Hoggard AndrewHon ANDREW HOGGARD (Associate Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a great joy to be here today giving benefit to this bill and ensuring that it passes. This bill the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme Agricultural Obligations) Amendment Bill this ag emissions trading scheme (ETS) backstop has been hanging like the sword of Damocles over the farming sector for the last six years. One of the best things or perhaps the only good thing that came out of the whole He Waka Eke Noa process was the Government report in October 2022 which laid out the costs of He Waka Eke Noa but it also laid out the costs of agriculture going into the ETS.Chlöe Swarbrick: How much does your group cost Andrew? We don't know.Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: Well let me give you some numbers on what this will cost rural New Zealand. No I'll give you the cost from the figures.Chlöe Swarbrick: No but give us the costs on your working group.Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: No no no calm it.SPEAKER: I'd ask two things: one is I don't need to know the numbers nor does an interjector in your speech.Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: OK. Milk production will be down by 8 percent under the ETS; lamb by 19 percent; beef 44 percent; wool 18 percent; venison 37 percent. We introduced the ag into the ETS. Those are the reductions you will see. Based off the latest situation for primary industries what does that equal? From the dairy industry $2.4 billion; from the lamb $600 million; beef $2.1 billion; wool $68 million; venison $81 million. All up that's around $5.3 billion gone from regional New Zealand.When you think about the economic multipliers—somewhere between 1.8 to 2.7—that's going to feel like $10 to $15 billion to regional New Zealand. We heard before Oh this will take New Zealand backwards." Implementing this will take New Zealand backwards. These are costs rural New Zealand regional New Zealand and New Zealand cannot afford.You know we've heard about "What about the market access?" Well no offence but we didn't get a hell of a lot of market access for dairy or beef in the EU trade deal. So I'm sorry but I don't see how that's relevant to this situation. And we're the best in the world. We have the lowest footprint. If they're going to say "Oh you can't export your food here because of your emissions." well our emissions are lower than theirs.We've heard about this whole thing around "Oh the Climate Change Commission says it's going to cost some people more." Well the problem there is because we have a very silly nationally determined contribution that was put in place by the previous Government. It didn't take into account split gas. So internationally we have a non - split gas approach. Nationally we have a split-gas approach. We're charging ourselves too much and that's why they came out with that report. But I think it's important we've just got to go back to the whole point: methane is a short-lived gas. No additional warming makes sense. That is what the basis of the Paris accord is—limit warming to an additional 1.5 to 2 degrees. We are aiming to ensure that New Zealand agriculture doesn't add anything to that. That is a sensible and smart goal to work for not reducing agriculture by $5 billion and making New Zealand poorer. These are sensible smart decisions that New Zealand needs to take into account. So I commend this bill to the House and well done."