Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Earlier this year a 10-year-old Enoch led a whole range of students as they marched through Invercargill's streets demanding urgent action on climate change. Once the group of students got to the Invercargill City Council they were met by Mayor Tim Shadbolt who asked them whether they needed a microphone. Enoch replied No we don't because our voices are already loud enough." I think the thing is that across New Zealand over the last few months New Zealanders' voices have been similarly loud as they've come and talked to us as a select committee around the submissions on the zero carbon bill. Over the last few months we received about 10200 submissions and we heard from around 800 submitters. Like many of the young people that spoke to us—like Enoch—what they were asking for was urgent action on climate change.So just reading one of these submissions from Cashmere High School what they said is "The whole of Cashmere High School believes that the zero carbon bill aiming for zero carbon emissions by 2050 must be drastically altered to have any chance at reducing the catastrophic effects of climate change … the government needs to plan for a strong carbon bill so that we will have a strong future and a chance against climate change. If they were to not do this it would [directly disregard] the future of our youth." They also talked about bringing carbon emissions to zero within the next 20 years and also talked about the need for the agricultural industry to be properly included in the bill.Similarly we also heard from many in our primary sector. Many of them also supported a lot of the aspects of the bill but a number of them also urged caution and particularly around the methane targets. Just reading from Fonterra's submission they said "The 2050 target for methane reduction is very ambitious and will be extremely challenging to meet with technology currently available. We support a 2050 methane target that is provisionally set at up to 24 percent net reduction from 2017. Regular reviews of this target must be based on scientific and economic analysis."So as a select committee we heard both sides in terms of making this bill much stronger and going much faster but also from our primary sector saying "No we need to stop and think about the science and what's achievable." So as members of the Government side of the Environment Committee we were happy with the targets as introduced in the bill because basically the 2050 methane target and the range that was set was set with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report of us staying within 1.5 degrees of warming.The other thing is that the commission already has the opportunity to recommend changes to the targets when it reviews them in 2024-25 based on the best available evidence at the time. So there are those opportunities to review those targets at that point.But in the rest of my contribution I'd just like to focus on some of the changes that we did incorporate within the recommendations for the bill in response to the feedback from submitters. There were quite a few submitters that were talking to us about reducing forestry offsets—for example the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association. What they were pointing out in their submission was their view that "Overly relying on trees can be risky … because trees are not permanent—they can be lost to fire pests and climate impacts." In their view while they supported tree planting they thought that it was a poor substitute for stopping carbon emissions. Similarly the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment also expressed some concerns about forestry offsets and suggested possible legislative limits in terms of those offsets. So in response to a lot of this feedback that we got some recommended changes to the bill have been made. As Government members we feel that these adequately address those concerns. Some of those changes are around clause 8. In new section 5Q(1) this relates to reviewing the 2050 target and in the addition of new section 5Q(1)(c) it states that as a result of reviewing the 2050 target the commission may recommend a change to "the greenhouse gas emissions and removals to which the 2050 target … applies." In this context the removals it refers to includes emissions that are sequestered by forestry. The addition of new section 5Q(1)(d) inserted by clause 8 allows the commission to recommend changes to "how the 2050 target … may be met including limits on removals [or] offshore mitigation." So again what these amendments actually allow is the Climate Change Commission to recommend that those limits be placed on the removals by forestry—so already doing what many of the submitters have been asking for.Then in clause 8 new section 5Z(2)(b) relates to the matters the administering commission must have regard to when advising on setting emissions budgets. An extra addition 5Z(2)(b)(ixa) states: "the implications or potential implications of land-use change for communities:" This reflects the feedback that we've been getting from rural communities in terms of the impact that forestation may be having on their livelihoods and makes that an explicit requirement that needs to be taken into account. So it's our view that it's not appropriate to set hard limits in the primary legislation but the independent Climate Change Commission needs to do some of that background policy work and then move forward as per already allowed for in the bill.We also had submissions requesting that we include international shipping and aviation into the bill. The committee acknowledged that that was actually important but there were some uncertainties around the global situation in terms of where that's currently at. So what we've recommended is adding a new requirement in new section 5OA that "The Commission must no later than 31 December 2024 provide written advice to the Minister on whether the 2050 target should be amended to include emissions from international shipping and aviation (and if so how the target should be amended)."I think that's really important but the issue we've got at the moment is in a lot of overseas jurisdictions while the emissions are reported in their national greenhouse gas inventories they're not actually included in their greenhouse gas emission totals. So what we're recommending is that further work be done internationally to work out how those emissions are accounted for before we sign up to something in the primary legislation. Similarly tools for abatement for some of the emissions aren't there at the moment and also some may be constrained by international rules. So the thought was to have a look at it a bit further down the line and then get the independent Climate Change Commission to provide further advice on that.We also heard a lot of submissions about prohibiting use of international carbon credits and there are also some extra changes in the bill that would lay out how we can strengthen that so the requirement is that those are used only when unforeseeable circumstances have come up. So we can probably discuss some of those more in the committee stage or as we move through the various stages of this bill. So there was a lot of feedback and a lot of submissions on a range of different areas and I suspect many of these will be canvassed over the next few days as we debate this bill.But what I'd like to leave you with is just a quote from one of our submitters Alicia Hall who's the co-founder of Millions of Mothers. In her submission she said "Today my ten year old asked me if we can stop climate change and what will happen to him if we can't. I am not willing to lie to my son [and] so I and we as a group [Millions of Mothers] want the New Zealand government to step up and do what needs to be done in order to stem the worst effects of climate change. We consider anything less to be unconscionable."So thank you Mr Speaker. I therefore commend this bill to the House."