Mackey Moana: Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Mackey Moana: Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand up and take a call on the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. I want to start with the comments made by the Hon Dr Nick Smith. I will start off on a positive note and congratulate him on his impending nuptials then I will make the comment that it is a little bit galling to be lectured by a member from a party that is only recently a convert to climate change and has a leader who until very recently said that he thought climate change was a hoax. Although I have no doubt that the Hon Dr Nick Smith himself is very passionate about these issues and is a believer in them I suggest very respectfully that he might want to turn round and give that little lecture to a number of the members sitting behind him including one in particular who on the emissions trading scheme and during the submissions showed himself to be very much a sceptic of the phenomenon of climate change. I respectfully say to him that he might want to look within his own party while he is throwing stones at many others. 
I am very proud of the commitment that this Labour-led Government has made to climate change policy. It is not an easy area to advance as we have seen with many different pieces of legislation. Saying we support climate change policy is one thing; actually supporting it when it comes to the House is entirely another. 
If we just look at the emissions trading scheme which was raised by the previous member we can see his complaints are very reminiscent of a number of the captured interests who came along to our Finance and Expenditure Committee to say that they loved the idea of an emissions trading scheme and they thought it was the only way to go but that they would never support one when they actually saw it down in words. The Finance and Expenditure Committee which I am a member of worked very hard on that scheme and I believe it will make an enormous difference. It is already being looked at around the world in terms of what we are doing and I do not accept the response that we should always just copy everything Australia does and never think for ourselves particularly not when our emissions profile is significantly different from that of Australia. But coming back to this bill despite that little aside I do agree with a number of the points that the previous member raised about this bill. 
Although I appreciate where this bill is coming from—and again this is another bill where as chair of the select committee I came in quite late in the piece—one of my big concerns is the regional inconsistencies that can arise from leaving something as important as this to regional councils. Different regional councils will approach this area in different ways. It is not like it is with us here in Parliament; there is a big concern out there in the general community about climate change and a genuine desire for politicians to do something about it. A number of our regional councils believe this is something that central government should be doing. They are not saying that nothing should be done about climate change; they are just saying that they do not believe they are the appropriate people to do it. That is something that resonates on the election trail with many voters who believe that this is a national issue that should be approached from a consistent national viewpoint. 
I will raise another very important issue. The transport sector is of huge concern when it comes to climate change. Of course the Resource Management Act has no power to keep cars off the road and it has no power to promote coastal shipping rail or other forms of more carbon-friendly transport. Again when it comes to agriculture the Resource Management Act has no power to control the number of stock that are grazed on land so we see a very genuine imbalance between the different areas that are emitting carbon. Although I genuinely appreciate where this bill is coming from I do not believe that the final result would be desirable. 
I understand the frustration of the member in charge of the bill Jeanette Fitzsimons with how long this bill has been at the select committee. She is a former chair of the select committee that was considering the bill and I do not believe there was any malice in her taking this bill away from the select committee—that was entirely her right. This is a very important issue for us to discuss in the House and I believe that this debate will be very important in the greater climate change debate. Although I am very sorry that we could not do what she wanted at select committee and that we were not able to find a way through I completely appreciate that the number of extensions this bill had already had was significant and that she as the member in charge of this bill has used her right to bring this back to the House for debate. 
In saying that we have a number of bills dealing with climate change before many of our select committees. The Local Government and Environment Committee is currently considering the Biofuel Bill. As we have just said the Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back the emissions trading scheme bill and it is generally regarded that the emissions trading scheme would supersede a lot of this legislation. It really is a matter of timing. 
The emissions trading scheme bill could have gone to the Local Government and Environment Committee which perhaps would not have been appropriate because it is a small committee compared with the Finance and Expenditure Committee but I think there are genuine arguments for a bill like that to go to the Finance and Expenditure Committee where every party in this House is able to sit in and have its say on it. If this bill had gone to the Local Government and Environment Committee then perhaps it might have been considered alongside the emissions trading scheme and that might have given the member in charge of the bill the opportunity to have it heard. Fortunately that is not the way that it went. We were left with this bill at our committee and we had to decide what to do with it. 
The majority of the committee decided that the emissions trading scheme covers most of the areas that this bill covers. A moratorium on new thermal generation for baseload is a very significant step and something that obviously cuts across a lot of the issues raised in this bill. In saying that clearly the Resource Management Act considers climate change - related or environmental issues; that is obvious. But Labour members on the committee felt that the danger of regional inconsistencies in the way climate change is dealt with was very real. We did not want to see some regions being penalised for having a very strict interpretation of the law whereas other regions might decide that they would benefit from that and take those industries into their region because they do not interpret the law quite so strictly. We think that when we are looking at overall global or even national greenhouse gas emission reductions we need to have consistency across the country. There is no point in simply shuffling them between different regional authorities so that one authority gets emissions down but another authority lifts them by just as much. That does not do anything in terms of our Kyoto Protocol commitment and the monetary commitment we will have to meet if we do not reduce our emissions or indeed the global emissions in the environment. 
Again I say that I am disappointed that we could not do more with this bill at the select committee. I would have liked to hold it over for a bit longer at the committee so that it remained live—so that it remained in a position for us to do something with it if members felt that the emissions trading scheme did not quite cover off everything that this bill meant to or for it to be retired with dignity if the emissions trading scheme did indeed cover it all off. But I have entire respect for the decision that the member in charge of the bill has made in bringing it back to the House now. It is an important debate to have and it is one that we are happy to engage in. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.