Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Speaker. Look others in this debate on this side of the House have already indicated what an appalling process this piece of legislation is. Here we are thrust into urgency 18 months into the COVID crisis by a Government that has completely lost control of its legislative programme is asleep at the wheel and has to come to the House to present under urgency an omnibus bill that will literally fix up dozens of small matters that need attention which a Government if they were on top of their portfolios if they were on top of their legislative programme and agenda would have had sorted giving full and proper process proper parliamentary scrutiny proper select committee scrutiny to this piece of legislation and the changes that are contained in it.And so my colleague Chris Bishop has very adroitly and articulately presented the case for why we oppose this urgency. And what he said was absolutely right: this is a Government that just is so far off beam in terms of their process and their agenda that they have to bring this piece of legislation to the Parliament put it under urgency so that during the next fortnight recess the select committee can hear and see and receive submissions. That process is simply appalling.And to hear a Green member—the Green Party members used to stand in this Parliament on principle. They used to. They used to oppose that sort of thing. They used to actually have some principles. Now they're entirely flexible and it turns out that they have turned into a party that is literally just a party of private property denial. One of the things that is done in this piece of legislation is that it's actually going to slow down a whole lot of climate change stuff. Now the Green Party member didn't mention that once. Oh we have declared a climate emergency—I would have thought that the Green Party would have been encouraging the Government to speed up its process. They have to rely on Greta Thunberg to actually point out how slow the New Zealand Parliament has been in terms of this Government's agenda.Hon Simon Bridges: What did she say about Ardern?Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Oh—asleep at the wheel? Oh I remember what she said. It was Blah blah blah." "Blah blah blah" is what she said about politicians like our Prime Minister who talk a big game on climate change and then under urgency pass legislation that will slow it down.And that is quite remarkable because some of us in this Chamber remember a time when the climate emergency was being passed through and all that sanctimonious high-handed grand gesturing stuff was being done when the Prime Minister said and I quote: "This is a declaration that will need to be supported by ongoing continual action and activity." That's what the Prime Minister said when the climate emergency was declared. And what do we have now? We have this Labour Government coming to the House and introducing under urgency legislation that will slow down climate action—will actually slow it down.But not to be outdone then the Minister of Climate Change James Shaw the Green guy—the one that's heading off on the big jet plane shortly to Scotland with a crew of 14 people—said at the time when the climate emergency was introduced back in December 2020 "We have been reluctant to declare a climate emergency. It would just be empty words." he said. "It has to have substance." is what he said.Well anyone who will read this piece of legislation will know that what's being asked here is that the emissions reduction plan that was set out in the legislation to create the zero carbon Act actually put in place some timetables and it relied on the Government to actually meet those timetables. And what's the first action of this Government in terms of their climate activity in action? Oh let's slow it down. Let's delay the reporting times. Let's link them into the Budget cycle. Now there's no logical reason at all why they need to be linked into the Budget cycle. In fact if they thought at the time that it needed to be linked into the Budget cycle they should have put it in the legislation—should have put it in the Act.What is being asked now is an opportunity to simply slow down the process. Greta Thunberg is watching from the other side of the world and she has highlighted that in fact when it comes to New Zealand's approach to climate action this Government has been very tardy indeed. And in fact we find out today that statistics released by Statistics New Zealand say that actually our climate emissions are increasing—a 2.1 percent increase in the last recorded year.So shame on this Government for talking a big game and then slowing the process down. This is an appalling process and one that we don't support."