Foss Craig: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
Foss Craig: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:649;Page:18134] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 I rise to speak on Part 1 and I acknowledge the excellent speeches and speakers before me. In a minute I would like to speak on clause 7 which covers the Minister’s discretion as to the various directions he can give the registrar. But before that I think it would be healthy for the Committee to note that I was at an environmental forum the other day where a Labour member and a Green candidate were commenting about this particular bill. I was most interested to hear the Green candidate say that the Greens did not agree with the bill that they did not think it was very good and that they did not think it went far enough but that they would vote for it anyway as they have some further changes up their sleeves. I think it would be interesting to see what other changes are up their sleeves but perhaps that candidate was not quite as informed as his colleagues in the Chamber. 
As my colleagues noted earlier we had 1000 amendments at the Finance and Expenditure Committee after the first rewrite of the bill and we have 780-odd in front of us today. I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee during its consideration of some of the submissions and during some of the discussion though not all. As can be seen in the commentary on the bill I was replaced on the committee by David Carter for a lot of the time. 
One of the things I am really interested in and have talked about is fungibility. National has released a plan and it is all about not moving faster than the rest of the world particularly our trading partners. Clause 7 and the following clauses talk about the Minister’s discretion in and around various units the transfer of units the setting up of the registry etc. As I have often said New Zealand could create the most gold-plated best thing in the world around emissions trading but unless the rest of the world recognises the items the units the structure the measurement and the fungibility of what we are creating here and unless the rest of the world thinks that the registry we have set up is acceptable then what is created here in New Zealand is almost redundant. 
As previous speakers have said this is based on the Kyoto Protocol and the need to measure—which is open to question as well—our emissions. But when we are going in front of the rest of the world unless the rest of the world has a system that is almost identical to ours and at least recognises our system then what we are talking about here is redundant. The Minister can say whatever he likes about how wonderful his system is but unless it can be banked against internationally unless it can be borrowed against internationally and unless it can be securitised internationally from offshore players then what we are arguing about here is redundant—unless it is recognised from outside of New Zealand. And how will outside players recognise this in New Zealand? It will be by the measurement of the units what the units are and what is on the registry. 
I will give an example. Let us say that this scheme goes in place as is and a few years down the track a farmer wants to hedge himself. He could be a farmer in Europe or a farmer in New Zealand and he wants to hedge himself. A bank in Australia has given him a loan for a dairy farm in New Zealand and he is trying to hedge himself against some units somewhere in Europe. Well unless that registry deals with the proper units that are recognised and are trading overseas regardless of what New Zealand thinks of the integrity of its own units and measurements it will not happen. He will have an asset and a liability regardless of how much is written off over what year. Unless they can be recognised internationally by those three players I mentioned in that example then it is redundant. 
We are about to spend time on this bill under urgency and we are talking about a 250-odd page bill as the Minister said earlier. I cannot for the life of me understand why it is not being considered longer further deeper and wider. It is the most lateral far-reaching horizontal bill that we have seen in this House for a long time. It is the bill with the most vertical impact across our economy that this House has seen for an awfully long time. I do not knock that fact but what is missing is the consideration and the buy-in from at least three-quarters of this Parliament. By most accounts I think the bill is sneaking in with two or three votes. That is not good. It is not constitutional and it does not make economic sense. If I were sitting somewhere else in the world looking at what is being rushed through the New Zealand Parliament right here and wondering how it is going to work I would think: “New Zealand you’ve gone nuts.”