Norman Russel: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNorman Russel: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:265. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak on some of the great crises and challenges that are facing the world and New Zealand at the moment. I want to identify two in particular what I would call the twin crises of inequality and climate change. Of course we are all increasingly becoming familiar with both of these things but I think it is important that we underline just how important they are to New Zealand and the world.When it comes to inequality what we have seen over the last 20 or 30 years is a dramatic growth in inequality in New Zealand in particular but globally as well. As our societies have become more unequal wealth has become concentrated in the top few percent and the vast majority of people no longer own very much at all and have been stripped of most of their wealth as a result of the neo-liberal reforms and the new-right policies pursued by successive Governments. There are now a great many New Zealanders who have no access whatsoever to wealth which is being concentrated in the handful.On the other side of the coin we have climate change. The thing about climate change is of course that it is a global issue but it does have very significant consequences for New Zealand as well. I want to start by talking about one of those which is ocean acidification. What we have found is that the acidification in the ocean has risen by about a quarter since pre-industrial times so say over the last couple of centuries. The amount of acid in the ocean has increased by about a quarter as a result of all the carbon that has been emitted into the atmosphere. Some of the carbon in the atmosphere dissolves in the ocean and that means that the ocean is becoming increasingly acidic. That has a huge effect on shellfish and their ability to form shells. The Ministry for Primary Industries recently produced a report saying that ocean acidification is a threat to our aquaculture industry. This is a $375-million-a-year industry and it is directly affected by climate change which is causing ocean acidification. Climate change in New Zealand has huge costs already but it is only going to grow in time if we do not take action to do something about it.Today I want to talk a little bit more about climate change. How we respond to climate change one of the greatest challenges of our generation will define us as a nation. Climate change is a reality. The science is very clear that human-caused climate change is a scientific reality but of course we have a Government that is in denial about that reality. Yet climate change will affect every part of our lives from how we grow food in the case of ocean acidification to how we make our living. And of course as the ice sheets melt as a result of climate change and also as the thermal mass of the water expands we will then see rising sea levels which will inundate coastal communities in particular. We recently learnt that parts of the Antarctic ice sheet have begun an irreversible slide into the sea. It is about 160 billion tonnes of ice that is being lost every year. Antarctica is literally shedding ice.In spite of the denial of the current Government in New Zealand climate change is happening right in front of us. A recent report in the Dominion Post about Wellington’s downtown streets such as Lambton Quay being turned into canals gives you a flavour of how it is going to affect us. Sea level rise is a dramatic problem.Of course the current Government says that we are such a small country that cutting our emissions will not make any difference that we should not do anything to cut our emissions and that because we are so small we cannot take any effective action. In fact the Prime Minister’s favourite line is “We’re only 0.2 percent of global emissions. What difference will it make?” which is of course exactly what you could say about voting in an election. If you took that attitude towards voting you would not vote. Of course we know from the Dirty Politics book that the National Party members do not want people to vote because they see that as a threat to their hold on the Government. The thing is that National has completely failed to grasp the challenge of climate change.So far under this Government New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 20 percent. So at a time when we should be cutting our emissions to relate to the reality of climate change in fact the Government is increasing New Zealand’s emissions. The Ministry for the Environment once again has produced a report that looks at emissions going forward and according to the Ministry for the Environment New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions will increase by about 50 percent over a decade. So just think how grossly irresponsible a Government is that has policies that will result in New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions increasing by 50 percent. Imagine if other countries in the world were as grossly irresponsible as the New Zealand Government if other countries were projecting to increase their net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in a decade.Fortunately most countries and most Governments are not as grossly irresponsible as the John Key Government but New Zealand is a major problem because we are an international player. So when the New Zealand Government goes out to the world and proudly tells everyone that it plans to increase New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent it undermines international efforts to do something about emissions. It is in fact a national disgrace.National rejects any proposals for a proper price on carbon so the Green Party and others have put forward proposals to put a proper price on carbon which we know is the cheapest most effective way to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. And yet the Government has hollowed out the emissions trading scheme so that there is virtually no price and has weakened it to the point of redundancy ensuring that it is a failure. The emissions trading scheme was designed to incentivise investment in clean technology emission reductions and the planting of trees. It has done none of these things—in fact it has done the opposite. New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 50 percent over the next decade according to the Ministry for the Environment. That is the hard reality of what is going on in New Zealand. It is embarrassing it is farcical and it is a disaster for the climate.The Government is giving away free permits to pollute—in fact it has given away $1.3 billion of free permits to pollute under the emissions trading scheme. When companies do pollute rather than handing back these units the big polluter companies have been selling them and then handing back cheap units that cost only 20c so the Government has enabled a flood of these units to come in from overseas.According to the Minister for Climate Change Issues—of course in this context that means the Minister for accelerating climate change Tim Groser—National has chosen to stick with its completely ineffectual scheme. It is ineffectual at reducing emissions but very effective at increasing greenhouse gas emissions. National has chosen to stick with its scheme to increase greenhouse gas emissions because the National Party base the voters for the National Party are not interested in action on climate change according to Mr Groser. At a pre-election Climate Voter event where I was there with him he said that to many National Party supporters climate change is nothing more than a United Nations conspiracy—a non-issue.Tim Groser is underestimating National’s supporters and in doing so he is abdicating responsibility for actually doing something. Instead of leading National is actually taking New Zealand in exactly the wrong direction. Remember the official statistics from the Ministry for the Environment say that under current policies New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 50 percent in a decade a dramatic increase in emissions—a grossly irresponsible act. But the National Party has misjudged the people who voted for the National Party as well as everyone else. Eventually National’s wilful neglect will come back to bite it and all of us.National has a 20th century attitude on the climate and it is not just a monumental failure on the environment—which of course it is—it is also a failure to grasp the economic opportunities of our times and a failure to understand where the global economy is going. The global economy is heading towards a cleaner smarter economy. That is where it is going—a greener economy. Instead of being part of that this current Government is desperately trying to lock in 20th century technologies that have very high greenhouse gas emissions per unit. It is hoping to lock them in. The Green Party put forward alternative policies such as our climate tax cut where we would put a price on greenhouse emissions and all the revenue that was raised would be returned in the form of tax cuts both for individuals and for companies. Of course the National Party completely rejected the climate tax cut which was fiscally neutral because of its desire to increase our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent according to its own figures over the next decade—an increase in New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions.Just this weekend the EU agreed to cut its emissions by 40 percent by 2030. At next year’s global summit in Paris countries will have to commit to binding agreements. We cannot continue with the policy of this Government of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions. It is time to move into the 21st century a century that will be marked by cleaner smarter economics and Governments that understand the science of climate change and actually cut greenhouse gas emissions instead of this Government which is proposing to increase them. But I suspect it will require a change of Government for us to move there.