Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I hoped to have had a response to my earlier speech promoting the amendments on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 406. I'm not sure if the Minister in charge the Hon James Shaw may have had time to do that. I unfortunately couldn't be here—if he had—and the reason was that Dr David Clark had attempted to rebut my speech. It was so bad—I hate to admit it to you Madam Chair—that I briefly lost my faith in parliamentary democracy and I had to leave. But I've got considerable faith in the institution so I've come back. What Dr David Clark seemed to say was that because the Stern report said that it was better to make emissions reductions earlier rather than later there should be a restriction on New Zealanders purchasing emissions reductions from schemes offshore.Now not only is that a non sequitur but it reveals his misunderstanding of the Stern report. You see I've followed this debate for a very long time and one of the problems with the Stern report was its total failure to build in any kind of depreciation or any kind of allowance for the future value the discounting that occurs as technology progresses and people have better ways of meeting their needs in the future. So even if his response had engaged the points I made which sadly it didn't then the premise he was using seemed to reveal a misunderstanding of the report that he was quoting. It seemed that he was just grasping at any issue that he could think of.So I hope that we get a slightly more considered response because I think the amendments on SOP 406 are actually very sensible ones that would allow New Zealanders to meet their environmental goals for less cost or make a greater contribution to emissions reduction or at least the concentration of carbon dioxide equivalents in the atmosphere for a given cost.I also being a hard-working and busy member have tabled yet more amendments on my tabled SOP at the time 5.07 p.m. So this is hot off the press! It very simply asks—Hon Scott Simpson: Late off the press.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well it was such a simple thing that I didn't quite get around to it Mr Simpson but it simply asks that those new sections 5ZD ZE and ZF set out in clause 8 be removed. It's quite simple; people might—Deborah Russell is reaching to see which sections they are. Those are the sections I can tell Deborah Russell that actually—Dr Deborah Russell: I can read for myself.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well I'm telling everybody not just Deborah Russell. Those are the sections that are actually—Dr Deborah Russell: Mansplaining.DAVID SEYMOUR: And there we have the sexism. They're accusing me of mansplaining. They would not accuse a woman of that and I regard that as a sexist attack on me.But in any case the fact of the matter is that those sections—5ZD 5ZE and 5ZF—provide for the Minister the power to publish strategies that affect how different sectors will combat climate change and I think this is incredibly worrying. It introduces an unnecessary level of bureaucratisation and politicisation into the economy that this country really rejected 35 years ago when we got rid of the Economic Stabilisation Act. I see Nick Smith; he was almost here at the time. We got rid of the Economic Stabilisation Act because we didn't want the executive we didn't want the Government to be able to say what prices should be or how much of something a particular industry or sector should be allowed to do. We found that that overly politicised the economy it led to absurdities it led actually to borderline corruption as people tried to get politicians to do favours for their particular industry or stop them from making decisions that would prejudice their particular industry. Those sections asking a Minister to make such a strategy for emissions reduction could decide whether an industry lives or dies—a steel mill at Glenbrook an aluminium smelter at Tīwai Point for instance. The future survival of those could actually be defined by whether or not a Minister allowed them enough credits in his strategy.I don't think that we need to have that level of centralisation of power to achieve the goals. So this amendment would simply delete those sections. Of course Parliament could still choose to legislate such things and Parliament is the right place to do that; it shouldn't be down to frankly the King Henry VIII" powers of a Minister. Thank you Madam Chair."