Dean Jacqui: General Debate 
Dean Jacqui: General Debate 
[Volume:636;Page:6940] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 This has been a very very long year for the Labour Government. Here we are nearly at the end of our parliamentary term. It is almost time to pack our bags and go back to our electorates—for those of us who are lucky enough to have electorates—do our Christmas shopping and spend time with our family. I know that Labour members of Parliament both list and there are many of those and electorate and that is a shrinking number will be reflecting on what a long sad sorry year it has been for them. First of all they had the enduring embarrassment of one of their members Taito Phillip Field. The Prime Minister and Government members spent months and months defending the reputation of their fellow MP Taito Phillip Field who is electorally a very useful MP. They commissioned an inquiry of sorts and then spent months trying to defend that. In the end of course they had to concede that perhaps they were losing that fight so now that particular member is back in his electorate and taking his pay yet doing no work. But the Labour Government thinks that that is OK because it still has his vote. 
Then as another part of this long long year for Labour members they had the unfolding story of the corrupt practices surrounding their use of public money to fund their pledge card for the election campaign. So what did they do about that? Those members brought in some retrospective legislation to put right something they knew was wrong. Indeed it has been a very long year. Then the Prime Minister thought: “I know what we will do. The press has been so bad for us all year. We are under pressure; we do not like it. Hang on a minute—it is the Labour Party conference. What will I do? I will have to pull out something big from the box. I know what I will do. We will call for carbon neutrality.” And I can just see the Labour Party conference and all the little unionists gathered there. I can just see them there saying: “Yes Prime Minister yes. Carbon neutrality—fantastic! We will buy that. The country will buy carbon neutrality. Gosh you are a good Prime Minister Prime Minister.” And for a brief moment it pushed the little problems that this Government has been grappling with all year Taito Phillip Field and the pledge card off the front page. 
However the unfortunate thing about carbon neutrality is that it is almost impossible to obtain. In fact when we asked the Prime Minister’s Minister of Energy about it he replied that the Government had not yet picked a date by which New Zealand would be carbon neutral. Has Mr Parker not yet picked a date for when New Zealand will be carbon neutral? He went on to say that we would find that it would become more clear over the next 6 months. Well I say to Mr Parker that I have a good memory. Christmas or not early in the next year I will be asking him when he plans for New Zealand to become carbon neutral because I do not believe that he has a clue as to when that will happen. 
What we need to do now is to back up the talk by looking at the Government’s environmental track record. Here we have a Government of 7 long years and of course it has built up a consistently good track record on the environment has it not? No! Unfortunately it has been exactly the other way around. Let us look at some of the environmental indicators. New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions under Labour have been growing at a rate faster than in almost any other country. 
That does not make for very good reading so I will go on to something else because I am sure I can pick something good that this Government has done. Here is a figure—emissions are growing at 50 percent faster than when National was in office. So here we have a Government that has been in power for 7 long years it is aiming for carbon neutrality but this is an unpleasant little fact for it: a major increase in the growth of greenhouse emissions has been caused by a drop in the renewable proportion of electricity generation. So how credible is it for the Prime Minister to have this lofty aim of carbon neutrality?