Smith Nick: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Smith Nick: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:6117] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 The mess around this bill is very symptomatic of the whole mess the Government has around climate change policy. This is the first bill since the election that we have had on what has been described as one of the most important issues facing humanity and the Government has rolled out Minister No. 25 in the Government to give the second reading speech on it. Why was that speech not given by the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues? Why was it not given by the Minister for the Environment or by the Associate Minister? I will tell the House why. It is because the Government is deeply embarrassed by the mess and vacuum in climate change policy. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Rubbish! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The member opposite might explain this to me—that is the member who is going out of Parliament; I think the member for Rotorua is one of ones that in the latest poll is dead. 
I ask the Minister to explain this to me. This bill was introduced on 3 May last year. When it was introduced the Government said there was a big rush—that we had to set a very tight timetable for the Commerce Committee to report back. Submissions were limited to only 3 weeks. It was a truncated select committee process and the bill was reported back to the House on 28 July 2005. The Government said the bill was so urgent that it had to be reported back to the House immediately. What has the Government done for 15 months on this bill? Maybe the Minister can explain that. Why after the urgency and the truncated select committee process did the bill then sit on the bottom of the Order Paper for 15 months? Well the Government’s climate change— 
Darren Hughes 
: The member is missing the point again. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Can Mr Hughes explain that? Can he answer a simple question? Why when the select committee process was truncated because there was such a rush has this bill sat on the Order Paper for 15 months at the bottom of the list? The member does not want to answer that question because he— 
Darren Hughes 
: Absolute nonsense! Don’t talk politics; talk climate change. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: It is not absolute nonsense at all. The member says we should talk about climate change policy. Well I am very keen to because the Government’s policy is as big a farce as is the process. 
 Let us look at this Government’s record on climate change policy. Even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says there is a vacuum in Government climate change policy. This Government has been in office for 7 years yet we have no idea what this country should be doing in respect of climate change. Let us look at some of the Government’s track record. It came out with an animal emissions levy. Do members remember that? It was abandoned. The Government had a policy that New Zealand should sign up to and ratify the Kyoto Protocol because we would make $500 million. Do members remember that? Well it is now acknowledged in the Government’s books after some dirty sneaky manoeuvres during the election campaign when the Government tried to hide this that rather than making hundreds of millions of dollars the poor old New Zealand taxpayer will be up for $500 million - plus as a consequence of this Government’s aborted mess around climate change policy. 
Then we had the carbon tax. Do members remember that? The Government announced that the answer to climate change was the carbon tax. At the last election Labour members said that—[ 
Interruption 
] I am coming to that I tell the member. I know that member belongs to a Government that has no policy. We have one and I want to talk about it. What Labour said about the carbon tax is quite extraordinary. When it was dumped the Minister in charge of it said that he was dumping it because it was not going to work. We had been telling him that for 12 months. There was no evidence at all that a carbon tax of $15 a tonne would have any effect on the amount of petroleum that was used or burnt. But we had a different message from the Prime Minister. She said that the policy was dumped because the Government could not get the numbers for it in the House. So today I ask the Minister in charge of the bill who is right: David Parker or the Prime Minister? The silence is absolutely deafening. He has no idea. The reality is that Labour made a mess of that. 
Let us go through some of the other things. We had a policy of tendering projects to reduce emissions. What happened to that? It was cancelled. We had a policy on reducing waste and improving energy efficiency; it was a real ripper. The Government spent $100 million on its Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy and after 6 years energy efficiency had become worse. That reminds me of the Department of Corrections. I know that the Minister who moved the second reading of this bill has no climate change responsibilities at all but he is the Associate Minister of Corrections. The Department of Corrections had a programme called Straight Thinking and the people who did Straight Thinking had a higher reoffending rate than those who did not do the programme. The Government’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy has been as big a disaster as that. 
I ask the Government this. After 7 years in office and after all the rhetoric about greenhouse gas emissions why have New Zealand’s emissions gone up at three times the rate of the United States’ and four times the rate of Australia’s? We get all these speeches from Labour members damning the United States and George Bush about climate change yet they are four times worse than that. 
Sue Moroney 
: The member is making it up. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The member says I am making it up. Let me ask this question: is the Government making up its submissions and its reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change? Oh it is not. Let me give members the figures. The figures that were submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change show that New Zealand’s emissions have gone up at four times the rate of the United States’ and three times the rate of Australia’s. Every Government member should be hiding his or her head in shame. In fact I challenge Government members to tell me a country any country in the world whose emissions have gone up by more than New Zealand’s under this Government. Can they tell me any country that has done worse than New Zealand—any country whose emissions have gone up by more than New Zealand’s? They are silent because they simply do not know. There is no country that has done that. 
In the wake of that policy vacuum we in the National Party have said it is time some leadership was provided around the issue of climate change. We produced a blue-green vision for New Zealand that provides a very sensible approach to the issue of climate change. One of the great tragedies is that during Labour’s period in Government the amount of electricity produced from coal has trebled. We all know that coal is the least friendly way in which to generate electricity so I would love a Labour member to explain why the biggest growth in electricity production in New Zealand where we have all sorts of renewable energy options—geothermal wind and hydro generation—has come from the dirtiest source which is coal. National has said that a sensible way forward is a tradable emissions permit system; that is what we have put on the table. We have said we should apply that system to the electricity sector first and that we will recognise the people who plant forests to absorb carbon because that is good for the environment. Planting forests reduces erosion and absorbs carbon out of the atmosphere and that provision is one of the more useful provisions in this bill. 
National will be supporting the second reading of this bill. It does provide for a sensible system of tradable emissions permits and that is where we want to go forward. But I really believe that the Government has to fill the vacuum that exists in climate change policy. Where the Government is at at the moment is a disgrace. It is an embarrassment for New Zealand. It is a disgrace for a country that wants to stand on its environmental credentials. New Zealand has had one Government policy disaster after another. I would like to know why it is that the Minister—whether it is the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues the Minister for the Environment or even the Associate Minister for the Environment—has not been prepared to contribute to this debate and move the second reading of this bill. 
The final point I make is to ask why the Government truncated the select committee process reducing it to only a few weeks last year and saying that this bill was urgent yet has allowed the bill to sit on the Order Paper for 15 months. That just shows the depth of the Government’s indecision—the depth of the vacuum—and the lack of policy from this Government around this very very important issue. So the Government has stuffed up. Leadership must be left to National in order to clean up the mess. We are happy to provide that leadership. The sooner the Government calls it quits the better it will be. Let some real solutions be put forward with regard to climate change.