SpeechMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise and confirm NZ First's support for this Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill. It is with a sense of bemusement that I listened to the previous speaker Jacqui Dean because let's go back to why we're here: we're trying to address issues around climate change. We are trying to meet targets set for us and agreed by us under the Paris Agreement. Those were signed by the New Zealand National Party when they were leading the last Government in 2015. Paula Bennett swanned off over there swanned off on to the international stage and they've come back here—that's 2015 and here we are in 2020—and they're still talking about kicking the can down the road. None of this stuff is easy and I will absolutely agree with all the previous speakers. This is far-reaching and wide ranging legislation which the House and the select committee has had to look very very carefully at. I understand this particular iteration of the bill is six years in the making. This is highly complex stuff but we do not have the luxury of just forever pushing it out to another day. We do have to take some action.In terms of farmers of which I am one we are the most impacted by climate change. You don't have to look far: for this year we've had three-quarters of the country in drought; there have been floods everywhere. And whilst those things are not unprecedented they are certainly becoming more frequent. All the statistics tell us this. We are reliant on international action and to get international action we have to do our bit. So in terms of fulfilling our obligations and what this bill looks to do it just updates the current setting set in 2009. It does put some price levers in there. That is absolutely imperative. It is about giving businesses certainty giving them a pathway to reduce their emissions so that we can meet our overall targets and our 2030 targets. These are the levers contained within this bill. We have got a floor in there at $20—and remember the price collapsed under the last Government down to about $3. That sends no signal at all. We had the forestry sector—essentially planting collapse. We had deforestation under those circumstances. So we are putting a floor in there to give some certainty for people like myself actually that are looking at the moment at planting some of our less productive areas in trees which is an absolutely appropriate thing to do. It does give me some diversification of income and it's a better land use for those rough faces and the like. It also extends a fixed priced option for $35 out to 2021 just to give some certainty. But then the cost containment reserve kicks in. And whilst it's not in the bill the regulations that the Government—the Minister—has set out show that there will be a $50 maximum and that is a big price in terms of where it has sat traditionally but that is the sort of certainty we need to give businesses: that that is the direction it's heading. Within that New Zealand First has sought some assurances from the Minister within this process that the mechanisms are there should that price get too high and should the levers suggest that we'll have widespread afforestation over and above what is good for our rural communities and for the reasons that Jacqui Dean rightfully raised. And the Minister has given us an assurance—and we've gone through this in some detail—that those measures sit within the zero carbon bill: the Climate Change Commission and the Minister must take into account the social and economic impacts of any measures brought forward in terms of setting future targets. So those mechanisms already exist and will be used should things go in a direction that is not in the best interests of our country and our rural communities.There's more transparency in this which I've already discussed. Actually in the farming—the members opposite must have missed the press conference where Katie Milne the president of Federated Farmers; Andrew Morrison the chairman of Beef + Lamb New Zealand; and Jim van der Poel the chairman of DairyNZ were with the Prime Minister and Minister Shaw and others with the He Waka Eke Noa initiative which actually gives farming a pause. It actually puts them in the driving seat to design their own systems so that they are fairly captured. I think it's imperative that we have the accounting system properly sorted out so things like riparian plantings or potentially soil sequestration are taken into account when we're accounting for what the liabilities are—or indeed the credits that some farmers may in fact benefit from from this legislation. So the farmers are very much in the driving seat as to how that scheme is going to be worked through. Within that there's a 95 percent offset. There will be only 5 percent liability in terms of the initial impact on farmers. There'll be 95 percent free allocation which is something that New Zealand First advocated for and got and won in the coalition negotiations with Labour.So as I say it is a wide-reaching policy wide-reaching ramifications. We don't want to see carbon leakage unnecessarily but we do have to transition our economy. We have to get freight on to rail and that's one of the reasons that we advocate so strongly within New Zealand First for rail. We have to actually do something. We don't want to be just kicking the can down the road for another 12 months to wait for another committee report. We actually have to get some measures in place. So without too much further ado I will commend this bill to the House. It is a wide-ranging bill. We will have to work with our sheep and beef sector. We will have to work with our forestry sector. We will have to work with our industrial and transport sector and we will have to work with our carbon sink permanent forestry people as well in getting some native bush into some of those erosion-prone areas that may not be suited to forestry or particularly sheep and beef farming.So this is a really important bill. I commend the Minister for his tenaciousness in this and this Government particularly for being brave and actually facing up to our international responsibilities—actually taking some responsibility for ourselves not just setting off trying to buy our way out of this by buying carbon offsets from offshore of which many were found to be fraudulent which is an absolute bonfire of taxpayer money. This from a Government that's accusing us of not having a plan or not being fiscally responsible—just to set that money alight essentially by buying fraudulent Ukrainian carbon credits. I could go on but on that matter I will commend this bill to the House. Thank you.