Fitzsimons Jeanette: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Forestry Sector) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Forestry Sector) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:655;Page:4555] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 The Government has come to Parliament tonight to ask Parliament for a “get out of jail free” card. Some might call it a technical “get out of jail free” card as Chris Auchinvole did but nevertheless that is what it is. The Government has done that because unless Parliament agrees to suspend the Standing Orders on the amount of time it takes to put a bill through Parliament next Tuesday the Government will be in breach of the law. 
The Climate Change Response Act that we are referring to was passed in August last year. Since then there have been 10 months for officials to get things right. It is an Act that relies on allocation plans and regulations to have any substance. That was one of my main criticisms of it last year—that we were essentially passing a bit of a shell that left a lot of the really tricky stuff to the officials to do through regulations and not through Parliament. Without those regulations without those allocation plans the law can have no effect. But the obligations and the entitlements for forestry began in January 2008. Forestry has been in the emissions trading scheme for 18 months. One would think that in 17 months the foresters could have got their act together and reported their deforestation as the Act requires them to do except that calculating deforestation carbon losses is a fiendishly difficult technical thing to do and it does not sound as though the officials have been particularly active in helping them so far because climate change policy has been in a complete mess. Moreover there have been 10 months since the Act was passed for the Government to develop its allocation plans for forestry and it does not appear that anything has been done there yet either and that is where the Government will be in breach on Tuesday if we do not pass this law. 
In December last year the new Prime Minister came in and said he was putting the emissions trading scheme on hold. I asked a number of questions in Parliament about how the Prime Minister could do that when it is the law without passing legislation. It then became apparent that it was not being put on hold because forestry would stay in the emissions trading scheme and nothing else would come in until next year. So the Government set up a special committee to review the emissions trading scheme except in this rather Kafkaesque way the committee was given very detailed terms of reference which asked it to do virtually everything one could think of except review the emissions trading scheme. It was given a wide range of issues to inquire into but the Act that it was meant to be reviewing was never mentioned and the task of reviewing it was never mentioned. Nevertheless everybody assumes that we are reviewing the emissions trading scheme and no doubt we will do some of that but not because we have been asked to; we will do it just because it appears to be the most useful job at hand at the moment. I have often suspected that the committee that we are all working very hard on is actually a bit of an excuse to park the issue until the Government has decided what it wants to do next. 
During all of this time foresters have been subjected to extreme uncertainty. Last year with the Act in place and apparent certainty they ordered some 7 million seedlings enough to plant some 7000 hectares and they are being ploughed in this winter because nobody is planting them because nobody knows what the rules are going to be. When the Prime Minister made his initial announcement they started to wonder whether they would even get credits for the last year. The answer eventually came that yes they would get credits for carbon sequestered since January 2008 but actually they will not be worth anything for a while yet because nobody has any obligations to buy any carbon credits nobody is buying any carbon credits so the foresters cannot with one or two minor exceptions sell their credits to anyone at the moment. 
After 7 months the Government is about to be in breach of the law and 1 week before that breach it recognises that and brings us amending legislation. Forestry is in breach of the law already over its reporting of deforestation and everybody is in a mess because the rules are still in complete flux and there is masses of doubt about what is going to happen. It would be somewhat tempting as a small Opposition party to say to the Government “Well stew in your own juice.” But actually forestry needs certainty so we will not do that. We will support this legislation. Last week I met with the Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith and pointed out that we could not support completely open-ended replacement dates. It turns out that that was the same thing that the Labour Party had told the Minister so we all have an agreement that that will be remedied at the select committee on Thursday. On that basis we will support the leave that the Minister is seeking and we will support the legislation. 
In my last few minutes I want to point out that there is worse coming up on the issue of the emissions trading scheme. This is only the first “get out of jail free” card because on 1 January next year the stationary energy sector comes into the emissions trading scheme. That sector includes the big industrials like cement steel and aluminium which are totally relying on free credits for up to some 90 percent of their emissions in order to cope with the fact that their overseas trading competitors do not face a price on carbon. There is no allocation plan for how they get their free credits or how many they should get. Without that allocation plan they will on 1 January be liable for 100 percent of their carbon emissions and if that state of affairs were to persist a number of them would fall over and close down. 
So why do we not have an allocation plan for the stationary energy sector? Because the Government has not decided yet what obligations the stationary energy sector will have how they will mesh with all of the other rules they have and on what basis they will be allocated. That is not something that can be done in a hurry because under the law as it stands those allocation plans have to come to Parliament. It is not something that can be done over a weekend. They are fiendishly complicated. In fact the most politically divisive and difficult part of the whole emissions trading scheme system is developing those allocation plans. We know the retinue of lobby groups that will be besieging the Minister and the officials once it is known that those allocation plans are under construction because it is the same retinue of lobbyists that the select committee saw all of last year that the select committee has just seen all over again this year and that we will no doubt see for the third time when the Government brings amending legislation to the House later this year—if in fact it does. 
The Government has a huge conundrum on its hands there because I predict that before 1 January next year the Minister will be back with another little amending bill to delay the coming into force of the energy sector. I have to remind folks that by the middle of next year we will be halfway through the Kyoto period. We are already 1½ years into that 5-year period and so far nobody other than poor deforesting foresters faces any obligation at all to pay for any part of their emissions. So for this period 2008-12 the taxpayer will still carry the main bulk of the liability—and this is a Government that wants to bring down taxes. 
It has been indicated a number of times that the Government would really like to align New Zealand with Australia. Well tonight I want to celebrate one hero in Australia who is a climate change denier. Members probably did not expect to hear me say that but I tell them there is one independent senator who does not believe in climate change; he thinks the effects are all caused by solar flares or whatever— 
Charles Chauvel 
: That’s this week. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: —well all right; this week—and who is not going to vote for the Rudd Government’s proposed carbon reduction plan. Therefore the Government will be a vote short and the plan will not go through. Even the Green Party over there which strongly supports carbon reduction and which supports emissions trading if they can get the rules right does not support the pathetically weak scheme that the Australians have. So there will be no Australia scheme for New Zealand to align to. We need to get on and make our own and make it work.