Shaw JamesCLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSE (ZERO CARBON) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I move That the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. At the first and second readings of this zero carbon bill I spoke about its purpose as detailed in Part 1. But I haven't until now spoken in this House about the intention behind the bill—that which gives it its purpose—and I'd like to take the opportunity to do so now.In my maiden speech to Parliament five years ago last week I said that Political tribalism is … the [single] greatest barrier to creating enduring solutions to the great challenges of our time. I do not know what the answers are. … I do know that we will need to change the way [we think] about ourselves and our relationship [to] the world"—and I know that the first step in finding the answers is to work together—"presently we are stuck. To get unstuck we will all need to let go of some things and to be more committed to finding the answers than to being right or to others being wrong. Time is too short for resignation. Things are too bad for pessimism. It is too big a task for petty politics. It is too important for partisanship. These things we must transcend and transform."Some things are too big for politics and the biggest of them all is climate change. The intent of the zero carbon bill was is and always should be to elevate climate change policy beyond petty politics and partisanship to transcend and transform a problem so wicked and so stuck that we have made virtually no progress on it in the 30 years we have been aware of it in spite of the very best efforts of many many good people. Climate change policy has been a political football kicked up and down the field and frequently into touch by changes of Government and in fact changes within Governments. This unstable policy environment has prevented progress and sent contradictory signals which has stymied decisive action until this the 11th hour and 55th minute before midnight.The zero carbon bill was conceived not by me I might add nor even by the Green Party that Marama Davidson and I together lead but by Generation Zero a movement of young people committed to climate action conceived as a way to depoliticise climate change policy so that we can actually start to make some progress.I have fought the centrifugal forces of politics to try and create bipartisan consensus and support for this bill because with all my soul I firmly believe that that is the only way we will ever make progress. And that has demanded that we have all every single one of us had to let go of some things and to be more committed to doing the right thing. Everyone has had to let go and give a little away even just a little. But this is bigger than all of us and it is going to take all of us and it is going to take everything that we've got.I am but the guardian of this bill. It has had many many parents. But it would be fair to say it has one grandparent. I'd like to acknowledge the presence in the Chamber today of Dr Kennedy Graham. Dr Graham laid the foundations for bipartisan consensus on climate change policy through the cross-parliamentary all-party group of MPs GLOBE-NZ. It's worth noting that Dr Graham's deputy chair on that committee was the Hon Scott Simpson now the Opposition spokesperson on climate change. The Net Zero in New Zealand report that they commissioned from Vivid Economics with the support from the United States Ambassador Mark Gilbert the United Kingdom High Commissioner Jonathan Sinclair the European Union ambassador Bernard Savage and others was a watershed moment in building the level of parliamentary consensus that paved the way for the zero carbon bill.I want to personally thank the Secretary for the Environment Vicky Robertson and her stellar team at the Ministry for the Environment for their work on this bill. They've worked under astonishing pressures to support a political process that was at times shall we say disobliging. The Environment Committee ably chaired at first by Dr Deborah Russell and then Dr Duncan Webb have also had to work under real pressure to consider complex implications of real significance to New Zealanders thousands of whom submitted on the bill in writing and in person.I'd like to acknowledge the Leader of the Opposition the Hon Simon Bridges and his current and former spokespersons on climate change the Hon Scott Simpson and Todd Muller. Every step of the way in the face of strong political pressures they've worked constructively with us to craft a bill that will I dearly hope be able to command the support of the whole House.I want to thank the Government parties who again in the face of strong political pressures have stuck with it and stuck with us to get it to this point. The Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern in particular has been personally and constantly involved and I want to thank her for her unwavering commitment to New Zealand's leadership on climate action.I want to specifically acknowledge all of the Green Party's caucus members past and present. It was Jeanette Fitzsimons who said in her valedictory speech that the role of the Greens and Parliament is to raise issues that no one else is raising. Today we are witnessing what happens when you do that for long enough. We stand here today on the shoulders of all of those who came before us including Rod Donald who left us far too early 14 years ago yesterday.If we are able to reach a parliamentary consensus today it will only have been possible because the people of New Zealand have increasingly come to demand it. And as I said this bill has had many many parents. The Green Party has always seen itself as a parliamentary wing of a much broader movement. This bill delivers on some of the most important work that that movement has done over many decades. In just a few years climate change has gone from being a fringe issue to one at the centre of global national and local politics—where it belongs—and that is because of the work that dedicated people have done in their communities in their whānau in their organisations in their unions and in their businesses.I want to acknowledge the people who sparked this movement who built it and who have empowered it with such momentum that it is now unstoppable; the lone scientists who raised the flag in the early 1980s and began building a global scientific consensus that human activities are changing the climate that sustains us; the storytellers and the journalists and the artists who saw that science alone would not achieve a solution but that communicating it to everybody else might; the individuals who stood up in board meetings and said "Our company cannot keep doing business as usual; there is too much at stake."; the rangatahi who question which is more important: a missed day at school or a missed opportunity to change the world; and the people all over New Zealand who wrote to their politicians and who marched in the streets asking for action and those who didn't—those for whom private personal changes in their own lives is their expression of rising to this challenge.This morning I became an uncle to our family's newest nephew. Luca I hope that when you are older you look back on this day and you know we did our best for you. In this House today your House we see you all and we deliver this bill for you. Let us begin. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa."