Sio WilliamAupito WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): There are a lot of people to be acknowledged who helped to bring this report here including the sponsors but I do want to single out two people. I want to thank Dr Kennedy Graham. As others have said I think you have been a driving force in bringing this together but I also want to thank you in particular because you have taken every opportunity with our international guests to share with them what is happening around the Pacific region and I really appreciate that because that is a key component in the work that we have got to do in addressing climate change here in New Zealand. I do want to acknowledge the Minister for Climate Change Issues Paula Bennett for being willing to have this debate because I think that if she was not willing we would not be here talking in this manner—bipartisan or multipartisan—addressing an issue that I believe is one of the defining issues of our lifetime. It is not going to go away; it is going to get worse. It is real.I have been told that most of us will not be able to leave Wellington tonight. The airport is closed down due to fog and it is likely that myself and others will leave tomorrow. Last year when I visited Kiribati on a climate change mission I was stranded because there was fog above the airport. It was flooded on the runway and for 4 days we were stranded there. The Pacific is somewhere that we need to look in order to anticipate what is coming our way. You see unlike the Pacific we are fortunate that we have this land mass and we have mountains. There are Pacific Island countries that will be underwater and the science shows this. Dr Nunn is well-known in the Pacific region. He is a professor of geography and has studied the region in the last 25 years and has said that by 2070 to 2100 islands such as Tokelau Tuvalu Kiribati and the Marshall Islands will be underwater.I want people to just think about that because this report is a report based on what the whole world has agreed upon in terms of the Paris Agreement. This report gives us some scenarios of what this country ought to do. I have heard some of the members talk about things that individually we can do—and yes there are things that we can do—but the reality is that this issue to address it meaningfully requires political will at the highest leadership level. At the highest leadership level it requires present and future Governments to act on it.I feel a sense of urgency about it because this report highlights that if we continue doing what we have always done merrily merrily down the road we will be off track. We will be off track. It suggests some things that we can do now in order to reduce our emissions and it requires us signalling right now what type of action we will take in order to transition from fossil fuels from the use of oil from the use of coal from polluting our environment to renewable energy. It requires us transitioning now from the way that we currently use our land for agriculture to more forestation of our land and the use of new technology and being more innovative. It requires us moving from gas-polluting vehicles to electric vehicles. That requires leadership.If we want to know what will come our way in terms of hotter wetter drier climates look to the Pacific because it is experiencing climate change right now. One of the leadership roles that I would ask this Government and future Governments to entertain and to act upon is that we need to develop a climate change plan not just for New Zealand but also for the Pacific region. Nobody else is talking about it but right now in the Pacific we have islands outside of Tuvalu and islands that are part of Kiribati that are under water. Their people are migrating and putting a lot of pressure on those small Island States. What will we do in 2070 when 12000 people from Tuvalu are at our doorstep when 112000 from Kiribati are at our doorstep? If we cannot fix our problems how can we help those people?