Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): I rise on behalf of the Greens to take a call on the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill. We're here on Thursday afternoon and I think I'm about to spoil the National Party – Labour Party love fest because I actually couldn't tell the difference between both sides of the argument happening here as well—except for when the previous speaker Angela Roberts started talking about socialist cows and socialism. So I would invite that side to have a glance through the old Wikipedia they might see a few things in there that they like.With a lot of the laws and the regulations that we pass in this House I look at it from the perspective of a parent. You know I worry about the future that we're going to leave our children and our grandchildren our tamariki and our mokopuna because if you look around the world you know things are in dire straits. I was just thinking about Pakistan the other day. The country's floods were so bad they could see them from outer space. They were that bad. Puerto Rico's also facing floods and storms as well and there's supposed to be a weather bomb hitting up north as well. We've had more than our fair share of floods and weather events that are related to climate change—weather events that are related to climate change. I'm mindful that tomorrow the climate strikers—the high school climate strikers the school strikers—will be once again on the steps of Parliament; our children and our grandchildren asking us to do better asking us to make sure that when we pass the laws that we pass in this House we take those things into account.So when I hear both sides of the House—that side the Labour Party and the National Party—say that they disagree with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment it concerns me—it concerns me. And it concerns me that the main thing that he was calling for was actually to get a climate assessment on what this bill will do—an independent climate assessment about what this bill will do.There's three ways of knowing in this world: there's things that you know that you know there's things that you know that you don't know and there's those things that you don't know that you don't know. For me this bill falls in the middle of that category: we don't know certain things and we know that we don't know them. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment knows that we don't know them. And if I look at the comments from the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) they also noted in their preliminary review that the proposals could lead to increased emissions—the proposals could lead to increased emissions. So if that's the case and this is the case that we're dealing with now why not have that climate assessment? I have heard around the House to say that our farmers are the most environmentally sound as possible. And I've met so many of them who do that who are moving towards regenerative agriculture who are doing all the right things as well. Why not give them the certainty? Why not give the sector the certainty and get that assessment done?So the Greens think that this bill should be paused and a review should be done on its potential impact on the climate. It's pretty simple really with the basic maths. Unless you do the assessment you know and actually find out that more cows mean more emissions that's just the basic maths of it. Putting a climate review in the too-hard basket and hoping for future tech fixes to cut agriculture emissions won't make the problem go away. If you take your car out for a spin on the road you've got to make sure that it's warranted and registered. Is this bill warrantable? No it is no—it is not because we don't know what that impact will be on the climate.So we have three major concerns with this bill. The legislation is likely to have a negative impact on emissions reduction efforts making it more difficult to leave Fonterra and incentivising increased milk production which will disincentivise sustainable land-use change and entrench intensive dairy farming. A climate impact policy assessment which I talked about earlier was not completed for the policy as it did not meet MFE requirements which seem inadequate given potential implications. However MFE did note in their preliminary review that the proposals would lead to increased emissions. Do the assessment.The regulatory impact statement noted that reduced shareholder requirements will free up farmer capital which could be invested into sustainable climate improvements. And I did hear a bit of that on—I get you guys confused on this bill. However there'll be no requirement for investments to be focused on sustainability. They could equally be targeted at increasing production. Our second major concern is around entrenching monopoly and stifling innovation. So I support the calls for actually taking a longer look at this bill because it needs it. We need to take a longer look at this bill to make sure that we iron it all out and make sure that we do all those things well. Because when I think about monopolies I think of the game; we all think about that game Monopoly. And I don't know about members around the House but it caused more than a fair few arguments in my house when I was growing up during the holiday times. When you played Monopoly you'd go around the board and sooner or later there was one person left—one person left. And the concerns with the monopoly is that all of a sudden you're going to have one bunch of people owning all the cows. So our concern here is that the bill provides new measures to support the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act monopoly including restricting Fonterra's exposure to external ownership by delinking its unit fund and making it more difficult for other processors to compete with Fonterra by reducing barriers to entry. This will have the effect of stifling innovation in the sector. This is because as a monopoly provider Fonterra has less incentive to innovate and competitors face greater difficulty entering the market. These risks are particularly significant in the absence of robust pricing for agricultural emissions.The Government has committed to measures to boost innovation reduce emissions in the agriculture sector as part of its emissions reduction plan and this proposal will likely make it more difficult—more difficult—for those initiatives to succeed. This exposes contradictory Government priorities further entrenching the power of a State-regulated monopoly. To protect the dairy industry is not aligned with the goal of diversifying agriculture and reducing our national emissions footprint. And our third concern is about the restrictions imposed on farmers. And I think we could all agree on making sure that we do the right things by farmers—putting in all those supports to help them to do the things that they need to do working in with the land making sure we can help those pathways for regenerative agriculture. While Fonterra shareholders voted for this capital restructure it should be noted that there are potentially negative implications for some farmers with the proposals—effectively devaluing farmers' shares to protect Fonterra from external ownership may impact farmers closer to retirement for example. These changes also make it more difficult to exit Fonterra where land-use change is desired—so those farmers that want to do all the things that they need to do to move towards more sustainable ways of land use. They incentivise increased milk production as the way to improve profitability as opposed to for example forestry conversions. This is understandable in the context of Fonterra attempting to protect its milk supply monopoly but has wider implications for the choices of dairy farmers now and in the future. Folks we've got to do better you know for our children and our children's children our tamariki and our mokopuna. We can't on one hand talk about doing all the things that we need to do to make sure that we have a climate-friendly future and then bring in something like this without an assessment to give us a steer on the impacts. We need to do better and so the Greens will not be supporting this bill.