McClay Todd: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
McClay Todd: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 06 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6305. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 I want to take a brief call in this stage of the debate just to say to the Minister for Climate Change Issues that I think that the work he has done here in this piece of legislation the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and the changes to the legislation are very important. I know that in the Finance and Expenditure Committee when we heard New Zealanders and went to different parts of the country indeed from memory we heard submissions for 19 hours. I did a little bit of checking and when last a bill was before this House on this very issue the select committee was not able to take that amount of time. We heard from some 780 submitters from a total of 803 submissions—again from memory—which was slightly more than when the House has dealt with this legislation previously. Finally we considered and then deliberated on this in the committee for some 9 hours. So when members opposite say that this was a rushed process I say that although the report-back time that was given to the committee may have been shorter than for other bills—and indeed when one stacks up the evidence—the committee went to great lengths to offer all New Zealanders an opportunity not only to submit to the committee to be heard by the committee but also where there was interest from members across the House where there was something more that submitters could add the committee and I as chair was happy to let those submitters spend some time. Indeed I think one submitter—I checked—had a dialogue of 50 minutes with the committee and a couple of others had 45 minutes. So we went to great lengths in the committee to make sure that New Zealanders had their say on this extremely important piece of legislation. 
What this amendment bill does—and this is why I want to commend the Minister for Climate Change Issues again—is bring balance to a piece of legislation that at the heart of the policy in the previous Government and in this Government is important to all New Zealanders. We did hear members of the Opposition say during the select committee consideration that they had concerns to some degree around the cost to New Zealand consumers and that if we did not make the changes we are making these costs would not go up. I want members to remember a submission that came to us from the very south of the South Island from Invercargill around an aluminium smelter. At the time in the newspapers members opposite were saying that the Government had to do more about the cost of electricity so that jobs were not lost in this important manufacturing sector. But on the other side of the fence members of the Opposition were also saying that we should impose greater costs upon manufacturing in aluminium than would be the case under this legislation. I would ask them to consider on the one hand why it is that they want us to find ways to lower costs so that manufacturing can continue and people can keep their jobs but on the other hand when it comes to emissions trading scheme legislation they are happy for those costs to be ramped up and indeed for jobs to be lost. 
We have heard from one of the previous speakers who occasionally passes through the Waikato to areas of the country where we grow great numbers of trees about a Supplementary Order Paper in the name of a Labour Minister—a Labour member—that is going to help— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Premature. 
TODD McCLAY 
: Well I will not speak to that Mr Mallard and “premature” anything at all but what I would say to you is that when it comes to the paper that has been put forward by Moana Mackey it adds nothing at all to existing legislation. So what Ms Mackey is saying is we must put in the legislation a quantitative restriction around the importation and use in the New Zealand scheme of foreign carbon credits. But it adds absolutely nothing to the legislation because as members opposite will know because it was put in place when they were responsible for this legislation through regulation the Minister can deal with the quality of foreign credits and also the quantity of them. So we already have that ability and in fact this Government a year ago put in place restrictions on the basis of quality over some international credits so they are no longer fit and they are no longer legally able to be in the New Zealand scheme. They are no longer legal tender. 
I congratulate the Minister on listening widely to the sector and asking his officials to go and have a look at other credits to see whether or not they are up to the grade that we require them to be as part of our scheme. Indeed I would expect a report back next year when the House will have an opportunity to look at the facts at the science around this to decide whether or not they are credible. So I know Ms Mackey feels strongly about this but actually this is a bit of wolf-whistling. It is a little bit of politics. What she is trying to do is already possible under the legislation. It has already been done under the legislation and it does nothing more than suggest that members in the committee from the Opposition did not pay enough attention did not really—