Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker—unexpected. I'm pleased to rise in this third reading. I'd like to start though by just pointing out Mr Tāmati Coffey's comments about how we need to cheer up; This is a good thing."—a continuation of this Government's complete spin in turning what is a complete stuff-up into "Hey something positive—this is great. Look over here at this shiny thing. Don't look at what actually is going on". Because actually what we've found out tonight through the committee of the whole House stage is somewhat of the truth of what actually happened. We haven't heard that before tonight and I'm still actually really confused about what went on because we've got clear evidence showing that as far back as March last year this issue was raised in Cabinet papers; it wasn't considered to be a big issue. Then the next thing we were told: Cabinet thought that it was going to be in the legislation and then it wasn't in the legislation. Again another example of Cabinet thinking that something was happening that actually in reality wasn't—something that's happened more recently that we're all aware of. I won't go into that but it is becoming a trend of what this Government thinks is actually happening actually in reality isn't because they're not on top of things. As my colleague Scott Simpson said earlier it was from a Minister that we would usually expect more from. But what we've seen from whoa to go in this whole thing has been as Scott Simpson said a comedy of errors a complete stuff-up from beginning to end and they never ever owned up to that even through committee stage where the Minister—who was giving nice fulsome answers and I do appreciate that from him—was still dancing around the issue when he should have just owned up and said "We made a monumental stuff-up and here we are trying to fix that up."The points that we made throughout these first second and now third readings is that the Minister had plenty of time to fix up these monumental stuff-ups far earlier than right now a week before the very first auction in fact. He admitted that he knew—although we believe it was probably earlier but he admitted that he definitely knew in September. We had weeks and weeks of House time at that point to be able to bring this to the House and have a far more fulsome debate and much longer committee stage where we could've had far more input from the public.Instead what we got was a process that was highly truncated rushed through. We hardly heard from any submitters at all not giving the public the confidence that they deserve in what is a very difficult complex piece of legislation—probably the most complex piece of legislation that sits in front of this Government. They had the opportunity last year to be able to put this through the House in the proper manner and they didn't. Here we are just over a week out from the very first auction and we are still fiddling around with the rules.Now we made it very clear all the way through and I mentioned it in my first reading speech—I said at that point when I hadn't had a chance to fully take in this bill that I did consider that there might be a problem around the Minister effectively setting the base price at the auction and whether or not that was the right thing to do. We again argued those points throughout our committee stage and second reading speeches where we did say that this is not a pure emissions trading scheme (ETS); this is something that is moving far more towards a carbon tax. Although it's not there the waters are definitely muddied. What we've ended up with is very much a hybrid situation where we're not quite at pure ETS; we're not quite at carbon tax but we're certainly moving in that direction. What we're talking about is hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of revenue which is effectively being paid for by the people of New Zealand in many ways but especially at the fuel pump and through electricity prices. We have a longstanding principle in this Parliament that it is Parliament that sets the tax rate not the climate change Minister and not the Government. For that reason we put up what I thought was a very sensible tabled amendment argued very well by my colleagues to say that at the very least—at the very least—the Minister should have to consult with the leaders of the Opposition over the mechanism that he uses which will eventually determine the price. He decided that that was far too difficult. A simple conversation with the leaders of the Opposition parties was far too difficult. I did point out that there is no skin off his nose and that in the spirit of collegiality around this bill and bipartisan nature of climate change it was the very least that he could do and yet he decided not to. So he puts us in a position tonight where we will have to unfortunately oppose this bill. It wasn't a big ask. I implored him at the committee stage to reconsider his decision not to support our tabled amendment. We had the opportunity last year to make a good go of this. We knew that the Minister knew in at least September. We had weeks and weeks to have a good fulsome process around this yet here we are at the last minute rushing something through in urgency when we didn't need to be doing it. Even the Minister himself had conceded earlier in the piece that actually we could be doing this closer to the third auction; we didn't need to be doing it right now. Something changed his mind. We're not sure exactly who or what but here we are again at the very last minute rushing through under urgency another bill another stuff-up from this Government from a Minister who usually has his eye on the ball but clearly does not. It is with great sadness that we cannot support this bill tonight."