Graham Kennedy: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: 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:11398. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): I just want to pick up perhaps where Julie Anne Genter has left off and just draw the attention of the Committee to the regulatory impact statement in a little bit further detail. We have not had much time as has been pointed out to explore it. But the Minister for Climate Change Issues has said—and probably only she could say it with the grace that she did—that the Government is no doubt about to take a few hits here and there along the way to restoring the one-for-one. That is all good fun in the Chamber here but I do not think she needs to look to Opposition members necessarily for those hits. She has got it right there in the regulatory impact statement I suggest.The Ministry for the Environment has not spared the Government much in its own analysis of things. The ministry’s regulatory impact statement does recall in paragraph 10 what we all ourselves recall which is that the transitional phase and the changes to the original emissions trading scheme back in 2009 did a number of things. It introduced the one-for-two it deferred agriculture—the primary ones—and it continued free allocation. Those were probably the three and then the fourth which was not changed but should have been was that it allowed the continuation of these semi-fraudulent credits which lack environmental integrity to come in allowing this country’s policies to become one-quarter corrupt.I think that is arguably in terms of our own integrity the single biggest mistake in our policy over the last 7 or 8 years. That has got us into the strife that we are in but if we then turn to page 43 and look at the heading that the ministry has identified here “NZ ETS design and operation is inefficient in light of changed circumstances” that to me is the single most significant point made in the regulatory impact statement.What it is saying is that whatever the merits of those transitional phase changes we did to the original Labour emissions trading scheme back in 2009—whatever they were whatever the merits—they are obsolete now in light of the changed circumstances and especially with what is encapsulated in the Paris Agreement. And if you look at paragraph 7 the ministry is essentially scolding the Government: “In the absence of clear aims for the carbon market established by the Government this means unit supply for the NZ ETS over the long term is unclear. This does not allow participants to form expectations about the future emissions price path and factor this into investment decisions.”In paragraph 8 it talks about “the NZ ETS being over-supplied by 150 million units over the period 2021-2030. On the demand side one-for-two undermines the principle that one unit should equal one tonne of emissions. Its presence is a barrier to aligning the NZ ETS level of ambition with the national target which is on a one for one basis.” We could probably get a common denominator across the parties here and just conclude that the benign interpretation is that things have changed so fundamentally that those 2009 transitions are now immediately rendered archaic and obsolete.I sense that the Government and especially the Minister is recognising some fundamental things have to happen. OK—restoring one-for-one tonight is a very good first step and we are going to vote for it but it is a baby step and there is a need—hence my amendment. But beyond my amendment I would just implore the Government through the Minister when the time comes for the Paris Agreement to come down the track and into this House to recognise that that is the ultimate and arguably the most critical opportunity for this House cross-party to get its act together as a country and to move forward.I am sure I speak for the Green Party when I say that we will be very much prepared to bring a constructive and positive approach to a cross-party dialogue pertaining to the Paris Agreement including the implementing legislation. Let us not shy away from that challenge. Let us do it altogether and let us take a constructive approach to it. Thank you very much.