Copeland Gordon: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Copeland Gordon: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:632;Page:3710] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I am going to use the majority of my time in this debate on the supplementary estimates for 2005-06 to talk about our forecast liability under the Kyoto Protocol. Our liability period begins in 2008 and goes through to 2012. It is interesting to note that on 30 June 2005 our liability under that protocol was estimated in the Crown accounts at $310 million. In these supplementary estimates it has gone up on a forecast as at 31 March 2006 to $627 million. That is an increase of some $317 million. The report we have received on this matter is that that is still only an estimate and it could go up further by the time the Crown accounts are finalised on 30 June 2006. So this is like an interim measure. 
I am very very concerned indeed because a large part of that increase in our Kyoto Protocol forecast liability results from the fact that there has been a faster rate of deforestation than the former Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues forecast. That of course boosts New Zealand’s Kyoto obligations because in cutting forests down we actually reduce the amount of carbon capture and the number of forest sinks in our country. The converse of that is also true of course that by planting more trees and encouraging harvesters to delay harvests we indeed increase carbon capture and with that reduce our liability to the rest of the Kyoto Protocol nations. 
This represents a serious breakdown of policy of the most serious kind. Time spent by the Government on its failed “burp and fart tax” and time spent on the flawed carbon tax could have been used to strongly incentivise the planting of new forests. That should have begun 6 years ago. One of the problems with this whole area is that time is against us. We cannot recapture the last 10 years; we cannot go back now and reinvent them. So there has been a real failure over the last 6 years. We have not incentivised the planting of new forests in this country. Instead of being $700 million in deficit at this point of time I think that if action had been taken earlier over that 6-year period we could have reduced that amount and reduced it very significantly. In fact I would venture to say that we could probably have come to a break-even situation. 
It is not really rocket science. The Government needs to stop dragging the chain on getting trees planted and move into getting strongly incentivised forestation campaigns under way. We have already lost 6 years. How much more time will be allowed to drift by? Every day is important and every hour is important. Surely it is better to spend a few hundred million dollars now on tree planting rather than pay out up to $700 million a year to some overseas jurisdiction under the Kyoto Protocol. But that is where we are heading. Continued delay is a disgrace. I ask the Government to please get on with doing something about planting more trees in this country.  
The other thing I want to mention to do with the Appropriation (2005/06 Supplementary Estimates) Bill concerns the New Zealand Railways Corporation. ONTRACK is its trading name but we have gone back to using the more old-fashioned name for it now the New Zealand Railways Corporation. Another $93 million has been put aside for railways. Of course the Crown again now owns the land around and under the tracks the stations etc. I suggest to the House that the Crown has an opportunity to look at building parking buildings around railway stations in the Auckland and Wellington suburban areas. Overseas they call it park-and-ride. People would like to catch the train because of the increased price of motor fuel but all the surveys show that they still have to use their car to get from their home to the station and when they get to the station there is nowhere to park it. So I suggest to the Government that it looks positively at that issue over the next few years to see whether we can indeed build parking buildings at railway stations. The private sector will put up the money. This would be an opportunity for what we call public-private partnerships. As I said the Crown owns the land and it could lease the land to a private sector company. If we built some car-parks then a lot more people would travel on our trains as a result.