Guy NathanHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you very much Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: The member has the call now.Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes I appreciate it. It's going to be a very good call: quite succinct.Todd Muller: Oh that'll be a change.Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes. This is an important bill. In fact I had a good read of it before. This bill here is extremely technical. Here are the supporting documents. Now I sit on the Environment Committee.Todd Muller: Lucky you.Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes that's right Mr Muller lucky me. Thanks for swapping jobs with me and putting me on that committee. We have got a huge amount of work ahead of us. This is a very technical bill. For a lot of people even members of this House they won't understand the detail about what is proposed. We're going to I think have a period where we're going to need to get up to speed on the emissions trading scheme (ETS)—what exactly these changes actually mean for New Zealand for farmers for trade exposed industries and for the foresters. So this bill is going to indeed require a lot of input not only from members of the committee but from officials over at the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry for Primary Industries.Before we talk about what is included in this bill I want to talk about the politics of it because that's what I find fascinating. So the National Government kicked off the review of the ETS and then the ICCC—Interim Climate Change Committee—did some work on whether agriculture should be brought into the ETS and had a look at processor level or whether it should be somehow incorporated at a farm-by-farm level. I read their report—and it was a fascinating report. It was long it was in-depth and it was well-considered. They summarised by saying that they believed agriculture should come into the ETS at processor level but most of their report said it's very hard to do at farm level and that's why they ended up saying at processor level. For those listening that means kilograms of milk solids or kilograms of carcass weight—basically a tax on farmers for their stock or for their milk.So that was the proposal. Now Minister Shaw received this advice and then he started socialising it with his coalition parties. Of course there was an allergic reaction from New Zealand First because they realised that we'd just had the debate about the capital gains tax. In the end the coalition for whatever reason backed away from the capital gains tax and then New Zealand First were worried about the cost of living and the cost of production. The most efficient producers of food come from here in this country. We are the world's best. Then they realised—and Mark Patterson didn't cover this off in his contribution—that Holy moly we can't do this processor level tax because it won't change behaviour inside the farm gate."So we knew that there were several occasions where Minister Shaw was going to stand up with people and say "Here's the report. We're bringing agriculture into the ETS and it's going to be a cost to farmers at processor level." But something happened in the murkiness of politics and around the Cabinet committee and the Cabinet room and suddenly it all went quiet. Then industry worked away—11 organisations our future in our hands in this document. It's a good document led by Mike Petersen leading the Farming Leaders Group in touch with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. They said "Well if you bring in the processor levy it's going to change nothing on every individual farm." And industry stepped up to the plate and said "Let's not forget we're investing $25 million a year in trying to reduce our overall emissions."—not well understood. And actually there needs to be more invested not just from the primary sector industries but from the Government as well.So what finally happened is that the Government realised they needed to accept the goodwill of the agriculture industries to say "Give us five years we'll have a go at doing it ourselves." I commend the industries that have stepped up to the plate and said "Give us five years but we're going to need some help." The help that the agriculture industries are going to need are these environmental farm plans. Now in a lot of cases—in fact most cases—there is an environmental farm plan required for the dairy company for the dairy farmers' supply and for the regional council. So I think it would be a great opportunity to combine all of those plans into one document.Are there enough people to go out and do the audits? You need people whether it's farm consultants that are going to need to be approved that are going to need to do the audits; how is that going to work? I'm looking forward to understanding that through the select committee process.But importantly what is missing in this debate so far is that the Government is going to drop a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) either in the select committee or in the committee of the whole House to say that we are going to change the law and agriculture is coming into the emissions trading scheme (ETS) at 2025. That's not in the bill at the moment but the Prime Minister's already said—and the Minister alluded to it—that there's going to be an SOP coming that's going to be attached to this bill that is going to force the agriculture community into the ETS. And the agriculture community is saying "Well hold on aren't you going to take us at our word that we can do all of the things that we've proposed in this working document?" And the Government said "No. To appease the Green Party we need to put it into law."So my challenge back to James Shaw the Minister for Climate Change is: will he put the SOP into the committee—which he can do—so that we can ask for submissions on the SOP? I'd like to hear from the Minister now: will the SOP go to the select committee so that we can ask for the public and industry to have their views heard? Brilliant thank you; thank you Minister. I appreciate the nod and the thumbs up that you will do that—not you Mr Speaker the Minister—because I think that that part of this process is going to be really important. Full transparency—and I commend the Minister for that.So in summary this bill is going to be one that's going to require quite a bit of technical advice for the committee to get their head around it. It's an important bill. And fundamentally I look forward to seeing the SOP because that is really going to be where the rubber hits the road. I look forward to industry having their voices heard through this process. Thank you Mr Speaker."