Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The first question that I have for the Minister in the chair Megan Woods is: can she recite any decision in any portfolio area as important as is in Part 1 of this bill in which a decision has been announced without any Cabinet process whatsoever? Can the Minister cite me any example in the last 20 30 40 years where a Government has announced such a huge change in public policy without even going to Cabinet? I was gobsmacked when my colleague from New Plymouth said when the Government had made the announcement that it hadn't gone to Cabinet. I said Hey Jonathan"—Young; Jonathan Young the MP for New Plymouth—"be careful. I've sat in the Cabinet room for 12 years. I've never heard of a Government making a decision without going to Cabinet. I don't think that can be true." And when I found out that what Jonathan Young said was correct—that the Government was prepared to make a decision with implications of over $23 billion and not even go to Cabinet—I said "Has this become a sort of banana republic? Have we become some sort of laughing stock that we are prepared to give up basic processes of Government?"I see Mr Kris Faafoi's in the Chamber. He might be able to answer me. Can he recall any decision of the scale of what we have in Part 1 of this bill that has been made without even a discussion or a paper in Cabinet? I say that's extraordinary—I say that's extraordinary. I say that's an embarrassment and I want the Minister in the chair to answer: why were these decisions in Part 1 of this bill never even considered by Cabinet?Then the second question I want to come to and I'm just flummoxed by this: anybody who's been engaged in the debate around climate change realises that the number one issue for us is around coal—that coal has the highest level of emissions that coal historically has played the biggest role in the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the global warming that has occurred to date and in the global warming that is projected to occur into the future. So why when coal is the biggest problem is the Minister in the chair preoccupied with shutting down gas? It just makes no sense. In fact if we look around the world to where the most progress has been made on climate change it has been where we have expanded natural gas to reduce the amount of emissions from coal. That's what's occurred in the United States with the development of the new gas industry around fracking. That's what's enabled countries like the UK and Germany to make some of the best progress of any country in reducing emissions.So where I am completely lost as one who takes the issue of climate change so seriously is why do we want to shut down gas when actually it is such an important transition fuel and when our number one priority should be in terms of reducing the use of coal? To put it quite simply we've got large numbers and my colleague Barbara Kuriger—a person who comes from the dairy industry—would know that a good amount of the dairy industry's energy sector comes from coal. And if the Minister in the chair was promoting a policy that would substitute that coal with natural gas my colleague could understand it I could understand it my good friend Jonathan Young could understand it but to shut down natural gas as is proposed in clause 6 of this bill simply does not make sense.The third issue is that the entire slogan of the environmental movement has been "Think globally act locally." Where is the global thinking in this provision? If New Zealand just imports its petrol its diesel and its gas we don't achieve one iota for the issue around climate change. All we're going to do is damage our economy import our petroleum and do nothing for climate change. And I will not have a bar of such loopy policy."