Graham Kennedy: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 27 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4051. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Mr Assistant Speaker a split call?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): A 5-minute call.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: Yes. As a number of my colleagues have already noted the 2015 Budget statement said virtually nothing about the biggest economic issue facing this country—that is climate change. The Budget revealed new policy of course on a variety of household issues. They are important issues especially to those directly affected but they are not the overarching macroeconomic issues that will at the global level—and therefore at the national level—overwhelm everybody if they are not properly addressed.The Minister of Finance is tinkering at the margin with his seventh Budget. It is like the captain of a ship transferring his passengers into a dingy with an outboard motor. Both are heading into the hurricane ahead. The captain is saying: “Not to worry we have just enough freeboard to stay afloat.” He is saying this even as the sea is getting bigger. That hurricane is climate change—literally hurricanes storms and floods that are already occurring.Why is extreme weather relevant to New Zealand’s Budget? It is because the stress on the planet’s resources through global population increase and burgeoning economic activity per person is unsustainable. We are incurring today a global ecological overshoot of 50 percent. Although New Zealand is rare in having a national ecological surplus we are negatively affected including our fiscal outlook by the unsustainable and worsening global economy. That is the reason the Minister is failing even though he is widely seen as a successful economic steward.The most important global meeting to date occurs in December. It is the 21st annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. It is the equivalent of the failed conference in Copenhagen in 2009 but it is more important because we have lost 6 critical years yet there is not a word on this in the Budget.The world has lost ground. No longer are the negotiators engaged in global planning. Top-down is out; bottom-up is in. Binding commitments are out; voluntary contributions are in. We going to tame dangerous climate change you understand through voluntary contributions by 194 competing States jealous of their national sovereignty. God help us for we know not what we do.That voluntary contribution is labelled in the latest jargon “INDC” or intended nationally determined contribution. It is “nationally determined” not “globally determined”; it is “intended” not “committed” and the jargon is sanitised to the point of stupefaction. Global warming above 4 degrees which is labelled by international organisations as catastrophic is described by this Government as having “substantial environmental economic and human impacts”. God help us.New Zealand is lumbering its way towards its intended nationally determined contribution. It has held public consultations throughout the country. The Minister for Climate Change Issues is conspicuously absent. He does not care; his mind has moved on. He will none the less announce the intended nationally determined contribution within a few months. It will be insufficient—probably between 10 and 20 percent. He will pepper it with conditions and irrelevancies. He will imply that he is in possession of complex and arcane knowledge that accords superior insight.The Green Party has already said that the intended nationally determined contribution must be 40-plus percent. That would bring New Zealand’s net emissions down from 67 megatonnes today to 40 megatonnes in 2030. That is consistent with the Green Party policy of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Is getting to 40 megatonnes feasible? Yes it is. As far as can be determined we could do at least that and we are talking about domestic abatement alone. In fact it is possible that we could go further. What might be New Zealand’s maximum abatement potential assuming all policy signals are optimal and there is sufficient political will? The experts will differ but the range could be anything from 40 megatonnes down to perhaps 20. So let us have the debate over what can be done—a genuine public debate not a trite ministerial sermon—and let us then have a genuine cross-party political debate.My final point is that that is simply our domestic abatement. If we are talking about doing our fair share in the global effort to ensure a 2 degrees Celsius outcome New Zealand’s national responsibility target goes far far beyond that.