Mackey Moana: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18049. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to speak to Part 2 of this Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill which amends the Climate Change Response Act. I have a number of questions for the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce which I hope he will respond to. This is an incredibly damaging piece of legislation for the post-1989 forestry sector. My first question would be: why does the Minister hate forestry so much? Why does this Government hate forestry? Time and time again we have seen Government policies undermining the very sector that is doing all the heavy lifting in terms of climate change response. I would like to know from the Minister in the chair why this applies only to post-1989 foresters.This is not actually about foresters not being able to reregister once they have deregistered and double-dip because we could have stopped that if that were the case. We could have just said that within any single mandatory emissions reporting period you cannot reregister; you can only register once. That would have fixed it. We could also have limited these international units across the board—treated everyone the same—to try to narrow that differential in price between the New Zealand Unit and the Kyoto units. That would have fixed it. If we had a proper price on carbon and that differential was not there then we would not have this issue at all. I want to know why the Minister is applying this only to post-1989 forestry. And the Minister should really be listening because we are talking serious money jobs and investment for a very important sector.The National Party likes to say that it is all about business—well here we go passing a piece of legislation that is unfair retrospective and inequitable and the Minister is not even doing me the courtesy of listening to or acknowledging any of these concerns. Maybe we should just put the officials in the chair because I do not actually think Minister Foss understands the emissions trading scheme or this bill at all but I would not want to do that because I would not want to have to put them in the horrible position of having to defend what is being done here. All I can say is that help is on the way. Come 20 September you will have a Labour Government that will take climate change seriously and that will support not undermine and attack the forestry sector.Jami-Lee Ross: The arrogance.MOANA MACKEY: Jami-Lee Ross here we go—climate change denier No. 1. Oh no sorry—that is Gerry Brownlee. Jami-Lee Ross is climate change denier No. 2. Simon O’Connor is climate change denier No. 3. He called it pseudo-science in his contribution—pseudo-science. The science of climate change is pseudo-science! Well I can say to New Zealanders and to our long-suffering officials who do wonderful work on behalf of this anti-environment Government that come 20 September you will have a Government that takes climate change and environmental matters seriously so hang on in there—hang on in there.I want to know from the Minister in the chair why this does not apply to the heavy industrial emitters who are engaging in arbitrage. Minister? Hello? No no answer.Hon Phil Goff: The lights are on but no one’s at home.MOANA MACKEY: That is right—the lights are on but no one is home. Why does this not apply to your mates in the heavy industry sector like Rio Tinto? Why are they allowed to engage in arbitrage but the post-1989 foresters are not Minister? Nope no one is there. The wheel is spinning but the hamster is long gone. Why does it not apply to your mates in the heavy-polluting industry sector? There is no answer to that.The other question I have for the Minister is if this is such a dreadful awful thing why was the Ministry for Primary Industries as late as the beginning of this year promoting it in itsSustainable Forestry Bulletin? Why was the ministry providing hints on things to consider when removing and reregistering post-1989 forests in the emissions trading scheme? I think it is fair to say that from this you could probably assume that the ministry thought the Government was OK with it so this has probably come as quite a nasty surprise to it which is why this bill should have gone to a select committee.My next question for the Minister is if this is about reducing the fiscal risk to the Crown—and we all accept that that is a good thing to do—why when the fiscal risk to the Crown of arbitrage being carried out by the post-1989 forestry sector is estimated to be between $11 million and $66 million are we not applying the same restriction to the industrial sector engaging in arbitrage? If we use the same methodology the fiscal riskto the Crown from that sector is $107 million. Why is $11 million of fiscal risk not OK but $107 million of fiscal risk is just fine?This is the most appalling thing. This is a serious piece of legislation. It was presented to us as being something minor and technical. On further investigation it absolutely was not. The Minister in the chair is refusing to even acknowledge these concerns. I would welcome him to stop sitting there like a dried arrangement get up on his pins and answer some of the questions that have not been answered. This bill has not been consulted on. No one in the forestry sector knew this was coming. The Government has not consulted with anyone. There was no select committee process. So these are very very simple questions and I hope that the Minister is going to respond to them.The next question I would put to the Minister is that if this is about reputational risk to the emissions trading scheme then should he not be more concerned about the fact that in his Government’s plan for addressing climate change the difference between the results for that and doing nothing at all is a 0.4 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? So the difference between the Government’s great climate change strategy on the one hand and absolutely nothing at all on the other hand is 0.4 percent. So basically we are doing nothing. If the Minister is concerned about reputational risk then I suspect he need only look in the mirror to see who is responsible for reputational risk to the emissions trading scheme and to New Zealand for our complete lack of action in this area.I have an amendment in my name and we will be voting against this part of the bill unless my amendment is agreed to. That amendment would restrict international units across the board for everyone. That is actually what the post-1989 forestry industry has been calling for for years. So this is not about the industry saying it wants these cheap units and it thinks they should be able to stay in our scheme. For years industry has been saying: “Please restrict them. We want to see them restricted. We want the New Zealand Unit to be the prime unit used in New Zealand but apply that to everyone.” So for the Government to turn round and say it is going to restrict them but only to that industry so it will be the only sector in the emissions trading scheme that cannot get access to these units is highly inequitable. It is also retrospective.This is I think one of the worst things about this particular change to the Climate Change Response Act. There are people out there right now who are holding Kyoto units that when this bill passes they will not be able to use. They purchased those units in good faith. They purchased those units because legally they were entitled to surrender them to meet their obligations. They purchased those units in accordance with the law in accordance with Government policy—the Government had been promoting this activity—and they are now left hanging. If they have not started the deregistration process with the Ministry for Primary Industries by today then they are stuck with those European allowance units. If they have not got New Zealand Units—if they have sold their New Zealand Units because they did not think that they were going to need them—then that makes it even worse.I have another question for the Minister which he will obviously choose to ignore because he does not understand it or appreciate how damaging this actually is. Why did he not allow the European allowance units that have already landed in the country from today to still be allowed to be used? Why is he retrospectively hurting people who have purchased these units in good faith and in accordance with the law but who have not started the deregistration process? Does he care? Do you care Minister that people are actually seriously out of pocket because of something that you refuse to even stand up and take a call on while you sit there and pretend that you are not listening to me and pretend to be reading the papers in front of you? It is just embarrassing. Seriously aquarter of a million dollars for this—that is what we pay this guy for no answers for a complete lack of understanding and for no sympathy at all no remorse for the business people who are out of pocket or the foresters who are going to be hurt by this change. So the amendment in my name will equitably apply that restriction across the board to everyone. That is the way we should be dealing with it.But the primary question that I want to ask this Minister is: why is he giving his mates a free pass and whacking forestry? Minister you should be thanking forestry. It is the only reason we came through the first commitment period of Kyoto in the black—the only reason. This Government has no plan to deal with climate change at all. Forestry saved us. You should be thanking the industry not taking yet another whack at it. So I ask again: why are your mates getting a free pass and forestry is being disadvantaged? Minister? It is cronyism plain and simple. It is what we have seen right through the Budget. It is what we have seen right through the 5 years of this National Government—cronyism. It is unfair it is inequitable it is damaging and it is embarrassing.For the Minister to say that this is about our reputation—give me a break. This damages our reputation. This is a massive breach of faith with people who made investment and business decisions based on what they understood the law to be based on what the ministry was actually promoting.