Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Right so just for the sake of clarity it's an increase of 3c to 9c right? My point was to illustrate the fact that during an economic downturn when you have reduced demand prices fall—statement of the blindingly obvious. But the point is that in introducing change now—which is the central argument that the National Party has been making about this legislation—because prices have fallen so much the cost actually is a lot lower. If COVID-19 hadn't continued—Hon Member: The hurt is lower.Hon JAMES SHAW: Well what I'm saying is that actually the prices that households are paying for their petrol—same amount of petrol if you're driving around—are considerably lower today than they were three months ago. And that actually if COVID-19 hadn't shown up and you know the economy was humming along and we're at capacity constraints and all of that kind of stuff then prices would be higher because of the pressure in the economy and therefore that marginal additional difference would be felt a great deal more at that moment. So I guess what I'm saying is: I dispute the central notion that now is the wrong time because actually prices are so much lower right now than they would normally be that you don't notice it. This is the point about a market mechanism of course is that it changes depending on the conditions in the market. Carbon prices themselves are lower now because there is less demand for units because for example Air New Zealand is flying less than they have and so their requirements for units have really shrunk. Therefore prices have come down. And that's a fundamental difference between an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax for example. A carbon tax is simply a staged increase over any number of years—just wanted to say something about that.Second thing he's asking for ministerial oversight. One of the key things that we were trying to do with the zero carbon bill was to depoliticise the debate. I'm concerned about the idea of reintroducing too much political debate and also frankly the ability of organisations and sectors that have got strong lobby groups being able to influence political decisions at their own advantage but actually at the disadvantage of other sectors in the economy. I have to say we've seen a bit of that recently where you know people acting in their own self-interests which is entirely understandable propose a change to the legislation that would have perhaps a catastrophic effect for another sector or actually for household prices. So the reason for ensuring that Government acts only on the advice of the commission is a way of guarding against those two things. However of course Parliament is supreme and as we've seen over the course of the last few weeks in an emergency it is possible and entirely understandable for emergency legislation to be introduced if there is a need to do so and we've got a number of cases of that just recentlyFinally the member asked about the refinery and the refinery is actually a unique case because they were not—in fact at the moment are not—participants in the emissions trading scheme. They entered into a negotiated greenhouse gas agreement in the 1990s with the Government which was essentially a special arrangement where they made commitments to achieve certain targets and in return they wouldn't come into the emissions trading scheme until a certain point. The member is absolutely correct; they entered into that agreement with certain undertakings. The issue recently of course is that since those undertakings were made technology and other things have changed. So there was a concern that they were going to be brought in on a different basis from firms that were already in the emissions trading scheme that were receiving industrial allocations. Now there are a number of concerns about industrial allocation obviously but we made the call to say look we should honour the agreement that was entered into regardless of you know history since. And also we should treat them on the same basis that we are treating all of the other emissions-intensive trade-exposed firms that receive an industrial allocation. And that was the certainty that they were looking for and we gave them that. Now there will be a review of industrial allocation but it isn't just going to apply to one company or one sector; it will apply to all equally. So everyone will be treated fairly as we progress through that.That is quite a slow process which brings me to the member's next point which is that revenue and profit are not the same thing. The reason I was using revenue is because I can see revenue. But the nature of profit is not always so easy to discern particularly when it comes to international companies where due to the nature of tax arrangements and so on it is possible for firms to have quite high revenues but quite low profits in one territory if they think that that forms an advantage. So we've been using revenue recognising that it's not a perfect measure but because you know we can't look through firms into all of the finer details of their accounts it's not really possible for us to use profit as a basis of comparison. The other thing of course is that you can compare revenue between different companies but you can't easily compare profits between different companies for the same reason. So revenue is not a perfect measure I acknowledge that but it's a more functional measure than using profit in this regard.