Woods Megan: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11377. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is so soon to be taking a second call on this bill. It is comforting to hear from the Minister for Climate Change Issues that the measure may be joined by another measure to address climate change. Although we are supporting this single measure it simply is not going to be enough. The Minister told us that our identity is bound up in our natural landscapes in our mountains in our rivers. It is those mountains and those rivers and those glaciers that are being put under threat by the risk we are posing to our planet by climate change. Until the Government can join up its thinking on that we are going to get nowhere. I would like to put it to the Minister that actually this Government’s action on climate change is slower than the glacial retreat in this country. Glaciers are retreating in this country in our own country at a faster rate—on islands here at a much faster rate.The Minister talked about the great difference that this piece of legislation is going to make. Well the regulatory impact statement for this legislation tells us it is going to make a 0.7 percent reduction of net emissions in New Zealand in 2020 at each price. In terms of the efforts that New Zealand has to make to meet its post-Paris and its pre-Paris commitments around emissions reductions this is a tiny drop in the bucket. This is simply not enough. If this is all the Government has got we are in trouble. A 0.7 percent reduction in our emissions is simply tiny. This Government took to Paris and put on the table a 30 percent reduction on 2005 levels of emissions—an 11 percent reduction on 1990 levels. More action—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Dr MEGAN WOODS: I am happy to take another short call on this piece of legislation. Before the dinner break we were talking about the very small contribution to our overall target that this piece of legislation will make in terms of the emissions trading scheme and the wider options in terms of the ways in which we can reach our pre-2020 targets and also our post-2020 targets. Remember this Government has signed up to a 50 percent reduction in our emissions by 2050 and we are simply not on a pathway to meet that in any way shape or form.So when members of the Government get up and they talk about their pragmatic sensible balanced view on climate change they treat it like it is something that they can choose to do or not. Rather than just reading the pap notes that they have been given they could have even flicked through the regulatory impact statement that sat alongside this bill where paragraph 6 on page 43—you might want to flick through now and have a little look—tells you that “Current NZ ETS policy settings do not put the New Zealand economy and Government in a good position to meet climate change targets and international obligations in the future.” The stark reality is that we are not doing what we need to do in order to protect our planet or to protect our economy into the future. So when the Minister says that they are having to balance jobs I say that by not acting on climate change this Government is putting our economy and the security of jobs at risk.Last year 232 people lost their jobs in my electorate in Wigram. They lost their jobs shelling mussels and they lost their jobs because the water in Northland was too warm for the mussel spat to grow and that plant was shut down. The research and development needed to do the breeding under new conditions simply had not kicked in. The response of the Minister Gerry Brownlee—in this case that Minister—was “Ah there’s plenty of work in Christchurch in the rebuild.” To go from shucking mussels to picking up a paint brush requires something in the middle and that is the role of Government. It is called skills training and it is about transition pathways and we are not seeing this.So when the Minister says that there are other measures coming to join this Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill we would like to see some other measures that do put us on a good clear pathway where we can protect our economy where we can futureproof it and where we can ensure that the security for workers in the 21st century is there and that their jobs are not going to move from under them. Avoiding any kind of shock in an economy requires careful planning and this Government simply is not doing that.The Government speakers when they are talking about their pragmatic sensible and balanced view on climate change might actually want to address what this bill does not do. They might want to address what the official advice says is the current state of our emissions reduction pathway. They may want to consider that there is going to be a 0.07 percent reduction in New Zealand’s net emissions through the piece of legislation that is being passed tonight. It is a tiny drop in the bucket and much more needs to be done. Labour supports this bill but it would like to see other measures join this measure. Thank you.