Turei Metiria: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8465. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]6.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “It makes no sense to be calling for emissions reductions on one hand while subsidising emissions on the other”?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Acting Prime Minister): Yes.Metiria Turei: What is the cost to the taxpayer of all financial support his Government provides for fossil fuel exploration and extraction?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The answer to that question depends on whether you follow the World Wildlife Fund definition which says there are some subsidies or whether you follow the APEC definition and other international bodies who estimate the cost at zero—that is that New Zealand has no subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not say the word “subsidy” at all. I asked for the cost to the taxpayer of all financial support provided by the Government. That is a different thing.Mr SPEAKER: And if you listened carefully to the answer the Minister explained that it depends on the way in which the subsidy is then described.Metiria Turei: How much has the Government spent on the two-for-one deal under the emissions trading scheme which does subsidise greenhouse gas - polluting industries by up to 50 percent?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not have those figures to hand but it would not be much because the carbon price has been so low. And I know the Greens liked the emissions trading scheme until the carbon price went down when it decided there was not enough pain being inflicted on the population at large so now it has changed to a carbon tax. And I suppose that would earn us quite a lot of revenue.Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister is simply moving into a criticism of a Green Party position. That is not appropriate for an answer.Mr SPEAKER: And I agree with that comment. I probably should have pulled—[Interruption] Order! I am just ruling. I should have pulled up the Minister earlier. The question was answered right at the start by saying he did not have that information with him.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is the Prime Minister aware that the last time fossil fuel electricity generation was subsidised in New Zealand was when the Whirinaki power station was built with Government subsidies and when the Government provided a guarantee for the new gas-fired power station at Huntly an initiative that was taken by the previous Government and supported by the Greens?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes I have become aware of that and was very surprised given the tone of the questions that we have been answering. And actually as the member may know since the electricity market has become more effective it is now likely that the carbon-producing generation at Huntly—well it has been reduced and could be reduced further.Metiria Turei: Is the granting of $9.6 million this year to help multibillion-dollar companies like Anadarko and Exxon Mobil search for more oil in New Zealand not an example of the taxpayer subsidising the fossil fuel industry?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No and if the member cannot tell the difference between the Government paying subsidies for petrol at the pump and the Government providing public funding to a research vessel to go and explore the ocean then I do not think we can have a sensible discussion. Surely the Greens are not suggesting we should now wilfully cultivate ignorance of our ocean just in case some petroleum company decides to use the information.Metiria Turei: Is the Prime Minister saying that it is not OK to subsidise the public’s consumption of fossil fuels but that it is perfectly OK for the Government to use taxpayer money to subsidise foreign companies to extract more fossil fuels from around New Zealand?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes New Zealand has led an international effort which is gaining momentum to encourage Governments to remove their direct subsidies at the pump on fossil fuels because all the work shows that could reduce carbon emissions by up to 12 percent simply by charging the market price. A number of Governments have been moving in that direction many of their own volition but certainly with encouragement from the international community. I can only repeat again for the member’s benefit that although we could have a detailed discussion about the tax treatment of activity around the petroleum industry there are no subsidies to the industry; there are a series of tax treatments that have been put in place to achieve consistency and equity in our tax system.Metiria Turei: Is the Government spending $8 million through New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals to map oil reserves in Nelson Otago and Southland yet another example of the taxpayer subsidising the fossil fuel industry?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Again it is a matter of whether we believe that the Government and New Zealand should be wilfully ignorant of its oceans. We think it is worth knowing. I mean we pay hundreds of millions of dollars for research in our oceans to understand what goes on out there—the ecosystems and in this case mineral potential. Of course that information could be used by international oil companies but we think it is worth having the knowledge and taking the risk that they may use it which we do not regard as a risk.Metiria Turei: Will the Prime Minister now guarantee to the New Zealand public that no company that is engaged in fossil fuel extraction exploration or mining will have any access to any of the information that the Government subsidises in looking for oil or mineral reserves—that there will be no subsidisation of that information?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am rather taken aback by this 20th century form of Luddism—or is it Ludditism? We are in fact the Government that has the opposite approach—which is why we will not agree with the member—and that is open data. We believe that everything the Government knows that is not breaching privacy and confidentiality should be available to the public even if they are members of the Green Party or multinational oil corporations. We are certainly not going to start hiding publicly funded data for politically motivated reasons.Dr Kennedy Graham: Has the Government made any estimate of the percentage reduction required in our emissions in order for New Zealand to have its fair share of the global carbon budget consistent with 2 degrees?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I suspect that calculation may well have been done but I do not have the numbers to hand. The Government is satisfied that the targets we are talking about at the conference in Paris represent an adequate balance of our contribution to reducing both climate change and temperature increase with the fact that for New Zealand the cost of reducing another tonne of carbon emissions is higher than for any other developed country.Dr Kennedy Graham: What are the principles of fairness that his Government has used when it decided on its self-described “fair reduction target” of 11 percent of 1990 levels?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Pretty much what I have just said and that is carrying our share of the burden of reducing carbon emissions across the globe on the one hand and on the other hand balancing it up with recognising that it costs New Zealand more than pretty much every other developed country to reduce carbon emissions by another tonne because of the unique mix of carbon emissions that New Zealand produces.Dr Kennedy Graham: With full regard to that unique mix would he agree that if one takes account of New Zealand’s per capita emissions our relative wealth and our historical emissions our target would be at least 40 percent below 1990 levels not 11 percent?Hon BILL ENGLISH: All those things have I am sure been taken into account and some of them may be at a detailed level but just by way of an example a very high proportion of our energy is from renewable sources already. I note that other countries that are on the face of it promoting more aggressive targets than New Zealand are at the same time for instance shutting down low-carbon-emitting energy sources such as nuclear energy and expanding their coal energy and it is going to be pretty difficult for them to reconcile those kinds of conflicting objectives.