Hodgson Pete: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hodgson Pete: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7989. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 At its heart the Kyoto Protocol is designed to take a problem that is environmental in its essence and turn it into a challenge that is economic. That is what a “cap and trade” system does. The Kyoto Protocol has also managed the awkwardness of only a few of the Western nations in the world signing up by inventing the so-called flexibility mechanisms the joint initiatives and the cleaner development mechanisms. It does not work in practice I freely can see that but at least in theory we have a chance of the world moving along the cost curve at the same time. That is the idea of the Kyoto Protocol. For it to work the full marginal price of pollution needs to be faced by the polluter. That is the essence of it. The full price at the margin has to be faced by the polluter in question. That is the case in theory. 
In the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill we do not see anything of the sort. We see the right price not being put in place in a timely manner. There are no right signals to the right players at the right time. That is as a result of an admixture of phase-outs and of arrangements that have come into play and distorted the original theory of the Kyoto Protocol and the original idea of “cap and trade” to the point where it is now well short of what it could be. That is a shame. The essence of our opposition to this legislation is around that. 
Let me put it to the Minister in words of one syllable. If we as a nation have the goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050—if we will halve them in the next 41 years—how come we are about to adopt legislation that does not have a complete phase-in of the economic signals until 2090? If we are supposed to be getting ourselves to halfway by 2050 why are the signals not fully coming in until 2090? Under the Parker legislation which will now be repealed that 2090 date would have been 2030. There is much more that I could say about that in the detail but instead of going on about the environmental shortcomings of it I want to speak of the social shortcomings. 
This Kyoto Protocol and emissions trading legislation seeks to transfer wealth. That is the guts of it. If there is no change in signals from a non-polluter to a polluter then there will be no reaction by the polluter which of course includes all of us. In this legislation in short the big end of town is winning. It does not matter whether it is the big end of “white town” or the big end of “brown town” the big end of town is winning. The corollary to that is that the small end of town both white and brown is losing. 
Last night we heard Jeanette Fitzsimons giving a careful anatomy of the sell-out of the Maori Party. She did it more in sadness than in anger. But she looked at the criteria that the Maori Party used to vote against the Parker legislation and put the same criteria against the current legislation. She said that she was bewildered she was sad and she was confused. She was really saying that the Maori Party has lost its principle. Let us leave aside the fact that Ngai Tahu has a deal for its trees or that there are another few thousand houses in the mix. That is the essence of it for the Maori Party and for Maoridom that will not work. Maoridom will be subsidising Comalco and other big polluters—foreseeably. That is not OK. Maori are disproportionately at the small end of town; relatively few Maori are at the big end of town. Therefore nearly all Maori will be worse off under this legislation than under the Parker legislation. The Maori Party said that the Parker legislation did not go far enough for them. It is now supporting legislation that goes nowhere near as far as the Parker legislation did and that has caused the Green Party to express its bewilderment. I say in a much more direct way that it is a sell-out and that the small end of “brown town” loses. They are taxpayers. They are trying to make their way as families year by year and they will not see a reduction in their taxes—they will see an increase in their taxes—as a result of this legislation.