Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Responding to the climate crisis means giving New Zealanders options about moving around the country in lower-carbon ways and that's something that for decades has not happened. I was just conversing with my colleague over here Simon Court who was a civil engineer before coming into Parliament—unfortunately the decisions made by engineers and transport planners in the second half of the 20th century led to a situation where people only had the choice to rely on private cars. That means we have to buy many more cars and that has a cost to New Zealanders of not having the money to do other things and it excludes those who can't drive for whatever reason from getting around. So anyway the point is that there's a huge opportunity here that right across the House we could all agree on which is providing people with more choices—low-carbon choices like frequent public transport like safe walking and cycling and using e-bikes and e-scooters and those things being all joined up. Of course there will still be a need for cars for some journeys and that's where the Clean Car Standard and discount come in. Now New Zealanders have been disadvantaged for quite a while by not having fuel economy standards like almost every single OECD country. Indeed they were intended to come in in 2008 2009 but the then National Government's Steven Joyce cancelled those fuel economy standards. As a consequence New Zealanders have been paying more money on fuel than they needed to travel a given distance because we don't have a competitive market. In the absence of fuel economy standards the car companies and car manufacturers were sending us their least-efficient cars because they make more profit off those because other jurisdictions had fuel economy standards and price incentives and therefore New Zealanders were missing out on the choice of fuel-economic options when it comes to cars.So the Clean Car Standard and discount together were our just ideal policies to change the type of vehicles that are provided to New Zealanders in a way that makes it easier for them to get more fuel-efficient cars. Even the most fuel-efficient utes because there were double-cab utes or single-cab utes that didn't—work vehicles that wouldn't have attracted a fee but they weren't being supplied to our market because we had no incentives and we had no standards. So how these policies work together is that you set a standard and you say that vehicle importers need to meet an average standard over time and that means they look to bring in the more fuel-efficient models to meet the demand for those particular cars. They of course are still bringing in some that are above the average which is the target but they offset that with more low-emissions vehicles.For second-hand vehicles it's not such an issue because Japan which is the main market we import second-hand vehicles from—95 percent at least—has had very stringent and ambitious fuel economy standards. And so in the absence of an age limit on the second-hand vehicles we're importing it is possible that we could be importing 20- or 30-year-old vehicles from Japan that were slightly polluting. But the truth is if you look at the second-hand market the average fuel economy was much better than even the standard so it's not a huge negative impact at all on the second-hand vehicle market. What was not coming down in terms of fuel economy were the brand new vehicles. That's because of the proliferation of inefficient gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles double-cab utes and Range Rovers. And look to be honest the vast majority of those are being driven in the very suburbs that Simeon Brown was castigating earlier in his speech. I mean they're in the wealthiest suburbs. Why? Because the wealthiest people are the people who buy brand new vehicles—Simon Court: Tow boats they tow boats.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —and they tow boats and they tow their jet skis—they need the double-cab utes for the jet skis.So far from being for work purposes the reality is that these are lifestyle vehicles that are expensive. And that is why the Clean Car Discount is a fair policy because it says we—so we're going to import more fuel-efficient vehicles but it was the industry itself which asked for the Clean Car Discount and so I find it so interesting that the National Party members are saying Listen to the industry—listen to the industry." The industry wanted the Clean Car Discount because they knew it would help them sell vehicles to achieve the fuel economy standards that were being brought in and the Clean Car Standard. And so clearly the National Party hasn't been talking to the industry because they have no clue that they want the Clean Car Discount.The Clean Car Discount has been phenomenally successful. Because of these two policies working together we have massively increased the fuel efficiency of the vehicles coming into New Zealand. That's what we knew that every country in the world that had increased fuel efficiency or reduced emissions from their fleet had done it through policies like this; a price incentive and a standard working together to just shift the balance of the vehicles that were coming into the market and indeed give people more choice.That is the key thing. If you don't have these policies you're actually reducing the option for New Zealanders to even be able to buy those fuel-efficient vehicles. I have some friends who are looking at a brand new electric vehicle (EV) and before the Clean Car Discount was announced the importer—Hyundai I believe—said "Oh there's no way you're going to get this." you know "It's a wait-list of at least six months." And the day after the Clean Car Discount was announced they rang them up and said "We're going to be getting a bunch of these in." So the reality is: these policies aren't just about influencing the choices of New Zealanders; they're influencing the vehicles they can choose from. So it helps improve the market for fuel-efficient vehicles. So as I said New Zealanders have been disadvantaged by a lack of fuel economy standards—this is down to decisions by the National Government in 2009. The cars sold here use more petrol and diesel to drive the same distance as cars sold in the UK or Japan. It means we have higher emissions. We spend more money importing oil which is bad for our economy really. The Clean Car Standard and discount have started to change this but we should be accelerating change because the reality is that Aotearoa New Zealand is way behind in this space and we're not really doing anything ambitious at all to reduce emissions from agriculture. Certainly the National Party wouldn't change that; they would slow it down even more. So we have to do it in transport. I'm sorry to say that despite some marginal increases in investment in rail to keep it from completely falling over there's been no substantial investment that would create a step change in people's ability to use public transport or rail to get around the country. And that's because sadly the Labour majority Government is still spending the vast majority of money on a few urban motorways just like that the last National Government would have done—it's slightly worse to be honest. Of course that's going to make traffic worse; it's not going to make it possible for people to get around not using a car. So the one thing we could be doing is bringing in the Clean Car Standard on time. So the Green Party won't be supporting this bill because it delays the implementation of the Clean Car Standard. I just want to note that of course everywhere the efficiency standards have been brought in—whether it's for buildings or for vehicles—the industry always pushes back. That's just what they do. They'll see how far they can go to avoid complying. And ultimately most other Governments bring it in and things don't fall over; it works perfectly fine because when there's a will there's a way. But if they can push back and delay they will. And if every industry keeps pushing back against climate action—like the farming sector like the vehicle sector—then we are not going to make the changes that we need to make. What's the consequence of that? Well we're going to have a destabilised climate that is going to be bad for everyone. It's not like a choice that we have either the environment or the economy—you know if we have an unstable climate if we have worsening conditions for growing food if we have droughts or floods all of that it's going to come back to human wellbeing and it's going to be a negative impact. So that makes it harder to trade; it makes it harder for us to live good lives. The whole point of the economy is simply a system of trade and that's part of what we rely on to make sure that people have what they need. But right now it's not working for everyone. The economy is not working for many people. It's just being abused by those who already have a lot of power and wealth to get even more power and wealth. To what end? It's unclear because money in the bank account isn't going to mean anything if we don't have food clean water and a stable climate in which we can raise our children and live good lives.Simon Court: But with enough money you can build a decent bunker!Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Oh all right yeah. So there's the plan for the really rich people: they're going to build bunkers. But that's really not going to help them if they don't have access to food and water. So the Green Party won't be supporting this bill. The Clean Car Standard and discount are excellent evidence-based policies that are already making a difference. And quite to the contrary of what the National Party says it is the wealthiest New Zealanders who buy Range Rovers who are paying the fees that lead to the rebates on the moderately priced EVs."