Blumsky Mark: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Blumsky Mark: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:635;Page:6226] 
MARK BLUMSKY (National) 
: 
 While I have this opportunity I thought I would draw this document to the attention of my colleague on the Government side of the House the Hon Marian Hobbs. She raised this document in her speech and actually questioned whether transport was mentioned in it. Now that she has sat down if she studies the document I am sure she will get some inspiration when she reads pages 5 8 9 and 25. The document will give her great inspiration and guidance on transport and associated benefits. 
It is nice to have this chance to speak in support of Part 1 of the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill. What is interesting is that this bill came via the Commerce Committee so I am therefore unaware of the quality quantity and content of the submissions that came through the select committee process apart from having read the report back. However I am on the Local Government and Environment Committee and have heard and read hundreds of submissions on a number of bills and in particular on the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. Through the submissions made during that select committee process I became aware of a very loud clear message. It was not my message. It was a message from the hundreds of submissions we had on in particular the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. 
The message that came from the submitters in a totally unanimous message was that the Government has not done a lot in the past with regard to climate change. Those are not my words; they are the words of hundreds of submitters to the select committee. Submitters said the Government could not be proud of its lack of activity on climate change and asked when and where the Government was going to show some leadership on climate change. Again those are not my words; they are the words of submitters on the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. I am absolutely sure that if I had sat on the committee that considered the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill and had managed to trawl through the submissions on it I would have had exactly the same message given to me on that bill. 
In speaking to Part 1 I take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague Nick Smith on his recently released  
Bluegreen Vision for New Zealand 
. I tell members that his leadership and his proactive work in getting a comprehensive discussion document out for debate has in fact been the leadership that has forced the Government’s hand with the Prime Minister just recently starting to preach from her throne about the importance of climate change in her vision for New Zealand. She said in her speech at the Labour Party’s annual conference that the climate change crisis requires comprehensive strategies. I thought the word “crisis” was an interesting one for her to use so I thought I would take the chance to have a quiet look at the definition of the word “crisis”. The dictionary definition of that word states: “an unstable condition as in political social or economic affairs involving an impending abrupt or decisive change”. 
Well the abrupt change that the Prime Minister was obviously referring to when she talked about the unstable condition that creates a crisis must have been the shift in the polls. That would be the crisis. All the polling has the Government falling further and further down in the popularity stakes. Action was needed and a new topic had to be found to talk about so the Prime Minister chose the climate change debate as her new topic of the year. It cannot possibly be that climate change was the crisis even though she was talking about climate change because her Government has been in office for 7 years. If climate change had been the crisis then her Government would undoubtedly have addressed it a lot more aggressively with a much higher priority a lot earlier on than it is doing now. As my colleagues on the Opposition side of the Chamber have alluded to there is not a heck of a lot to show for the Labour Government’s 7 years in office.