Street Maryan: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7992. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I want to go back to some of the entry points for the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill. I did not come into this House to make life worse for my daughter her peers and any children whom she might have in the future. I did not come here for that purpose and one of the reasons why we as the Labour Party are voting against this legislation is that it does nothing to advance the future for New Zealand. 
National has always been the party of the status quo. What we have here is spin upon spin upon spin layered on what is essentially a status quo document. The National Party has always been the party of big business. It is only recently that its members have discovered Maori big business but it is still the party of big business. 
We are concerned—deeply concerned—about this legislation because of not only its content but also its process which I will come back to in a moment. The content of this legislation does nothing to incentivise our producers—it does not matter whether they are agricultural producers or industrial producers—to do things differently: to build a new economy and to build a new productive base in this country on the basis of new methods. It does not help to build productivity and economic output for this country based on new methods that are sensitive to not only the environment that we are blessed to live in in this country but also the needs of the planet’s environment. That is the fundamental concern for us in Labour. This legislation provides no incentive to reduce emissions. 
If there is nothing else that National understands about climate change can it please understand this? This watered-down scheme—it is in effect a return to supplementary minimum prices—panders to the corporates by giving them vast handouts and it does nothing to incentivise them to change their behaviour in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At least that is what we all understand; surely we all understand that. The public knows that greenhouse gases need to be reduced if this planet is to survive in any kind of reasonable condition for our children and their children. So it is absolutely essential that some of the amendments that have been put up get proper consideration and support. If I am allowed to take a second call in a moment I will go over some of those Supplementary Order Papers. 
But I also want to talk about the process around this bill. The Government would not be in such distress now about the numbers or be in such a shambles about the passage of this legislation had it simply taken a breath and done it in a more consultative way. To give legislation of such importance as this only 6 weeks in front of a select committee is a travesty of the process. This Government has prostituted the processes of Parliament in order for the Minister for Climate Change Issues to say there is legislation with his name on it when he goes to Copenhagen. That is not a good enough reason for doing that. I say to Dr Smith that this legislation is not about him; it is about the future of New Zealand. It is about our contribution to the reduction of global warming which is a man-made phenomenon. 
If this bill had gone through a proper process and had taken some time we might have arrived at legislation that was durable—at an emissions trading scheme that was durable. Instead of ramming through these completely inadequate—worse than that; destructive—clauses in this legislation all that the Minister needed to do was in fact to extend the implementation date for the previous Labour Government’s emissions trading scheme. All that he had to do was to delay the implementation of our scheme give it a greater hearing and let the Maori Party work out whether it was going to be advantageous to its people—that is not simply advantageous to five iwi corporates but advantageous to Maori and Pakeha families in the lower socio-economic brackets in our country. This legislation will not do what the Government is trying to spin that it will do. It will not reduce power prices as it stands. It will require taxpayers to foot the bill for subsidies to large emitters to carry on with their emissions. Those large emitters will not only carry on but also increase their emissions. They will be allowed to increase their emissions; there will be no progress. 
This issue is not meant to be about the Minister’s ego in Copenhagen. He could easily have said New Zealand has an emissions trading scheme in place—he could have said that in Copenhagen. He could even have said we were still in discussions about amending it. This is not about going to Copenhagen with nothing; we have something in place so we could have held our heads up. When the first soundings of this legislation were broadcast through the diplomatic channels in the pre-Copenhagen conference people laughed—people laughed. The Minister thinks he is going to achieve something by way of reputation by having this bill—this legislation with his name on it—held up in Copenhagen. But when people look at it closely they will continue to laugh. This legislation will do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and worse than that it will require the low-paid the low-income households to pay for this scheme through a reduction in services—whether they be reductions to education to health to other infrastructure or to public services that they draw on and require in order to live with dignity in our country. 
I ask the Maori Party members not to be influenced by National sending its Maori members to cuddle up with them on their benches right now. They just need to be aware of what the Maori Party’s membership is saying. They should be aware that the party’s membership has dropped to the fact that this spin is completely transparent and that this bill will not deliver the kinds of relief wanted by low-income Maori households—relief that they would wish that their party would represent for them in this Parliament. It is time for the Maori Party to withdraw its votes and to listen. It is not too late. It is time now for the Maori Party to withdraw its votes on this bill and to vote it down. 
We have an emissions trading scheme in place. Let us spend more time on achieving a durable consensus around that. It was the Minister who walked away from the bipartisan talks—from the multiparty talks. It was the Minister who walked away thinking he could sew up the Maori Party votes on this bill and get it passed. That is not good enough. It is a travesty it is an abuse of parliamentary process and it is not what I would suggest many National members came into this House to do. Regardless of the issue surely they would not subscribe to that kind of abuse of process. This is the moment for the Maori Party to withdraw its votes on this bill to listen to its membership and to understand that what has been said by the Government in terms of relief for low-income households has been just spin. 
Let us take time. Let us build I say to the Minister a durable consensus around the emissions trading scheme. This bill is a shambles. This process is a shambles. It is now getting to the point where the votes in support of the bill are at risk. The best thing that the Minister could do is to withdraw this bill rather than suffer the ignominy of a defeat. He could withdraw it and say “All right let us go back. Let us see if we can gain some multiparty consensus.” The last thing that our farmers need is instability around the emissions trading scheme.