McClay Todd; Clark DavidHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr Chair thank you very much. I want to thank the Minister for his intervention there which ran for almost 13 or 14 minutes. I do commend him for that because I remember during the second reading members opposite—members of the Government his backbenchers—standing up and saying how very important this is and the amazing things the important things it will do to address climate change and saying that they are a responsible Government and they take this seriously and they spoke for about a minute and 14 seconds each each time it was so important to them. I did have a constituent email and it said Well I suppose they're not adding to greenhouse gases through their long speeches." But I do want to thank the Minister for taking the time to actually set out the reason that he's brought the bill the importance of it.Can I start by saying how I feel for him. I remember when I was a Minister and things were passed to me when I got a new portfolio after an election and I would look it at and think well it doesn't actually achieve what the last person—the last Minister—said that it would; it feels like it's overhyped but you've just got to grin and bear it and get through it and keep reading from the paper and he's done that admirably. I think actually if the Minister had been here with his portfolio in the last term of Government he would have actually done a proper job of it and I think the previous Minister of course as support partners they needed before—they don't need the Green Party now but of course they're still nice to them in case they need them in the future. You've got to pay credit to the former Minister James Shaw but actually this Minister knows as we do that whilst it sends a signal to the world it doesn't achieve anything else and doesn't do anything more than that. It does run the risk of burdening business in areas that it shouldn't because every time there's a regulation there is a cost of that to business. In some cases I suppose for the very large insurance companies the banks it's not significant but it is getting them to do something they do already and for those companies that are listed on stock exchanges in New Zealand or around the world they already need to do these sorts of things.National is supporting this but we have three Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs); two are tabled to this part they're on the Table already and they are in my name. We think that actually there needs to be things done here to address this so that any unreasonable burden that's placed upon businesses and companies is met it's not there it's not unreasonable—we want to give them good time frames to get through this—and that Government entities and private sector entities are treated the same. The Minister mentioned earlier in his intervention that there's another way to deal with public sector entities. Well if it's good enough for the private sector it has to be good enough for the public sector and it's not enough to say well public sector companies are under a duty of care when Ministers write to them with their expectations every year and we could go further—actually of course the Government can go further but if you are going to have a requirement on a like-minded same business in the private sector why is the Government exempting itself? It's not reasonable it sends the wrong signal. That's an SOP that I've put down to include public sector entities in this and I will speak to that in Part 1A. Is that right? The Minister wants to respond to that—yeah go ahead.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I do thank the member for his contribution. Whilst I don't agree with some of the sentiments he expressed at the beginning I sincerely do believe this is a very important piece of legislation actually. This is about the fair transparent and efficient running of public markets and if we believe in the efficient allocation of capital and we believe that there's also a climate crisis we do want to see that capital used in a way that doesn't endanger markets because the information is not clear or transparent or comparable and creates risks in our market—volatility and so forth. Those who believe in the value of markets want to see an efficient market with good information and so consistency of information is important.So I do think this is incredibly important and equally as to the allocation of capital those who are concerned about climate risk and they are many will also want to see that they are supporting companies that don't have risks in the future on their balance sheet that are climate related and/or that are taking appropriate mitigation where they do have risks on their balance sheets that are climate-related. So I think this is incredibly important legislation. I pay again tribute to the Hon James Shaw for the work that he's done to develop this legislation working with the Government during the last term.What I also want to respond to the member on is in respect of his SOP to require public entities to make climate-related disclosures. Here he is suggesting a whole lot more red tape when there are other measures. There are 4000 entities that qualify as public entities in the Public Audit Act. He is wanting them to essentially go through two processes. For a Minister that claims that "We don't want red tape."—and I have heard him say that before—I'm just a bit bemused by that desire. There are 15 public climate-reporting entities that are captured under the bill: Kiwibank Air New Zealand some port companies some energy companies and so on. So these companies are captured and it's a matter of scale and it's a matter of public markets working efficiently. This is a bill that is focused on public markets. I expect investors in the future will demand more climate-related disclosure from private equity companies and concerns as well. But this bill is targeted clearly at those that are public reporting entities."