Shaw James: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11399. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Just following on from what my colleague Dr Kennedy Graham was suggesting I would like to introduce two further amendments in my name. One of these is to amend the title of the bill so that the title clause would read: “This Act is the Climate Change Response (Removal of one Transitional Measure) Amendment Act 2016.” It has been noted on a number of occasions during the debate that there are in place a number of transitional measures that are not being removed as a result of this bill. What we are suggesting is that a more accurate title for the bill would be that this is the removal of one transitional measure rather than all of them or rather than several measures. If the Government is not comfortable with that I would be happy to have that changed to “Removal of a Transitional Measure”. The point is that it is a single measure rather than a plurality of measures and of course that it is a specific single measure which is to remove the one-for-two subsidy transitional measure under the emissions trading scheme.Related to that I have a further amendment which is to change clauses 4 5 and 8. What that would do—if we were to do it as read and I am happy to read it out—is instead of phasing in the removal of the two-for-one subsidy it would essentially bring it back to its original starting point which is that it would simply happen immediately. So the two-for-one deal would be removed immediately rather than get phased out over the course of 3 years. I know that there has been a number of very similar speeches tonight about how it is pragmatic and reasonable and responsible—and some other adjectives—to phase it in because of the woeful burden apparently that business will have to suffer as a result of removing the two-for-one deal. But of course what we know is that the removal of the two-for-one deal will carry a total cost to the economy of 0.1 percent of GDP. I think it was said that it is essentially 8 hours of productivity. In other words we can all take a day off for climate change.If we were to remove it immediately that would mean that those 8 hours of productivity—we would carry that cost immediately rather than a third of that each year which is I guess just under 2½ hours per year. It is a minor cost and the reason I am suggesting it is the urgency with which we need to act on climate change because we have done nothing about it for 2½ decades. It has been 24 years since the introduction of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We have been negotiating globally for more than half my entire life about what to do about climate change and we came up with the Paris Agreement last year as a result. Earlier today somebody asked why it was that we needed to introduce this bill under urgency and I wanted to say that it was urgent 24 years ago when the world created the framework convention. It was urgent 2 decades ago when National Government Minister for the Environment Simon Upton proposed to his Cabinet that there be a price on carbon and his Cabinet voted that proposal down. It was also urgent when Bill English in Opposition drove a tractor up the steps of Parliament to protest the introduction of a—Hon Members: Shane Ardern.JAMES SHAW: —sorry—Shane Ardern drove a tractor up the steps of Parliament to protest the introduction of a levy that would have paid for research into how to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. It was urgent last December when we signed up to the Paris Agreement and so it is urgent tonight.The Chinese have a saying which is: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago but the second-best time is today.” We did not take action over the past 2½ decades. New Zealand’s emissions and our contribution to climate change have grown inexorably over the course of those 2½ decades and so we would suggest strongly that this amendment to the bill because it is such a minor contribution to what we need to do should be introduced immediately rather than phased in over 3 years. Thank you.