Parker David: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
Parker David: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:649;Page:18129] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues) 
: 
 I rise to deal with some of the issues raised so far that are general rather than matters particular to any clause. The National Party members Nick Smith and Bill English made reference to the length of the Supplementary Order Papers. The bill as reported back including the commentary is 258 pages long. The officials have had a couple of months to polish the bill during the period when negotiations have been afoot with other parties. A track-changes version of the bill is available to members. This goes through the technical amendments made to the bill in Supplementary Order Papers 232 and 238 which comprise 29 and 35 pages respectively. All of those changes are technical. It is not intended that there be any significant policy changes in these Supplementary Order Papers. The changes proposed attempt to clarify and give effect to the changes adopted by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. As I said for the assistance of members those are set out in a track-changes version of the bill. 
To give an example of the sorts of amendments we are talking about I refer to Supplementary Order Paper 232. Members will see under the amendments to clause 4 for example that subsection (4) is amended to omit the word “Parts”—plural—and substitute the word “Part”. A lot of the changes are purely grammatical. In terms of the other Supplementary Order Papers there is a short two-page one that relates to the GST treatment of emission units. The most significant of the Supplementary Order Papers records the changes to the policies agreed to as a consequence of our agreements with the Greens and New Zealand First. Those have been traversed in terms of principle in the announcements made last week and they are set out in that Supplementary Order Paper. 
The objections of Mr Hide and Mr Copeland are not to do with the emissions trading scheme so much as they are to do with the Kyoto Protocol. They do not accept that climate change is happening. Therefore they see no need for a response to it. The Government disagrees with that position as does the National Party the Greens and New Zealand First. Every party apart from ACT and Gordon Copeland agrees that climate change is real and requires a response. The purpose of the emissions trading scheme is to create the appropriate economic incentive to reduce emissions rather than increase them. 
I refer to the point made by David Carter relating to agriculture. He said that the agriculture sector says that it should not be exempt but that it wants more exemption than is at present provided for in the bill. The agriculture sector is given free allocation for 90 percent of its 2005 agricultural emissions from the time it comes into the scheme which is not until 1 January 2013. There is no credible evidence that farming will become unprofitable. As a consequence there is no credible evidence that farm output will reduce. Indeed I think New Zealand farmers will once again be ahead of the field when it comes to emissions-reducing technologies and these technologies will improve the competitive efficiency of their industry as against that of their competitors overseas.