Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): This Government's number one environmental announcement to date is a complete sham. This bill is a complete sham. Jacinda Ardern's nuclear-free moment is greenwashing" at its absolute worst.James Shaw comes up here today and tells us that 100 percent of what you don't burn doesn't create emissions and it all sounds very good but the problem is we're not dealing with demand and he knows it very well. All we are doing is cutting supply. We're doing nothing to stop demand. He knows that. We will be burning exactly the same amount; it just won't be produced by us. It'll be produced by someone overseas with a far worse environmental record. We will be shipping it here creating more emissions and doing nothing. That is why this bill is complete and utter "greenwashing". As much as members opposite want to paint us as some kind of ecoterrorists for opposing this bill they know full well there is not a single shred of evidence that has been produced to date to show that global emissions will be reduced by this bill. I sat on the Environment Committee and there was not a single report that we were presented with that showed a reduction in global emissions—not a single one. In fact the Government's own eventual advice showed that the intent of the bill to reduce global emissions would actually not be the case. And yet here we are at third reading.The Prime Minister in her overwhelming desire to be seen as some kind of eco - warrior princess on the world stage announced this policy to a bunch of university students in Wellington—we know without any scientific advice or reports and without a cost-benefit analysis. She didn't consult with the region with industry or with experts. She didn't go there. There wasn't a single working group which we know they love so very much because there are 170 of them.Matt King: 80.ERICA STANFORD: 180. Oh my gosh! There have been 10 more since I wrote this speech. Education Justice: millions of dollars spent fancy croissants; here absolutely nothing. All we have is puffery. Virtue signalling—"If not us who?"! "If not now when?"!—for goodness' sake!This is absolute "greenwashing" and it sets a terrifying precedent. At the whim of our "great leader" in her quest to improve her image and nothing more here we have thousands of high-paying jobs at risk halted investment and an entire region at risk of ruin throwing away anywhere from $9 billion to $23 billion dollars of revenue. On the advice that we now have from their own officials we will be increasing global emissions rather than reducing them which was the whole intent of the bill.The Prime Minister sure is putting that communications degree to good use. Communicating about the environment—she's great at it; really good. But when it comes to actually acting to protect our environment it's where she fails miserably and this bill is proof of that.And the Greens are the worst kind of accomplices—the worst kind. They bellowed and they rode that high moral horse in Opposition objecting at every possible opportunity about process and the erosion of democracy when the legislative process was truncated.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Sorry. You've done about four minutes with general principles. You actually should be talking to the principles of the bill as they were returned by the committee of the whole House.ERICA STANFORD: Thank you for your wise guidance Madam Assistant Speaker.The fact is that the entire world including countries like Norway that the Greens like to hold up as leaders in the green space know well that natural gas in the transition that this bill talks about is a great transition fuel to move us along the energy continuum from coal—filthy coal—at one end to renewables like hydro solar and wind at the other. Natural gas will reduce our reliance on coal. It will allow us to rely on a fuel that has half of the emissions of coal while we build renewable energy and while we wait for that technology to deliver us these new energy solutions because without gas when the sun ain't shining when the lakes are low like they are now and when the wind ain't blowing under this bill we will be burning more coal.We heard from David Seymour in question time yesterday about Genesis ordering four shipments of coal from Indonesia—120000 tonnes of coal to be delivered between December and February. We know that we don't have energy security with renewables alone and this bill puts at further risk our increase of creating more emissions because this bill will make us burn more coal.If this Government were actually concerned about the environment and reducing emissions in their nuclear-free moment we'd be asking them some questions. Why aren't we dealing with coal in this bill—the dirtiest and worst form on the transition continuum? We haven't heard a peep from them about coal. Why isn't coal included in this bill? Why are we concentrating on gas? That's got half the emissions of coal. Why aren't they dealing with coal?And secondly why are they not dealing with demand? There's nothing in the bill as reported back to deal with demand. As I said earlier about James Shaw's contribution logic tells us that simply stopping a fuel source but not changing the behaviour will mean only one thing. We don't change any of our emissions. We import more oil and gas from countries with far lower environmental standards; we ship it here. All this bill is going to mean is an uptick of fuel tankers into Marsden Point. And hey for all we know maybe that was the deal that was done with New Zealand First to increase economic activity up in Northland.Carbon leakage is a serious question that we have asked so many times at select committee and in this House. All it is is a transfer of emissions from one country with far lower environmental standards. This Government are not willing to look at things in this bill like vehicle efficiency. They've done nothing about the increase of electric vehicles or infrastructure in the bill. Of our emissions 49 percent come from vehicles and this Government should be focused on fixing the demand problem. Cutting off New Zealand's supply in this bill—cutting off supply—will only increase as I said the number of tankers coming into Marsden Point. So what this Government are doing is saying they're not going to fix consumption they're not going to worry about New Zealanders' use of oil and gas they're just going to cut off the supply and that's what this bill does. It just transfers the importing of those fuels into New Zealand.One of the worst things about this bill was the process and it started with Megan Woods at the conference earlier this year where she indicated to the parties who were at the conference that she would be consulting with the industry that she would be consulting with the region and that she would go the greatest lengths to make sure that happened—and they believed her.A month later we had the announcement and everybody was taken by surprise. Many people complained about the fact that in coming up with this bill the industry and the region weren't consulted. So not only were they not consulted before they made a decision but they weren't consulted before this bill was brought to the House.Then we had this truncated process where we sat in select committee and heard from submitters who only had five minutes and who'd travelled a really long way because we refused to go to Taranaki.Matt King: They wouldn't let them.ERICA STANFORD: Wouldn't go there. We tried our very best to make this as democratic a process as we possibly could and we were stopped from doing that. Every other bill that we're looking at—we're going to be travelling the West Coast we're going to be travelling to Canterbury and here we are with one of the biggest decisions that this Government can possibly make and we wouldn't travel to Taranaki. I apologise to the people of Taranaki because this is going to ruin your economy and ruin your region. And I'm sorry that we couldn't go. We tried—we did our very best—but Government members refused. And then they cut speakers off—to the second. We had CEOs of major companies of industries who were cut off to the second.Angie Warren-Clark: Everyone treated the same.ERICA STANFORD: They were all treated the same and they were all treated extremely unfairly. A massive decision that is going to affect our economy and a huge region and they were all treated extremely unfairly.This bill is about virtue-signalling "greenwashing" and image-building for a Prime Minister who cares more about how she's viewed on the world stage than anything that will improve our environment. This bill is pure and simply environmental vandalism and we will not support it."