Guy Nathan; Rurawhe AdrianHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It's a wonderful opportunity for me to make a contribution on the zero carbon bill. I came into the Environment Committee when Todd Muller and I had a bit of a changeover and Todd Muller said to me Get in there and shore up the right flank." So that's indeed what I did. I want to acknowledge all of those on the select committee and I want to pay a tribute to Todd Muller who when he was our spokesperson for climate change issues worked very closely with James Shaw.Indeed it was just unfortunate that for a couple of months leading up to the first reading the phone somehow just fell off the hook. I think what happened there is New Zealand First woke up to the fact that Mr Shaw had reached out to this side of the House and perhaps hadn't consulted with New Zealand First. So for whatever reason whether that indeed is correct we find ourselves in this position—Todd Muller: Obviously correct.Hon NATHAN GUY: —this afternoon. Mr Muller is indeed confirming that it is correct that's exactly what happened.What we're interested in—talking about the politics of this bill before I get into the substance—is what New Zealand First is going to do when we put our Supplementary Order Papers the changes that the National Party want to this bill to strengthen it up. What are New Zealand First going to do? And that's going to play out in the next day or so.What I thought is also telling is that James Shaw has sent out an invitation to everyone. The invitation reads something like this: "Dear such and such come to drinks in my office on Thursday night this bill will be done and dusted and it's an opportunity for celebration." I wish Mr Shaw well with his little drinkies on Thursday night but I thought that might have been a little bit presumptuous because we have got a committee stage to go and I think it's going to be a long debate because we have got some concerns with this bill and I want to go through those now.Of course we all know our position on this bill: that things need to change. I'm not a denier. Yes I'm from the agriculture sector and I'm a farmer myself and I know that there are challenges ahead. But importantly our five key principles are of course we need to focus on the science—and I think that's certainly a given. Everyone on this side of the House nods. We know that the Green Party are focused on science when indeed it suits them but they like to ignore it when it doesn't suit their rhetoric. Technology is a real focus as well and we don't think that it has come to pass in this bill enough. I want to make a few more comments about that shortly.We want to ensure that there are long-term incentives for change and that we don't want to get ahead of the world. We don't want to be the laggards but we don't want to be just fast followers and out of the blocks first or second. We want to ensure that the big growing economies of the world are playing their part as well. And what about the economic impacts? Pretty much silent in this bill and I want to come on to those in a moment.Chlöe Swarbrick: It's because you didn't understand officials.Hon NATHAN GUY: I acknowledged the officials and I acknowledged the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE). In fact I asked officials specifically if they could come back in and take me through the economic analysis because I was new on the committee. I appreciate the officials doing that and I think the rest of the committee actually learnt a little bit through that process as well.This is economic modelling—and yes I know it's out 50 years but here's the impact of this bill where one of the economic modelling scenarios says that it could indeed cost $3000 to $7500 per household out to 2050. Mr Shaw shakes his head and he'll probably shake his head on this one as well: it could reduce GDP by $300 billion—that's about $10 billion a year over 30 years; shakes his head on that one. So that was really important and I don't think that's very clear in the bill. Yes it does mean that the commission has to take account of the economic impacts and so does the Minister; that's really important. But I think the numbers—the highlight numbers—are nowhere to be seen in this bill.Now I want to talk specifically about the methane targets because this has been a big bugbear for the rural sector and all of the industries that came in and addressed the committee were really concerned about it. In law in this bill right now that we are debating the second reading of and if it goes through these methane targets out to 2050 will be in legislation. They'll be enshrined in law—minus 24 percent to minus 47 percent. There was hardly anyone in the agriculture community that came into the select committee and said "Bring it on we can do this."I'll tell you what's really important: all of the technology gains in this bill have already been banked. So if the methane inhibitors—if the vaccine doesn't turn up what is the agriculture community going to do? What is the Government proposing to do to turbocharge R & D? What is the focus of the coalition Government on GE—genetic engineering genetic modification? What is the Government's view?On one hand we have Labour Ministers and New Zealand First saying "Yes we should look at it"—and I was heartened that about two months ago Minister Shaw said yes he was keen to have a look at it but what's happened is that the Green Party membership have rounded on James Shaw. Just in the last week or so he's now saying "Oh no it's off the table we're not going to anything around GE; we're not even prepared to look at it." That's not surprising to me because Eugenie Sage stopped officials and the group that are leading Predator Free 2050 from doing any work on making possums sterile to reduce those terrible pests that we have in this country. All that GE work has stopped. So it's not surprising that the Green Party have this view.The reason that I raise the importance of technology and I've talked about a couple of examples the really important thing about GE—and that's why on this side of the House we are prepared now to have the debate and have the discussion with New Zealanders—is that there is a ryegrass being developed through AgResearch that has to go offshore to the US to be field trialled and it reduces methane emissions by about 25 percent. It's also drought tolerant. So if you think about technology—that is the opportunity for our farmers to make change to try to meet this horrendous target that I'm really concerned about. But that is silent from the Government coalition benches because they know that the Greens won't have a bar of it at all.I want to acknowledge the contribution that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment made through the select committee process. He came in several times and presented to the committee. Simon Upton is doing a good job as the Commissioner for the Environment. In fact his staff stayed with the committee right through this process—and I want to acknowledge them. The important thing that resonated with me was when the PCE came in and said "If forestry offsetting is not curbed we could be in a situation"—this is New Zealand—"that 1.3 million to 1.7 million hectares of land is in forestry."That's by 2050 and then if you multiply that out to 2075 that's 3 million hectares. To give you a sense of those numbers there's about 10 million hectares in New Zealand under productive land use. So potentially you'd wipe out a third of that—that's the size of the Otago region—in trees. That's why we're going to be debating over the next 36 hours the importance of curbing the offsetting of forestry. We have a real concern that if this aspect of this bill is not constrained it's going to hollow out rural communities and it's going to impact on our food and fibre production that we are world leading in. I bring it back to when the National Government signed up to this agreement in Paris. A big part of that agreement is a focus on not threatening food production so that is a very significant point.Finally I want to just wrap up by saying—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired. This is a split call. I call Kiritapu Allan—five minutes."