Stanford Erica; Rurawhe AdrianERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I am very pleased to take a call on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill at the second reading. As has already been noted by my colleagues we will be opposing this legislation at second reading. To be honest for many of us it is with somewhat of a heavy heart because at first reading we did support the bill and many of the proposals in it—as we still do some of those proposals—but we are not living in the same world that we were living in when this bill was introduced. The global pandemic of COVID-19 has changed many many things and New Zealand is going to be recovering from this virus in economic terms for many many years—potentially the next decade.Before I get into my speech I'd just like to thank officials. As others have noted officials worked very hard on this bill not just for the period that the select committee's been looking at the bill but actually for many years prior to this. More recently they have as Scott Simpson pointed out been dealing with us via Zoom and putting up with the many questions that we had. As has been pointed out already this is an extremely detailed piece of legislation. It has been frankly quite tough to get our heads around many of those details and officials put up with us asking a lot of questions bringing them back for many many briefings especially when it came to things like forestry.There has been a general consensus on climate change across the House. Our general direction of travel is all mostly in the same direction. We always have our differences but we are moving in the same direction. The zero carbon bill we agreed on and voted for but as Scott Simpson mentioned earlier this is just the framework; this bill that we are debating today is the meat. As Scott Simpson said it's the doing". This bill is going to have the most effect on New Zealanders. Most people won't get their heads around the detail of this bill. It is massively complicated and it was like I say even tough for us to get our heads around. But what people will understand—what they will understand—Hon Member: Not you Erica.ERICA STANFORD: —nice one—is the increase in cost to their daily lives. Fuel groceries and building costs—these are the things that are going to be impacted by the passing of this bill. Costs and handbrakes for doing business into recovering our economy are not required right now.As Scott Simpson pointed out we agree with many aspects of the bill and the overall direction. We started the process of looking at this bill with an open mind but as I said COVID has changed everything and as was pointed out already we do want to look at this bill again in 12 months after we've got a far better understanding of the economic damage that COVID is going to do to the economy. I mean at the moment thousands of people unemployed people are calling for the councils to reduce their rates or to have zero rates increases and here we're introducing potentially a bill that is going to increase the cost of almost everything for New Zealanders and it's important that we pause and take that into account.One of the things that we looked at—or I certainly looked at—very early on was I had a really good look at what National did when we were in Government. We had a fixed-price $25 price cap that was deliberately put in place to protect households and businesses from costs. Now we've had a few speakers today talk about this bill giving certainty but in fact it does quite the opposite. What we did by introducing the price cap which began I think at effectively about $12.50 and was increased over time—gradually lifted—was to give certainty over time for business. This bill removes that cap altogether meaning no limit—well there's a price ceiling but it for the most part doesn't give certainty to businesses for fuel and electricity and indeed gives actually significant uncertainty for businesses for future costs. In a post-COVID world what we need is certainty for businesses moving forward as we recover. Consumers and businesses need some reassurance about how much the price will be allowed to rise. I note that there was a press release today from James Shaw and if anyone was reading it they will look at figures like the new cap on the emissions trading scheme (ETS) of 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide but what does that actually mean? What does that mean for the price of fuel for the price of electricity or for the price of goods? Saying something like that is all well and good but what that means for everyday New Zealanders in a post-COVID world when people are out of work and out of jobs and have lost their livelihoods is a completely different thing and we need certainty around that.We've already heard from our agricultural spokesperson David Bennett so I'm not going to go into that again. But basically the forcing of the agricultural sector into the ETS if they don't meet certain targets by the 2022 date which is fast approaching in our view is not good policy. I just want to finish by reiterating the fact that in the first instance we had an open mind to this bill. We were prepared to sit—and in fact we did—for many many weeks discussing the detail of this bill and how we could make it work. But since the introduction of COVID to the world and since the economic damage that has been wrecked on this country we don't believe that we're in a position to be introducing what is basically a tax that will increase the cost of living for every single New Zealander at a time when we need to be working out how we reduce costs of living and increasing certainty for businesses not taking it away. For those reasons we oppose the bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call the Hon David Parker."