Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): So firstly I want to confirm that ACT will support this bill at first reading because it's important that people who are subject to very very bad law that imposes an outrageous cost burden on them have an opportunity to come to Parliament and make a submission about things that affect them. But I also want to make it clear: when the primary legislation was passed ACT opposed it because we do not believe that imposing excessive costs on the New Zealand economy landowners and primary producers if it does not reduce emissions globally—that there's any point to it whatsoever.So the purpose of this bill—the problem definition according to the regulatory impact statement is that the emissions trading scheme for forestry is complex. There's a small number of forestry participants who have become non-compliant with requirements because they simply don't understand it. That's one of the problems with having a climate Minister who makes rules about what you can do with private property in your business who simply doesn't understand the effects that has on people who farm who do farm forestry who produce things who manufacture things.That's why ACT alone opposed the zero carbon Act because it gives the climate Minister unbridled power to decide which industries which farms which means of production are allowed to survive and which ones must be squashed. That's why ACT opposed the zero carbon Act. But we want to give people who are affected by this terrible legislation this Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill—we want to give people who may have cut down some trees on their land and only just worked out they're liable for penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars for something either they did or a previous landowner did since 1990 the chance to come to select committee.Now when we think about the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris climate accord—those agreements that politicians from New Zealand political parties either Labour or National or the Greens went and signed New Zealand up to; climate targets that they had no idea how New Zealand primary producers or manufacturers or just people trying to get to work could meet but they signed us up anyway. They didn't care about the cost and then when they worked out that actually Kiwis aren't buying it they tried to terrify the children and the young people by declaring a climate emergency—ACT opposed that. And so here we are the Minister for Climate Change a representative of the Green Party is coming to the House to explain that Actually we got it so wrong that potentially we are going to bankrupt some landowners who didn't realise that if they cut down some pine trees on their farm that were planted before 1990 they could be liable for penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars."I note that the Minister isn't going to be listening to this which is disappointing. Maybe he'll review the tape later. But I want to paint a little picture: imagine a world where you're a young farming couple a husband and wife and you've bought a farm in the back country somewhere that you could afford. It's steep; it used to be subject to erosion—say it's beef and lamb country somewhere in the King Country. On that property there's mānuka scrub there's regenerating bush and there are big trees that were small trees when the big land clearances happened over a hundred years ago. Over a hundred years ago in places like Raurimu and Te Kūiti big rimu big totara were harvested—essentially clear-felled—to produce timber for homes in Wellington and Auckland and Melbourne and Sydney and even further afield.But what was left behind is now regenerating and actually on a lot of those steeper slopes in farms in places like the King Country pine trees were planted both to stabilise the soil and as an investment for the future because those farmers weren't sure what the price of lamb and beef would be 20 or 25 years down the track but they knew there would be value in those trees. Now for the people who planted those pine plantations in the 1980s they had no idea there'd be an emissions trading scheme. They had no idea there'd be a Minister for Climate Change from the Green Party who would pass a law essentially telling people what they're allowed to do with their own land and what they'd have to pay if they dared to cut down some pine trees. These young couples who have bought farms in places like the King Country in the central North Island now find themselves subject to enormous penalties.So what would ACT do? What would we do differently? Well look New Zealand needs to play its part on the world stage when it comes to climate change—we do—because we're being constantly threatened by bullies like the European Union that if we don't do our part for climate change they will exclude our products and our primary production from their markets. Now even though the Prime Minister's announced a free-trade deal with the EU actually we haven't seen the document yet. So maybe there is still a bit of stand over going on there. Maybe that's what this is—maybe that's what this is.So what would ACT do? We've got to play our part. We actually think that the price of carbon emissions in New Zealand needs to be about the same as our top-five trading partners. I've just come back from the US; I've been looking at infrastructure three waters and how they do climate resilience and adaptation. When I told them that we've got an $86 a tonne carbon price on our manufacturers and that if you cut down trees and you don't plant more you'll pay 85 bucks a tonne for that carbon they said "You're going to send yourself broke. What country in the world would do that?" Well the virtue-signalling climate warriors who declared a climate emergency in the New Zealand Labour Party and Green Party—these people who sit here in the House lecturing us. ACT says no to that. We've got to play our part but our carbon price needs to be around the same as our top-five trading partners so we don't send ourselves bankrupt.The other thing we need to do is reform the emissions trading scheme so that New Zealand businesses which emit carbon and want to do their part to mitigate that can plant trees not just in New Zealand—captured under the emissions trading cap where you're not allowed to offset your emissions outside the country—but say for example they wanted to replant forests in Borneo that had been cut down say to produce palm oil to make biofuel to satisfy some other climate change low-carbon mandate; that in fact New Zealand businesses or people who manufacture here who could be multinationals could go to somewhere like Borneo or South America to the Amazon jungles and they could replant forests there and get the carbon credits for it.I have a member's bill in the tin which provides for just that: for New Zealand businesses to go and contract to mitigate their emissions by doing planting or carbon sequestration in other countries. I mean Australia's worked out how to do carbon sequestration: their Gorgon natural gas project in northwest Australia has sequestered between six and seven million tonnes of carbon while they've got the natural gas out of the ground to use. Now in New Zealand if we wanted to do that you can't even get credits for sequestration. So for all of the virtue signalling for all that we've heard from the climate warriors about how they want to save us from ourselves they've come back to the House—the Minister with this bill this bill to reform a bill that he only passed in 2020—and assured the House that actually this was a fair scheme to make people pay for their emissions. And yet here he is coming back to explain that actually the penalties are so extreme and the outcomes are so perverse that he's asking the House under urgency to review this bill and send it back to select committee because the due date for payment for people—most of whom didn't even know they had an obligation—is 1 January 2023.That's an example of the appalling rushed legislative approach by these people who have no practical experience who sit in a Labour Government and who lecture us on how we should live. ACT rejects that. We've said we will repeal the zero carbon Act in our first hundred days if we were part of a new Government and that all of this cost in the economy slowing down business slowing down people trying to drive places and do things—we'll put an end to that. ACT is New Zealand's hope for the future."