Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): I'm so pleased that you could finally remember my name Mr Speaker.Simeon Brown: Stranger in the House!ANDREW BAYLY: Stranger—let's not go there. Anyway it is a pleasure and I wasn't scheduled to talk and that's why the honourable Speaker is having trouble but it is a pleasure to be talking on this climate change response—no I'm not going to read it all—second reading. And I'm a ring-in because this didn't come before the committee that I sit on but none the less it's a very important matter this.I think this is about making sure that people get a fair go. As all the speakers have noted there are situations where people simply do not apply and don't know what's happened with the land. Maybe you've just acquired it and you suddenly find out that a few years ago—it may even be prior to 1990—the land previously had exotic forests on it that were removed. And hey presto you paid what you thought was good value for the land and then you find you get suckered with or socked with a huge bill. So what this bill does is it defers it from 1 January 2023 to 1 January 2025 to give that time as everyone has spoken about. But no one's actually talked about the numbers. Just to put this in context what if this has a maximum threshold or minimum threshold? However you look at it in terms of if you have less than 25000 units you will be able to operate under this delayed time setting. And to put those 25000 units into perspective that probably represents an area of about 35 hectares so there are a lot of small exotic forests around New Zealand. So this is dealing with those smaller blocks.So again if it's 25000 units at the current carbon price of about $88 that means that the owner of that land will need to pay approximately $2.2 million in terms of the emissions trading scheme (ETS). So with a three times charge which is what the rules are if you don't meet this requirement you will be charged three times the current rate. That would mean potentially a liability of $6.6 million. And so this is just giving time for people to recognise and to check what the situation is. But also for some people that is a substantial amount of money particularly if you hadn't anticipated it. So the deferral was developed in response to submissions although I heard one to the Environment Committee. But the principles behind it were: the size of the penalty was viewed as excessive—and I just explained that—and the current rules mean that if someone had a legitimate reason why they mightn't have known about a previous plantation it didn't matter because what would happen is they would get charged the penalty anyway. So it was a way of trying to mitigate that and to enable the regulator to take a more appropriate view on it. And interestingly Māori had some concerns about this. They were concerned particularly when you think about a lot of iwi land is held in trusts and it's very unclear what the ownership is and who actually has the responsibility to make the penalty payment. So they were particularly concerned about this. And so this is a pragmatic way of dealing with it. As everyone said from our side—well Ian McKelvie said and no doubt my colleagues will—we will be supporting this bill. But the other thing to note with this is that the design of the penalty aligns with international jurisdictions. So it's to some extent futureproofing whether in fact the ETS—New Zealand's ETS which is quite a distinct climate change mechanism—can be aligned with other international practices which is an option we should keep up our back pocket. Now the last thing I just want to talk about is backlog because I have been approached by a number of constituents who have been seeking to get clearance whether in fact they are surrendering credits to get confirmation from the regulator. And what we've been hearing is delays of up to a year. So in the case of one particular landowner I know who wishes to sell his land but can't because he can't get the clearance from the regulator he is now sitting in a situation of hiatus. He cannot get that done. He cannot proceed and get on with his life because we've got a Government department—Simeon Brown: How many bureaucrats do we have there?ANDREW BAYLY: 14000 extra bureaucrats over the last five years. Approximate cost: $2 billion a year. We need a Minister to focus on making sure these consent applications and the issuance of these ETS credits are done quickly and promptly. And it's not good enough to blame it on COVID. We should be getting the resources in there now and dealing with it because it's putting people's lives at risk and creating a whole lot of tension that should not otherwise be. So I hope the Minister will action that side of it. He's certainly been made aware of it. But it is something that needs desperate attention because this Government should be trying to make sure that people can get their ETS credits and the confirmations that they require. But on that note I'll let the others take over.