Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you. I thank the member Scott Simpson for his question. So in response to the member's question about where in the legislation is the mechanism to limit the risk of mass afforestation of productive farmland: this issue was canvased during the debates around the zero carbon bill last year. Of course the zero carbon bill was an amendment to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 and this bill is also an amendment to the Climate Change Response Act 2002. The member's party actually won a concession during the zero carbon legislation which is that it's a mandatory consideration for the Climate Change Commission when considering its emissions budgeting processes and a similar obligation on the Minister and the Government when responding to the advice of the commission to consider the implications of land-use change for communities and the wider economy. So that was actually built into that legislation.As the member has said this legislation here is where the rubber hits the road—metaphorically obviously—in that those considerations at the high level that the commission has to consider in those 5-year emissions budgets and then emissions trading scheme settings and so on filter down to this piece of legislation. So that concern is built into the legislation already as a result of that.In addition I wanted to say that I understand the concerns of rural communities. There has been a 0.25 percent—i.e. a quarter of 1 percent afforestation of land in beef and lamb territory for example at the moment. I just want to compare that to historical trends. So planting rates actually peaked in 1994—and I see the Hon David Carter's in the—Rt Hon David Carter: Wonderful year.Hon JAMES SHAW: —Chamber and he may remember this—when 98000 hectares of land were planted in forests. Throughout the 1990s—during which time of course there was a National Government through pretty much all of the 1990s—a total of 554000 hectares were planted. So if you compare that to today there are only 13300 hectares per year—so considerably lower than the afforestation rates that took place during the 1990s. What we've anticipated is that the forestry changes to this bill will result in an increase to 23000 hectares a year which is still again substantially lower than the afforestation rates during the 1990s.The other thing of course is that there has been a considerable deforestation rate. So after the planting in the 1990s which was considerably higher than it is today there was considerable deforestation rates. So there have been for example 70000 hectares deforested just in the last 10 years alone and deforestation has outstripped afforestation over the course of the last two decades. So for example in 2017 we had 6000 new hectares of planting but 9000 hectares of deforestation. So on a net basis actually the rates of deforestation have outstripped afforestation historically.I also just want to be mindful of the fact that actually forestry itself has an economic value. There are 35000 people employed in the forestry and wood-processing sector. I understand that red meat employs about 66500 so roughly twice as many people as are employed in forestry but on five times as much land. So the forestry sector actually employs more people per hectare than the red meat sector. Forestry is a $7 billion export revenue earner. So you need to sort of balance out the set of considerations.I completely understand the concerns and I also know that the lived experience doesn't necessarily match the data right? So when someone let's say for example in Wairoa gets up in the morning where there has been sheep out on the fields and then they kind of get up and they see huge amounts of forestry it feels like the whole world has changed. It hasn't but I can understand that their experience may be such.