Hipkins Chris: Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7818. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill. I congratulate the Greens on bringing another excellent bill to the House. I notice there is another ballot for members’ bills tomorrow; no doubt there will be some more Green bills coming out of the ballot given their recent run of very very good luck. 
I will pick up on a number of the points that other people have made in this debate. It is hard to look at the particular issues of this bill in isolation from the wider issues around climate change and energy efficiency that the Government is currently dealing with—or should I say not dealing with as the case may be. I pick up the point that my colleague and friend Grant Robertson raised. He said this Government appeared to be taking the approach that we can reduce our emissions without doing anything at all; that we can do absolutely nothing and somehow miraculously New Zealand’s carbon emissions will diminish and will decrease. We know that will not happen. 
This fairly small bill a realistic bill and quite a practical measure is just a small thing that we can do that would make some difference. Even if the Government is opposed to the bill why does it not at least send it to a select committee so that it can get a hearing so that the debate can be had and arguments can be put forward? If the Government decides to vote against it when it comes back into the House for its second reading it can do that. But why is it afraid of the debate? Why will it not even listen to the evidence and allow people to have a say on the bill? I tell members why that is the case: the Government simply has no idea of what it is doing about climate change. 
Shane Ardern talked earlier about his farm vehicles being inefficient because they were carrying loads that were beyond their capabilities. That sounds a lot like the Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith. He is overloaded much like Shane Ardern’s farm vehicles and he is completely losing the plot. The way the Government is dealing with climate change is a total debacle. It is an absolute fiasco. 
Let us go back to the very beginning to the very first things that this Government did when it came into the House after the last election. The first thing the Government did was to repeal the obligation on the fuel companies to use biofuels. It repealed the obligation and replaced it with a form of corporate welfare—a subsidy. It thought that rather than having the cost of biofuel development put on to the oil companies which were making massive profits it would be better for hard-working Kiwi taxpayers to pay a subsidy to the fuel companies. That is what the National Government thought. When Gerry Brownlee finally gets around to answering the questions I put to him—the answers are now several weeks overdue—it will be interesting to see whether any of the oil and gas companies have taken up the subsidy or whether it has turned out to be yet another fiasco on the part of the National Government. 
The second thing that the Government did—and this is quite relevant when we talk about the potential future of electric vehicles—relates to the thermal moratorium or thermal restriction that was put in place by the last Government. It was removed immediately upon National taking office as well. If we are going to move towards more electric vehicles we need to think about where the electricity comes from. If the electricity is coming from non-renewable resources from burning more coal or burning more gas will we end up any better off at all? Actually we probably will not. Why is the Government so opposed to renewable energy? Why is it so opposed to this bill which will require State sector vehicles—21000 State sector vehicles I believe—to be fuel efficient? This bill is a very practical measure. It needs to fit in with other measures that the previous Labour Government had in place with support from the Greens—for example the two that I have just mentioned the biofuels and the thermal restriction. 
Then there was the transport strategy. Significant investment was made in repurchasing what is now KiwiRail to get some of those big trucks off the road to get more freight on to rail and to get more passengers on to rail. Instead the Government seems to have wound back the clock on that; it would rather see the rail system run down as it was in the 9 years National was in Government in the 1990s when the private sector simply ran the rail network into the ground. 
I commend the Greens for bringing this bill to the House. I think it is a practical measure a small step but a positive step none the less. I urge the National Government to consider sending this bill to a select committee so that it can be properly debated.