Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. Tonight we've heard some wonderful platitudes about the collegiality of lawmaking in this house and I'm new to Parliament and I must say that I have been impressed by some of the positive behaviours.What I want to say is that ACT is a party that believes in free markets private property rights and we also believe that polluters should pay—they should pay their fair share. Not five times or 10 times or 20 times what our trading partners are paying to mitigate their climate emissions—they should pay their fair share. Even the Climate Change Commission says that New Zealand business should have access to emissions credits carbon credits from international sources. Because if we are going to dramatically accelerate our emissions reductions in New Zealand as the climate change Minister mentioned before then we have to ask at what cost and to whom does that cost fall and why should that cost fall excessively on New Zealand when our trading partners and our competitors—sometimes they're the same like the European Union or Australia. Why should the cost fall almost exclusively on New Zealand businesses on New Zealand consumers and New Zealand taxpayers when carbon dioxide emissions are a pollutant that affects the planet? It's a global issue it's not an issue simply for New Zealand to solve.So what ACT says is that creating a confidential reserve price at auction while it may go some way towards making the emissions trading scheme (ETS) more functional in fact simply is another way for the Government to set an artificial price for carbon emissions and that's an artificially high price that could be five or 10 or 20 times what our competitors and trading partners are paying. And it doesn't need to be that way because there are mitigations for climate emissions available at much lower cost per tonne than what is available in the New Zealand airshed.Our international trading partners in many cases would welcome a green investment an environmental investment an investment in sustainability. The examples that have been offered to us during the select committee process are that of the Amazon rainforest cleared in the 1990s in the most destructive of fashions devastating land-use changes loss of biodiversity sedimentation of major rivers and destruction of indigenous communities. There are places like that which would benefit from a New Zealand investment in reforestation. Because it doesn't matter whether we mitigate our climate emissions here in New Zealand or in South America or anywhere else in the world. What should be available to New Zealand business New Zealand consumers and New Zealand taxpayers is an opportunity to mitigate their climate emissions at the lowest possible cost—and the Climate Change Commission agrees. They believe that these international opportunities to mitigate climate emissions should be available to New Zealand.So looking at our emissions trading scheme and this proposed amendment very late amendment—an amendment to a scheme that had been in place for over a year and which is due to hold its first auction on 17 March just a few days' time. This bill was rushed into the House under urgency after a late error a major concern was identified a risk was identified by officials and a risk that could potentially have quite devastating consequences to the New Zealand Government's coffers because 4.75 million units currently trading at close to $40 each is a significant amount of money. We're talking potentially hundreds of millions of dollars billions of dollars in cash raised from New Zealand businesses and then by extension from New Zealand consumers and New Zealand taxpayers paying at the pump paying through their food prices at the supermarket farmers paying through transport and through all the other ways that goods and services get to and from farms and towns and cities and supermarkets and homes—every New Zealander paying.So when this bill was rushed into the House only a few weeks ago it had the effect of creating a deep uncertainty and a concern amongst those organisations which rely on the emissions trading scheme so that they can buy New Zealand units and then hand them back to the Government in order to fulfil their climate emission obligations. They came to us. Many of them were only able to submit over Zoom because they couldn't travel to Wellington in the time frames that had been offered to them—just a few days to make submissions. Some of the people who offered their perspective have been involved in the design and establishment of emissions trading schemes going as far as back as the 1980s when one of the submitters—who has worked at Victoria University developing better public policy—was one of the first people to propose an emissions trading scheme. When that submitter saw what was being proposed they said Look these minor tweaks aren't enough. They're not going to deliver the functioning emissions trading scheme that we need so that New Zealand businesses can make the right decisions." Other submitters said "Look we don't need a confidential reserve price at all. There is already a floor there's already a ceiling and again those rails aren't needed. What we need is the opportunity to be able to go outside the New Zealand market and offset our emissions in any way that works that actually sequesters carbon and stores carbon. We shouldn't be limited by the artificial constraints."So we now have the situation in New Zealand where because of the Government's poorly thought-out climate policies such as banning oil and gas exploration and signalling that gas has no future in New Zealand beyond 2050 we see a chilling effect in the market. We know that natural gas supplies are dwindling much faster than even the Government anticipated when that proclamation from the steps of Parliament was made in 2018 and that is having a huge and significant effect on electricity prices which have spiked up to $500 per megawatt hour in the past few weeks. That is a direct result of the massive amounts of coal currently being imported and burned at Huntly and that is just to keep the lights on in what looks like it will be a dry and cool winter.Now the businesses and the organisations and those concerned environmental groups which submitted on this bill raised genuine objections as to why either the confidential reserve price was unnecessary or it would be just another meddling in the market another lever that was unnecessary creating confusion and creating uncertainty. What they are really asking for is a functioning emissions trading scheme that is transparent that allows businesses to see in the long term what the likely price of offsetting their carbon emissions is so that they can make better investment decisions.Some of these businesses who manufacture cement in New Zealand are absolutely vital to our infrastructure and building construction to deliver more homes to fix the broken pipes to fix the cities to unlock transport connections. They want to keep working in New Zealand. If they price of carbon if the price of buying units through the New Zealand emissions trading scheme gets too high they will simply shut up shop—we know this; it's called carbon leakage—and they will transfer their production to other facilities. One of New Zealand's former major cement manufacturers Holcim based down in Westport declined to proceed with any further infrastructure investments in New Zealand. They now import all their cement from Vietnam and other locations. That is New Zealand's future: less economically resilient; our communities in the regions gutted as these major industries leave. All of these things are not just a mirage on the horizon; they are likely consequences of poor public policy and poor Government decision-making around climate.We've heard about the European emissions trading scheme. That is simply a facade. They don't include transport they still subsidise their farmers to plant hedges and they call that environmental mitigation. New Zealand has so much more to offer leading the way with an emissions trading scheme that is truly functional. That's why ACT opposes this bill because we want a functioning proper ETS for New Zealand."