Seymour David: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11414. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On behalf of the ACT Party I rise in support of this bill. I am here to say all the things that the National caucus has been thinking but has not been able to say.Hon Member: That we want to go home?DAVID SEYMOUR: Ha ha! A former member Richard Prebble once told me that in a parliamentary debate one should seek to respond to the earlier contributors but having just listened to the last three speeches there is very little scope for that. So let me just say a few other things.This emissions trading scheme is a pieceofSwisscheese public policy. It is so filled with holes and deliberately so that it never quite achieves its objective and yet it also gives the impression that the Government is trying to do something. We saw that in Minister Bennett’s speech last night when she first moved this bill. She said “Well it’s going to do quite a bit.” and then each time she said that she pulled back and said: “But it won’t actually have any binding biting effects on real activity.”The fact that there was a two-for-one discount on carbon credits in the first place tells you everything you need to know about the seriousness of the emissions trading scheme. Throughout the scheme’s history there has been a whole host of adjustments: what sorts of credits you can redeem within New Zealand; what sorts of activities are included and when they are going to be included. The truth is that it is designed to give the impression of doing something without actually binding any sector to change its behaviour and at the same time providing vast amounts of room for political horse-trading and manoeuvring.The emissions trading scheme is and has always been an utter joke. Today we find ourselves debating under urgency as part of a Budget measure the removal of the two-for-one discount which should never have been needed in a serious piece of public policy designed to reduce emissions in the first place.What might we have been debating if we were serious about this problem? Of course the reality is—sadly for our colleagues in the Green Party—that the overwhelming majority of the population is not serious about it. We could have been debating the introduction of a simple transparent uniform carbon tax. If New Zealand was serious if the people of New Zealand really wanted to reduce their carbon emissions and were prepared to make a commitment to doing so then what we might have done is come here to debate the introduction of a carbon tax. We have not because its simplicity and its transparency and its effectiveness are all the reasons why it does not fulfil the role that the emissions trading scheme has fulfilled in New Zealand politics. It bites evenly on everybody who emits greenhouse gases and it actually does not have any room for any political manoeuvring or horse-trading. That would be a sensible policy committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand. The emissions trading scheme is not and this urgent debate about the two-for-one discount is just another manifestation of its long history of political horse-trading.I none the less am in support of this bill. It is a public policy abomination but on balance I would much rather keep these people over here in Government because believe it or not in spite of everything that I have said about the emissions trading scheme in the bill we are debating today those people on the other side of the House are far far worse. These people occasionally make a public policy mistake but if you look over there you think: “Oh my God! Thank God their mistakes are so minor compared with what those parties often threaten the New Zealand public with.”So this is not a particularly desirable piece of legislation and it is not a particularly desirable situation to be here debating under urgency the removal of this discount. None the less it is all the best for New Zealand that I support it and keep these people over here and those people over there.