Mackey Moana: Biofuel Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: Biofuel Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18275. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I just want to take a short call to respond to the previous speech. I sometimes wonder whether Dr Nick Smith and I were sitting in the same select committee when listening to the submissions because what he is relaying to the Committee is certainly not what we were told during those submissions. And if he had listened then the submitters would have answered a lot of questions for him. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: What did the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment say? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well I tell Dr Smith that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment submitted on the original bill not the bill as reported back to the House after the Local Government and Environment Committee had done its work. In fact all the international organisations that Dr Smith quoted were the reason why the select committee worked so many extra hours through all the adjournments and I acknowledge the hard work that Dr Smith himself put into coming along to the select committee and working on the bill. We did it because we listened to those international organisations and because we listened to the reports out there. We recognised as a committee that the bill needed to change from the original format that came to us which was the format that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment spoke on when she came to our select committee and gave that report. Dr Smith knows that just as well as everyone else. 
I want to say of Dr Smith’s amendment which he brought up that it is a very handy way of never having to do anything. If we simply do not ever develop standards and if we do not have a time line in the bill as we have now where the Minister has to come back with the methodology then we never have to do anything—that is true. I tell Dr Smith that if we never come up with standards then his amendment says we never have to have a biofuel obligation—yes? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: That’s right. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Dr Smith says “That’s right.” Well we say that that is not good enough. 
We were told by submitters that they wanted to know the kind of biofuels that the select committee and this House believe should be exempt. That is why we put in those three sustainability standards that we developed in conjunction with the Greens—to make it clear. Oil companies do not go into 3-week contracts when they are looking at biofuels; they want to know up front what this Parliament might smack on them part-way through their obligation. And we have told them. So they know that some biofuels out there are absolutely never going to be allowed regardless of what the Minister comes back with after he has done the methodologies and the things the bill requires him to do. 
We have been up front about it. We know that that is what biofuel producers want because they need some certainty. We will never have a domestic biofuel industry in this country if we cannot provide some form of certainty like a biofuel obligation so that producers know they will have some kind of industry to provide to here. That is why we are doing it. I do not know how many times Dr Smith needs to be told but if he had listened at the select committee then I would not have to be telling him again and again.