Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Speaker. I would like to start out by acknowledging the people in my electorate who have been evacuated last night due to the flooding down south. It's certainly a significant event and I know with the clean-up that they'll be about to face how difficult that can be fixing fences up and dealing with stock and all of those things that go along with it. So our thoughts are with them.But we're here to talk about the Budget in this Budget debate and I'm going to focus on climate change which I'm sure you're probably not surprised about. It's been a bit of a disappointment actually in terms of climate change. Back in December of 2020 the Government decided to declare a climate emergency. I had a quote back then saying that it was complete virtue-signalling and actually that has proven to be the case. We have seen little in the way of urgency to meet this climate emergency that the Government thinks we have and we also see this in the Budget that's been announced a few weeks ago. We spent the last four years that the Government's been in talking a lot about stuff and not getting much done and I think we're seeing that here today.The clean car standard had $56.7 million in the Budget for that to be rolled out but what we see in that because the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment have come up with this formula is that actually some cars that emit way more than others—V6s for example V6 diesel—actually get an incentive in that standard compared to some very small four-cylinder engines with much lower emissions because of the complicated formula that goes in there.My point with this is that when you start to come out with incentives along the lines of this sort of thing you always get these sorts of—not you personally. But we will always see gaps and perverse outcomes very much like what happened with the roll-out of the net zero Government programme when we see the Department of Conservation buying an electric vehicle (EV) and putting it in Stewart Island. In Stewart Island the only electricity down there is generated by a diesel generator. Now that makes no sense at all to put an EV in Stewart Island. It just doesn't make sense at all but it's a great idea because we're subsidising the roll-out of EVs! There is no possible justification for that and yet the Government goes out and does it.Now I did actually write to the Minister about this through a written parliamentary question and she came back with quite a cute answer saying Well it's an efficient diesel engine." Well I've talked to an electrical engineer and we've done the calculations and it's rubbish. Effectively you're wasting your time putting an EV down there. Now EVs are great technology. We all like them—I'd love to buy one myself—but that's not a point for subsidising them for everyone. It's middle class welfare actually.Actually $100 million was announced in 2018 for the Green Investment Fund. We heard the Minister saying "Well we've allocated another $300 million because we want to actually fund some big projects." Well he can't tell us what projects he has funded. We don't know how many tonnes of emissions that the fund has actually abated. There's no numbers around it. I think from what I can gather what has been spent of that $100 million original fund has gone into bureaucracy. It certainly hasn't gone into anything to do with lowering emissions at this stage. So another $300 million—what's that going to do? Sit there. This is actually what the Government has done since they got in. They've got a great track record in making announcements and not delivering and that's another example of it.The $1.3 billion to go to KiwiRail to try and—and we heard the Minister of Climate Change say today that we're going to get freight off rail and on to road. Well actually they're different kinds of freight. The freight that goes on a truck goes to the door. Freight that goes on a train is used going into big depots. Actually KiwiRail do a great job at what they do but they're not going to get all the trucks off the road. It's actually about rewarding the unions and building Hillside workshops—well rebuilding it—in Dunedin is a waste of money and what we should be focusing on is actually getting coal-fired generation out of the system. The Government's banned oil and gas and we're on track to burn 2 million tonnes of coal. Our renewable electricity share has gone from 85 percent down to 75 percent. This Government in a very short time after this virtue-signalling climate emergency has increased our emissions from coal by a significant margin—probably four times I would imagine. A waste of time."