Shaw JamesJAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): For a party that likes to pride itself on its economic acumen National does seem woefully incapable of grasping some basic principles. You cannot buy real stuff with Monopoly money and you cannot make progress on climate change with fake credits. I am talking of course about the use of fraudulent Russian and Ukrainian carbon credits to offset our own greenhouse gas emissions. The Government's whole approach—its entire approach—to climate change so far has been to pay other countries to cut down on their pollution so that we do not have to. It allowed New Zealand businesses to buy certificates from the Russians and the Ukrainians at rock-bottom prices by the way—at rock-bottom prices—saying that those countries were cutting down their emissions so that we here in New Zealand could continue to pollute the atmosphere.Well it turns out that you get what you pay for. Virtually all of those carbon credits were completely worthless. No actual emissions reductions took place. No dirty coal power stations were shut down. No electric trains were built. No trees were planted. It is like Murray spending the entire band's savings on intergalactic real estate. Well the certificates might be real but Planet Jemaine is not. It is like buying a car that has no wheels off the internet and then insisting that you can still win the race because the certificate of sale says that it has got wheels on it when it does not and you bought the certificate of sale off the internet from some Russian website.What is worse is that when it was caught out the Government went on to say that because those fraudulent credits were legal at the time they were bought we can continue to pretend that our emissions went down when in fact nothing of the sort happened. This is the Government's shibboleth. It cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is fake. I started my career in the world's largest audit and advisory firm. It has thousands and thousands of accountants the world over and they will tell you that accounting does not trump chemistry and physics. The Government is pretending that these credits represent something real. What matters is not whether the credits were legal; what matters is whether our emissions came down and they did not. And here is the thing.Here is the thing: New Zealand actually has an enormous store of surplus authentic carbon credits that we could use to pay back the debt that we owe on those fraudulent credits. But this week the Minister for Climate Change Issues Paula Bennett said that she was not going to do the right thing. It is like we were using Monopoly money to pay for dinner when we have still got real cash in our back pocket. She can cancel out those fraudulent Russian credits by using the authentic surplus credits that we have got restoring our international climate commitments all at the same time.We learnt this during the global financial crisis (GFC): when you build a tower out of imaginary credit sooner or later that tower comes crashing down. The implications of the global climate crisis will be so much worse than the GFC. Our international reputation on the climate will be damaged if we knowingly continue to use these dodgy Russian carbon credits to claim them as real and meaningful reductions in our own climate pollution. The Green Party is calling upon the Government to protect our international reputation as being clean green and free from corruption by dumping these false carbon credits and using real ones in their place.The window is still open. The Government still has the opportunity to do the right thing. This is how we maintain our international reputation and how we maintain a seat at the table during future climate negotiations rather than having our face on a picture on the door saying: Have you seen this person? Wanted in connection with climate fraud." We do not want to be like the emperor—caught out in our fancy new clothes. The clothes were cheap because they did not exist but now Paula Bennett is saying that they were real because they were somehow legal at the time they were purchased. Well the emperor is still naked and no amount of paperwork is going to cover up that fact. Thank you.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."