Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's appropriate on this the first Tuesday of November with the running of the Melbourne Cup that this is the second leg of the double in terms of climate change that Parliament is considering today.This piece of legislation is complicated it's detailed; it runs to something like 200 pages of detailed policy analysis and work and it's going to take the Environment Committee quite a lot of time and effort I think to get their heads around the fine detail of the bill. So I'm pleased that the Minister has indicated that the bill needs to be reported back after a lengthy and appropriate length of time at select committee. I'm hoping that that will mean that the select committee will take plenty of time to hear submissions from interested and affected parties particularly industrial emitters and business people who I think will be wanting to come to terms with what exactly the precise meaning of this bill is in terms of their particular business or sector.What is interesting about this bill is that it is the result of a long detailed piece of work done by officials over a long number of years. The Minister's made mention of that and I too want to thank officials for the work that they've done. It was in fact work that was commenced by the last Government and many of the provisions in this bill are provisions that would have been put in place had the Government not changed. But there are a couple that cause us on the National Party Opposition concern and we'll be looking to tease those out during the select committee process. We'll be wanting to investigate and analyse the impacts and see whether they measure up against our broad principles about climate change policy and particularly the implementation of it.One of the primary concerns has been in relation to including agriculture into the emissions trading scheme (ETS). I'm delighted if for no other reason than it now seems that for the first time in this Government's administration they appear to be dealing with farmers rather than dealing to farmers; that's a small step in the right direction. By pushing out the introduction of agriculture into the ETS to 2025 I think that's an acknowledgment by this Government of the practical difficulties with doing what they proposed when they were campaigning in this area. The Prime Minister when she announced this piece of legislation last week made a big deal of the point that New Zealand in 2025—by passing this piece of legislation—will be the first country in the world to include agricultural emissions in an ETS scheme and she lauded that as something good and fantastic. Well actually the risk for New Zealand agriculture the risk for our economy is still there in that if that is the case New Zealand will in fact be the only country in the world that disadvantages its domestic primary producers to a point where farmers in New Zealand—who are acknowledged as some of if not the lowest emission producers of food in the world—are disadvantaged competitively against less emissions-efficient competitors in the international marketplace. And we have real concerns about that.It's always been the view and the position of the National Party that agriculture should not be brought into the emissions trading scheme until there are sufficient tools and technology available for the primary producers to adopt that allows them to effectively minimise their emissions without the necessity of simply culling cows or lowering production. We don't think that that is effective and we don't think that it is overall of benefit not only to New Zealand but indeed the globe because simply if New Zealand's primary production is through carbon leakage replaced by dairy or meat or other primary products that are produced in other countries less efficiently then there is no net benefit to global emissions reduction and that would seem to be an obvious problem with this bill. So there's no point from our point of view of disadvantaging New Zealand farmers simply on the basis of ideology and political slogan-making.We're also concerned about the issue of the planned phase down of industrial allocations and the Minister alluded to issues concerning emissions leakage in this area as well. They are real concerns for some of the country's top emitters who produce products like cement like aluminium like steel like glass like fertiliser. These are all sectors that—even if by 2050 we are at zero carbon levels in our economy we'll still have a need for steel cement aluminium fertiliser I suspect and glass. I can't imagine that those products will not be part of the New Zealand economy in the New Zealand that we are living in in 2050 at that stage. But there is again no benefit to the global total emissions reduction if we are simply then importing those products from countries that are less efficient producers and manufacturers of them than here in New Zealand. I can't see the sense of that. And so there are issues around that that need to be addressed and we will be investigating and looking at that as we go through the select committee process.But we've had as I said in the National Party—and we mentioned it in the last bill—some basic principles around how to approach climate change policy. And until we are sure and convinced that the sensible practical pragmatic science can be applied to New Zealand producers then we will have difficulty supporting this bill through to its conclusion. But I want to let the House know at this stage that it is the intention of the National Party to support this bill at first reading. We want to have an understanding of the detail that the Minister has included in the bill. We want to see the bits of the bill that have been left out because as introduced in the introduction to the bill it makes it clear that there are still details to be worked out that there will be Government Supplementary Order Papers put forward that there will be new material other than what we have presented to us in the House today presented at select committee. And so we'll wait and see what that is see what the detail is and then we'll make our appraisal of its merits going forward on that basis.So we cautiously but with optimism support this bill at first reading. We do want to see the detail. We do want to have certainty and clarity and we will as we have done on the zero carbon amendment legislation want to try and find a pathway through if we can. But we do have some policy perspectives that we want to make sure are in place to protect the future wellbeing not only of the New Zealand economy but the future wellbeing of New Zealanders as we transition to a low-emissions economy. Thank you Mr Speaker.