Graham Kennedy: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11387. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Reflecting on the comments made in the second reading as opposed to the first reading and starting with the remarks by the Minister for Climate Change Issues commencing the second reading let me take the opportunity to pay tribute to the Minister. I think that her tenure in office is offering a whole new positive approach to climate policy in New Zealand and I think that we can all be hopeful that we can build more of a national consensus the kind with scope for respectful disagreement that exists in Europe. I am very hopeful that we can develop that as the months go by.The Minister from my recall in commencing the second reading made two fundamental points. I want to just comment and critique them. The first was—and it is there in the explanatory note—that the reason for the switch to the one-for-two measure back in 2009 was essentially in response to the global financial crisis (GFC) and a protective maternal concern for business in New Zealand which we all share; then again it was essentially extenuated in 2011 because things had not quite recovered sufficiently. In response I suggest that that was a missed opportunity on the part of the Government to seize the moment for a real conscious and cohesive national effort at a transformational pathway to a low-carbon economy. That was missed because the protective action of calibrating that surrender obligation in a way that the business people made it clear they felt comfortable with by definition meant that they were not going to change. You might have wished to have modified it a little bit but you did need to keep it in store such that the business community would move along the transition that Grant Robertson and James Shaw and others have mentioned.I do not hear the words much: “transformational pathway”; I do not hear the words “just transition” coming from National colleagues. I invite them seriously to start using those words so that we can start sharing in the framing of a future national climate policy. I would love to see a cross-party dialogue informally in advance of the implementation no doubt of the treaty examination of the Paris agreement that allows for both a just and effective transition in the next few years.Her second point was as she put it about identity. It was about identity of New Zealand and the way in which as individuals we Ministers and MPs and citizens identify with the land. Of course we all share that—no question about that. But I would toss it back and say that in caring about our land we are going to just have to recognise the magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis. If we go back to 1992 it was regarded as a major problem coming down the track but not a crisis. Well that was a quarter of a century ago when the framework convention established that. The principal Act of 2002 is already 14 years old. The Paris agreement reflects a qualitative change in the nature of the crisis. It is now upon us; it is a global crisis. New Zealand is not immune from it.We have to identify—and I will be putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper that tries to link the traditional framework convention obligations that inspires in the explanatory note the removal of the one-for-two and links it to the 2002 principal Act and links the 1992 framework convention to Paris and basically modernises it. Let us do that on a cross-party basis as well.To reiterate my final point is that I still am not sure that our colleagues across the aisle here recognise the magnitude of the problem. The current pledges guarantee 2.7 to 3 degrees. That is teetering between dangerous and catastrophic climate change. If the best we can do tonight is take these pragmatic principled baby steps to catastrophic climate change then we can flag it away. But I do not think that is in the intent of the Minister or her Government or her colleagues and so I put out the challenge to our National colleagues to work with Opposition members—Labour Green and New Zealand First—on a cross-party basis to develop a consensus in the future.