need to survive in the world. It is a trick that has been missed and it is a trick that this Government is continuing to miss.Listening to the Government speakers through the course of this debate tonight just shows how out of step they are when it comes to the issue of climate change. In other countries politicians are realising the opportunity that transitioning to low-carbon economies gives us. There are the opportunities for us to create higher-value economies with better-paying and more secure jobs. That is the kind of vision that we in Labour have for New Zealand and climate offers that opportunity.At the Paris climate talks one of the standout side events that happened was the international business community getting together and saying that Governments were not doing enough. Business was pushing Governments to do more. So we have here the business community in New Zealand realising that more needs to be done. But the Government is out of step with business. Businesses realise the threat that inaction on climate change poses to New Zealand. It poses the fiscal risk of New Zealand thinking it can just buy its way out by buying credits for evermore. I know that that is not something that Grant Robertson is looking forward to. Business also recognises the real reputational risk of New Zealand failing to meet its climate change targets. New Zealand simply cannot continue to trade on some kind of clean green image and turn up to climate conference after climate conference and earn itself Fossil of the Day awards which make no mistake New Zealand excelled in in Paris.This is not the kind of image that we want for New Zealand on the global stage. We want New Zealand to be seen as somewhere where we are doing the right thing and that we are not an international laggard. The legislation we have today and tonight in front of us is an important start but it cannot be a cherry-picked part of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) review. The Minister when she was in the chair admitted that the ETS was broken that the ETS was so broken that it allowed something like the hot air credits to come into play. We are not putting the ultimate legislative protection around that in terms of a price floor to sit alongside a price ceiling but we have to have a commitment to an ETS to be a mechanism that puts a real meaningful price on carbon that will work as a lever in our economy to move us on to a low-carbon transitional pathway because we do not have that at the moment.We cannot simply continue with business as usual and we have to see the opportunities that are contained in that transition for us. Labour supports this bill and we would equally support more measures from the Government to finally start addressing New Zealand’s rising greenhouse gas emissions.