Copeland Gordon: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:6130] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I rise with considerable pleasure to take a call on behalf of United Future on the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill. Like Jeanette Fitzsimons I regret that it has taken so long for the bill to come to the House for its second reading. I had imagined that after the 2005 election this bill would have been well up the Order Paper but I guess it is better late than never and I am pleased to see that at last it has got to this point. 
I come to this debate after viewing  
An Inconvenient Truth 
 late in the afternoon on the Sunday of Labour Weekend. By the way Labour Weekend in Wellington was the wettest Labour Weekend we have had in a decade. We have had the wettest winter on record followed by the wettest spring on record. We have had landslips in the greater Wellington region in areas that have been without landslips for years. Anybody who doubts the reality of climate change would only have to have spent the last few months in Wellington to see that something quite dramatic has happened to our weather patterns. 
Let me say at the beginning of this speech that United Future fully accepts the reality of climate change. The evidence is there all around us and therefore we are committed as a party to ensuring that New Zealand pulls its weight in addressing the issues that affect all of the people on this planet at this point in time. If I were to signal one thing that New Zealand is perhaps uniquely placed to do in its response to climate change it would be to plant trees. We are actually quite a large country geographically. We are bigger than the United Kingdom and Ireland put together and we have millions of hectares of wasteland that at the moment are basically barren. Therefore United Future has had a policy for some time that we should incentivise the planting of trees as the singular greatest contribution New Zealand can make to address climate change. 
I am absolutely staggered and disappointed to find that New Zealand First will vote against the bill tonight. I well remember the leader of New Zealand First Winston Peters saying that the nation needs to plant 1 billion trees. When he said that I said “Right on!” yet tonight New Zealand First has come to the House and said that it will vote against this bill which completely baffles me. 
It is clear that trees have become a method whereby carbon can be sequestered. Carbon sequestration has the ability to make a huge difference to world climate and growing trees is one of the very best ways of doing that. I should also point out that it is important to have a sustainable harvesting regime in place for those trees and this bill allows a sustainable harvesting regime to kick in after 35 years. The reason for that is that once a tree matures and in fact starts to rot as old trees do then that tree is no longer absorbing carbon. So the wise thing to do is to cut that tree down at the point where it has optimised the absorption of carbon and to plant a new tree to start that process over again. Conceptually we can see that continuing on until the end of time. It is a good thing to do. Therefore United Future thoroughly supports the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative that is at the heart of this bill. 
I should say in relation to overly mature trees that one of the things that should probably be revisited in this country is the decision not to allow any sustainable harvesting of the West Coast beech forests. I know that that is a sensitive issue but the fact is that if we wanted to get really serious about carbon change we would turn back the clock and let many of those rotten old trees get cut down. Many of those trees are completely rotten right down the middle and they are sequestering no carbon at all. If we could cut them down on a sustainable basis and put in a new tree we would be making a significant difference. I know that that is a controversial suggestion but if we are to get serious about it and follow the science that is exactly the policy outcome that would come about. 
The way in which this bill will work will be by the devolution of tradable carbon emission units from the Crown down to land owners. It will include situations where the Crown itself is a land owner and where it makes sense for the Crown to make its Crown-owned wastelands available to people who want to plant millions of trees on those lands. That would be a wonderful thing to see and in United Future we call it a “no regrets policy”. We would have many more trees. It would increase biodiversity address climate change and absorb nitrate from the soil. Really there is just no downside. 
 Planting trees would also make our country much more beautiful. Funnily enough although New Zealand prides itself on being a forested country our rural countryside is actually denuded of trees compared with England for example. It is very noticeable that there are many more trees in the countryside there than there are here so planting trees is something that needs to happen and it is a very good thing to do. United Future also has a policy specifically of planting trees around all our rivers and lakes on their marginal strips where again that can contribute to climate change to biodiversity to absorbing nitrate and to improving the quality of the water in our rivers and lakes. 
There is huge scope in New Zealand for planting trees on erosion-prone land. Recently I flew from here to Auckland on a beautiful clear day and from Taranaki and all the way through to the King Country I saw a vast area of very hilly land with basically no farming and no trees on it. There is huge scope for us to go ahead and plant those lands. Based on the people who have come to see me and talk about the exciting opportunities this bill presents to them from a commercial point of view it is possible that when this bill goes through we will actually see money coming into this country—and God knows we desperately need that given our balance of payments situation—from overseas people who would be prepared to get involved in planting trees in this country simply in order to access the devolution of those carbon emission units. That would be a cash-flow driver for them. They do not want the land they do not want the trees; they just want to come here and make it happen. So I am very excited with this bill’s potential. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons mentioned the deforestation that is occurring at the moment. I think that that is a tragedy. I have done a graph going all the way back to the 1930s and every time there has been a Labour Government of any stripe the numbers in tree-plantings have gone down. I ask myself when the Labour Party will get its head around the importance of forestry to this country. To sit here doing nothing—as has been happening since the year 1999—and to see our forest estate going backwards I think is a tragedy. It is really counter to all that the Government gives lip service to in terms of climate change. Not only that tree planting even plantation forests opens up commercial possibilities for the future. 
When it comes to climate change United Future’s policy is unashamedly “Let’s pick the low fruit first.” We should do the things we can that are practical—and where there are no regrets no downside but only upside from every point of view—and do those first rather than try to get to the fruit right at the top of the tree and somehow to be some sort of world leader. That is not our role. The big European nations which Jeanette Fitzsimons and others have mentioned can do that. By the way those nations have made some terrible mistakes which we can learn from and we do not want to go down their route. 
I was amazed that Jeanette Fitzsimons said there was nothing much in the bill about the conditions around permanent forest sinks. I tell the House that there is a whole page of them under new clause 67Z inserted by clause 30 in Part 2. All of the obligations that landowners will have to enter into if they want to go into permanent forest sinks are set out there. They state for example that the landowner is required to be the guarantor or insurer of those forests or to provide any other risk management arrangement the Minister considers appropriate. The landowner is required to control the harvest of timber and to have a forest sink management plan. The covenant is to be expressed to have effect in perpetuity and so on. A whole page of conditions is laid out there so as far as we are concerned the template is in this bill. There is just time now for us collectively as a nation and as a Parliament to get on with the job and make a difference to climate change. Thank you.