Roy Eric: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Roy Eric: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:637;Page:7388] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 If those who are listening on the radio think we are a little uncertain about what is going on in Parliament we are actually debating the Prime Minister’s statement which sets out some aspirations and plans of the governing party in Parliament at the start of each year. Yesterday we had an hour dedicated to the Prime Minister to deliver the Prime Minister’s statement. Tonight I will focus on two elements of this speech: what will be commissioned and what is being omitted. So it will be a speech of commission and omission. 
I found the general trend of this speech quite interesting. About halfway down the first page we have the statement of the Prime Minister: “Meeting the challenges that our country faces in the 21st century requires substance not slogans.” After that we find the word “sustainable” or “sustained” mentioned more than 30 times. So she has already lapsed into using a slogan. In fact this speech is imbued with the slogan “sustainability”. There is perhaps nothing wrong with that but we need to look at the credibility of that from two points. Has the Prime Minister used slogans before? Yes she has and several of our members have talked about that. Mr Tisch highlighted the economic transformation slogan that was there before and the slogan that we will be in the top half of the OECD. And has the Government delivered? The answer is no it has not so we need to give some scrutiny to the elements of commission that are in this speech. 
Sustainability is the theme as I have said. One of the things that we really need to look at at the start of this sustainability thing is the slogan about being carbon neutral. Is it doable? Well yes it is with a level of pauperism that is not acceptable to New Zealand. This speech does not lay out a blueprint of how or when we will be carbon neutral. Yes there are some quite good suggestions about things that need to be done on the way but carbon neutral is an extraordinary aspiration. It actually means that we have to delete from our use or stop using 100 percent of the carbon and greenhouse gases that we are now using or sequester them into some form that is durable. That is what it actually means. 
Since we have been talking about doing our thing as a nation under the Kyoto Protocol we have actually got worse. We are supposed to be going back to 1990 levels but we have actually slipped further and further out. My interpretation of carbon neutral—and any member following from the Government side can correct me—would say that it is not at 1990 levels that we will be carbon neutral but that is where we have slipped to here. So we need to look at how that is going to be done. 
Other members have spoken about how we are now deforesting for a whole lot of reasons mostly through mismanagement. Punitive fines have been threatened against people who do not replant their forests and forests are now coming down before that impacts. I guess to be fair we have some alternate land uses that are more attractive. Essentially we are not getting the returns from our forests that make them viable. The Government thinks that it can prop up afforestation by threatening punitive measures when it actually needs to make forestry viable. 
In my patch we have had one reasonably significant wood processing plant Bright Wood Sawmill indicate that it is leaving the market because it can no longer compete. Why can it not compete? Well when we look at how many new wood processing facilities have been established in New Zealand during the time of this Labour Government the answer is negative. There are not really any. They have not been established for two reasons essentially. Firstly they cannot actually get a contract for power supply that will allow them to establish. Secondly there is the cost of the Resource Management Act in getting the consents to go through. 
So we ask: is this a global phenomenon? Across the Tasman—and the Labour people do not like us talking about how well Australia is doing compared with here—in that same period 18 significant wood processing facilities have been established. So what we have is a problem of our own making and that is one of the omission things. If forestry is going to be a fundamental element of sequestration then we need to do some serious things and there is not one word in this prime ministerial statement about how we make forestry viable if we are going to get anywhere near our goal of 100 percent neutrality. So that is an issue. 
We noted in the speech from the Prime Minister that 30000 hectares of trees will be planted up the East Coast. Is that a good start? Well it is a start but the Government’s own farm Landcorp Farming is clearing or buying from the Kaingaroa - central North Island area 35000 hectares of established forest and putting it into dairying which if we believe the information about land use is one of the worst things for greenhouse gases. So here is the Government saying that it will be carbon neutral and is planting 30000 hectares in the East Coast—which is not a drop in the bucket if we are going to be carbon neutral—while its own farm operation Landcorp Farming is actively destroying forests. I say that that is seriously not credible. So there is an issue that needs to be addressed in terms of the sustainability of the forest industry if in fact we are going to be sustainable at all in even making some inroads—not talking about being carbon neutral but holding up our hand and at least matching what is happening internationally. 
Land use is going to be one of the keys to actually solving the problem of greenhouse gases. As I said there is a bit of information circulating out there now that dairying is probably the least preferable option in terms of creating greenhouse gases. Yet the other alternatives are not really viable. If this was a speech about the future about where this Government wants to go and reach its ideals—let us just assume something far less than carbon neutral but just something that we can believe in—then there needed to be some things about the viability and sustainability of our export sector. 
I mentioned dairying as one of the least preferable uses. In Southland I was told on Monday there are 28 conversions to dairying in Southland. 
John Carter 
: Where? 
ERIC ROY 
: In Southland. Why is that? It is simply because alternative land uses are not viable any more. They are not viable for reasons that can be sheeted home to this Government. Take the meat processing industry—predominantly sheep and beef farms. This Government brought in legislation such as the Holidays Act. It may have been a great idea but the impact of that is $1.50 a lamb. Then there is the increase in interest rates that has a double whammy effect. There is about 114 days on average between when a lamb is purchased on a farm processed then sold. The impact of that interest on a lamb—every percentage point that that interest rate goes up—is $1 a lamb. So there is another $3 or so coming off the lamb. Then the impact on the exchange rate is probably another $5 or $6 a lamb. There is $10 or $12 that has come off the price of a lamb— 
John Carter 
: Then your profit goes. 
ERIC ROY 
: Well what profit? There is no profit. In the last 10 weeks we have seen over $20 come off the price of a lamb. I do not have time to develop this particular argument much more but quite simply if this Prime Minister and this Government were serious about sustainability—not just words placebos or slogans which they promised they would not do—there would be some active pursuit of making our export industry viable because the alternative fuels that we have to look at in terms of cost of research are more expensive. So we need a more viable economy if we are going to be sustainable. There is not one word about making this nation more viable economically in the Prime Minister’s statement.