Hague Kevin: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8047. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Members of this House come to this Chamber today with both a privilege and an awesome responsibility. We do so because the issue of climate change which is before us today is the most important issue that will be dealt with by this Parliament or indeed by any New Zealand Parliament. That imposes a particular standard on us a standard of responsibility that requires us to examine our consciences and to do the right thing. I fear that the reality is that we are about to do absolutely the wrong thing. I ask the members of the Government parties—National United Future and the Maori Party—to examine their consciences and regardless of the instructions that they come to this Chamber with to consider again— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I apologise to the member for interrupting an important contribution. I have twice before raised the issue of Mr Quinn rudely chipping across the Chamber from a seat that is not his own. You have chosen to infer that he did not move for the purposes of chipping and you have asked him to restrain himself. There is nothing particularly substantive in his interjecting—it is just noise—but it is very discourteous to the member speaking who is trying to give a considered contribution to this House and it is inciting disorder amongst my colleagues and that is not helping the public of New Zealand to understand the arguments. I ask— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I would note that Rahui Katene gave a speech only 15 minutes ago and all the way through that speech there were rude and aggressive comments from members like Mr Cunliffe. Although I am very keen to hear what Mr Kevin Hague from the Green Party wants to say I think there has to be some consistency. If members ask for courtesy it should be applied to members on both sides of the debate and not just to his side. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: I appreciate the Minister’s point that there has been vigorous debate in the Chamber and that is to be expected on a bill of this nature. But there is a specific case here of a member who is not in his own seat and the Chair has previously warned him and it has had no impact on his behaviour which is now disorderly to this House. 
Paul Quinn 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: No I do not need the member’s assistance. I think we have at times throughout this process had quite vigorous interjections from members who have not been in their seats. The Speakers’ ruling is quite specific about moving to gain an advantage. When the Chamber has fewer people in it people tend to congregate down the front and there is a degree of tolerance of that but I think generally speaking all members of the House should be advised that it is expected that interjections be rare reasonable and if possible humorous. I ask members to have some consideration for other participants in the debate. 
KEVIN HAGUE 
: Thank you to the member for raising that point. I was commenting on the gravity of the issue before us. I have spoken previously in the debates on other parts of the Climate Change Response (Moderating Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill about the inadequacies of this bill. The gravity of the climate change situation facing the Earth requires all Governments all Parliaments and all countries to do everything that is in their power to mitigate the disaster that looms. This is a bill that does not contribute to that purpose but rather weakens the law that already exists. Compared with the law that already exists this bill will result in increased emissions. 
We are debating the title of the bill and the words “Moderating Emissions” seem to me to be completely inappropriate for a bill of this sort. The Green Party will be introducing an amendment in the name of Dr Russel Norman to change the title of the bill to the “Climate Change Response (Polluters Get Paid) Amendment Bill”. He has another amendment to change it to “Climate Change Response (Payday for Polluters) Amendment Bill”. Both of those names would be more suitable names for this bill. 
Earlier today a brief flame of hope flared when the news hit this House that the national council of the Maori Party was intending to meet today to reconsider its position. It seemed that for that brief window the Maori Party was prepared to listen to the evidence and the arguments and to reconsider. I have to say that it was with great regret that I read the comments of Te Orohi Paul dismissing that rumour as nothing more than rumour and saying that the Maori Party was a party of integrity and a party that considered that its word was its bond. 
In my intervention last evening about Part 1 I referred to a number of comments that the co-leader of the Maori Party Tariana Turia had made in her speech in March last year in relation to emissions trading. All of those comments are totally at odds with the position that the Maori Party is now taking on this bill. I ran out of time before I was able to come to the last comment that I wished to use. It was a comment from Tariana Turia in relation to the Greens’ position on that bill. What she had to say was this: “A billion dollars was the price of the Green Party support for a scheme that achieves almost nothing. We predict that that $1 billion will seem like 30 pieces of silver once the full impacts of climate change start to be felt.” If Te Orohi Paul is correct and the Maori Party is a party of integrity then I call on the Maori Party members to reconsider examine their consciences and actually consider what it is that their party stands for because what they stand for in this debate is at odds with everything they have stood for on the issue of climate change until this debate and it is at odds with everything they have come to this House with and represented their members and their voters on prior to this debate. 
I will quote from OraTaiao one of the submitters on this bill. It is an organisation of senior health figures—doctors nurses and other health professionals—and mirrors in fact the global interest and urgency that the health professions are bringing to the issue of climate change. One of the things that it had to say to the select committee was this: “We submit that if passed the bill would render the current emissions trading scheme completely ineffective resigning it to irrelevancy. An ineffective ETS means falling between two stools for health failing to mitigate the threats to health from climate change while introducing a regressive policy with a high economic burden on those who can least afford it. Such a policy also passes on significant costs to future generations.” What OraTaiao was saying is what health professionals around the world have been saying: that the health consequences of not dealing with climate change effectively are extreme—and this is a bill that proposes to increase emissions. OraTaiao enumerated many of those consequences in its submission. In particular I want to point out that those consequences are most severe for Maori. 
We have heard a lot in the debate from the Government about the need to balance the economy and the environment. It is very clear that it is possible to do both—and the Green Party has given many examples of how—and to actually have a meaningful emissions trading scheme and also a productive economy. It is with great regret that I have to say that National and the Maori Party have chosen instead to favour an economy that is based on the short-term thinking of current business. 
I will conclude by quoting from an editorial by Professor Hugh Montgomery in the  
New Zealand Medical Journal 
 from 9 October. He says this: “There is a real danger that politicians [at Copenhagen] will be indecisive especially in such turbulent economic times at these. Should their response be weak the results for international health could be catastrophic. We must all act now to ensure that there  
is 
 a deal and that it is meaningful rather than fanciful. At present voiced aspirations for large targets for 2050 or small ones for 2020 are nothing more than dangerous hot air. A weak deal will represent not an historic international agreement but a suicide pact. Now is the time for us all to act. If not us who? If not now when?”. That applies equally in this House today as it does in Copenhagen next week.