Groser Tim: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
Groser Tim: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:649;Page:18145] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I want to address Subpart 1 “Forestry sector” and Subpart 4 “Agriculture” in new Part 5 inserted by clause 43 in the context of land use land use change and forestry but before doing so I will make just a couple of other small points. 
First of all I note the importance of Peter Dunne’s contribution that sustainability is a word that has many different facets. But anyone who is familiar with the history of climate change policy not just in this country but in other countries knows that political sustainability is the most important facet of all. If the public will not support the policy long term all the environmental policies will collapse and there will be no progress whatsoever on climate change. I think that is a fundamentally important point. 
I will put the second point in the form of a question to the Minister in the chair the Hon David Parker and I hope that the premise of my question is correct. It may not be because of the complexity of the amendments and the speed with which this process has moved. Am I correct in understanding at least in general terms that as a result of the price of getting the Green Party on board on this legislation the Minister has in some way qualified the Government’s ability to purchase what are called in popular jargon Russian hot air units? If that is the correct assumption underlying my question and given that although I did not participate in the select committee process my understanding is that Treasury advised the select committee formally that without access to the so-called Russian hot air units the price of emissions would be significantly—that is my understanding of the word used—higher. Does the Minister have the numbers in front of him to advise the Committee and indeed the New Zealand public and those who will have to pay for the costs of this bill what the long-term implications of this deal with the Greens will mean? This question could be very significant so I would like the Minister in his next intervention to address it. 
The third thing I will point out before getting on to land use land use change and forestry is that I myself listened to the Minister explaining in his rather too calm way that we have got it right in the face of what my colleague our spokesperson said: “How could anyone argue seriously that they have got it right after they have just tabled 743 amendments?” or whatever the figure was. I mean it just beggars any belief or any plausibility. But one of the strange aspects of this that has always confused me but that maybe the Minister can explain relates to the ban particularly on gas as the fossil fuel of choice in balancing the baseload. I am totally confused you see as to how the Government could put out a statement in I think October 2007 that large 106 or 110-page study called  
New Zealand 
Energy Strategy to 2050  
which spelt out—in a very coherent way if I may say so; I congratulate the officials who wrote it—the still considerable scope for renewables expansion in New Zealand because of the great gifts we have in this country. 
The National Party fully supports that but even so we would still need some thermal to balance the baseload and there is a perfectly coherent set of arguments of a conventional nature around that. Then crucially it stated explicitly—and I am pretty sure that I have this quote from the report almost exactly word for word—“and gas given its lower emissions will be the fossil fuel of choice”. Well that seems quite logical too. But then only a matter of weeks later we got this ban. Is it a ban? Well that is how the public and investors have interpreted it. So I would be interested in the Minister’s explanation for this complete volte-face within weeks of making what I thought was a sensible way through this issue of balancing the baseload. 
Now let me come to the question of “LULUCF” which when I first heard it I thought was the name of some rather discredited pop singer from the 1960s but I later found out that it was the acronym for land use land use change and forestry. This is the heart of the problem for New Zealand. I have heard one of the Government’s most rabid supporters on this—given that it was said under Chatham House Rules I will not name the person—say that the whole process of negotiating for land use land use change and forestry was done as an afterthought in a complete mess by countries that were really looking at industrial emissions.