Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Just as I begin my remarks on this third stage of the bill may I thank the members of my select committee the Environment Committee who worked very hard to hear from all the submitters who wanted to be heard. I appreciate the effort they made to do that.I want to start by quoting something that my colleague Clare Curran said in the House the other day. She said If not now when? If not us who?" I submit it does need to be us. Over on the other side of the House we have heard that the other side supports moving to a low-carbon economy. But if not this what? It doesn't seem that there is any plan other than being what is called a "fast follower". But it turns out if you listen to what speakers on the other side of the House or what the one speaker so far Jonathan Young has said they've said that they would reverse this policy—they would reverse this policy. So where is the commitment to at least making a start towards a low-carbon economy? I submit that there are fine words on the other side of the House but no action. This bill the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill represents a start—a start that is being made by this transformational Government to get under way with the work of mitigating climate change.I wish to continue with some of the things that have been said already. If I may start with something that Mr Young referred to in the Minister of Energy and Resources' speech the other day about not wanting an economic shock—Mr Young has submitted I guess that this represents an economic shock to New Zealand. That is an odd claim I submit. It's a very odd claim. We remember the 1980s and 1990s and the economic shock that was administered to New Zealand at that stage and remembering that economic shock on this side of the House we have opted for a slow start. We want to get there. But the slow start—we're not shutting down oil exploration; we are not shutting down the industry. All that we are saying is that we will not open up further areas of exploration. The existing areas remain. The existing 100000 kilometres of offshore exploration areas remain. All that is happening is that oil companies or fossil fuel companies may not ask for new areas to be opened up for exploration. This is in fact a very slow start.I guess one of the things that came through in many of the submissions to this bill was that many people want it to be much much faster. What they wanted was for all existing permits to be shut down straight away. We have chosen not to do that because we know that the industry needs time to plan and that's what we have given them—plenty of time to plan plenty of time to explore that 100000 kilometres of offshore area that is still available. So we are taking it slowly.Mr Young talked of the impact on Taranaki and the worry about jobs there. But there's some interesting news out of Taranaki just today. The unemployment rate in Taranaki just today is 4 percent only 0.1 percent above the national average. That's a significant drop since this announcement was made from 5.3 percent down to 4 percent—since the announcement to stop oil and gas exploration was made. There was a peak unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in Taranaki but it is now down to 4 percent even with this announcement.In the quarter ending September 2018—the quarter since this announcement was made—the workforce has grown with 2300 jobs added in Taranaki despite this announcement. And the underutilisation rate in Taranaki has dropped from 14.4 percent down to 12 percent since this announcement was made. We've heard a lot of scaremongering from the other side of the House saying that Taranaki would never survive that it was a terrible shock and that the region was reeling. The figures—the figures—on employment out today show that that is simply not the case. It is simply not the case.Mr Young talked of investors having lost confidence in New Zealand. That's simply not the case either. There are investors queuing up to get involved in the KiwiBuild projects investors queuing up to get involved in the infrastructure projects and even as TAG Energy is leaving it is being replaced by Tamarind who seem to have no fear about coming into New Zealand.So I suggest that in fact there has been no shock to business confidence. There was talk of a loss of revenue to the Crown and wild figures have been bandied about in various statements. In fact it has been said that our officials said there might be a loss of up to $7 billion. I submit that those figures have in fact perhaps been miscalculated. I offer you the submission from Sam Warburton a Socratic gadfly if ever I met one but he is someone whose numbers are relied on and he says "Actually if you do the calculations correctly we're talking something more like about oh—maybe about $1.8 billion." He says that's because the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment have used a super-low risk-free rate and perhaps if you'd used a higher and more reliable discount rate then the figures would have been better.Let me offer you Mr Warburton's submission. In paragraph 39 he says: "According to the RIS the oil industry does the exploration then all the labour and capital involved in drilling"—so the oil industry is doing all the work—"[and then] takes home only 20% of the benefit with the Crown 80%." You'd think the oil industry would be up in arms if that was really the case but actually they seem to still want to be here. Mr Warburton's analysis is compelling and interesting.May I also submit that what was compelling was the weight of submissions: over 7000 submissions of which 86 percent supported ceasing new offshore exploration—86 percent in favour of the bill. And even if we take out the form submissions the submissions that were facilitated by Forest & Bird and by Greenpeace we are left with 2:1 support in favour of this bill. That is the weight of the submissions and that was from people all over the country including people from Taranaki. What we had from the oil and gas industry was that it was pleased to allow fossil fuel exploitation to continue pleased to allow more carbon-heavy fuels to be burnt and pleased to allow global warming to continue because it suits the bottom line.I wish to refer to submissions that I have already referred to once but I want to go back to them. From Richard Middleton is a submission that I picked out because it quotes Adam Smith—one of my favourites. He says quoting from Adam Smith from book one of The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 that any proposal from business "ought always to be listened to with great precaution and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined not only with the most scrupulous but with the most suspicious attention." He goes on in this submission which I have not quoted previously to say "The task before the governments of the world is not to facilitate economic growth which we now know depends on cheap and abundant energy supplies but to prevent the worst problems of it and to establish an economy in which more modest lifestyles ensure our children have a future." That is what Richard Middleton advised us.Abbie Jury advised us to walk away from the oil and gas industry which pollutes her own home in Taranaki and Sam Netherclift a young person who submitted to the bill—one of the many thousands of people—said something very simple indeed. He said "I am 18 and I think it is very unfair that my generation is inheriting a world affected by climate change because of older generations." It is time for us to start. It is time for us to take action. This is a first step and I commend this bill to the House."