Kedgley Sue: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Kedgley Sue: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7981. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 George Orwell coined the terms “newspeak” or “doublespeak” to describe language that makes the bad seem to be good the unacceptable and the truly terrible seem to be acceptable and the inappropriate seem to be appropriate. They are the terms for a whole new language and they seem to me to encapsulate the whole approach of this Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill and what it is about. It is Orwellian. The whole thing tries to make it look as though we are reducing our emissions when in fact we have a bill that will increase our emissions. This bill tries to make us look good so that the Minister can to go to Copenhagen and stand up and say: “Look! We have an emissions trading scheme in place. Isn’t it fantastic!”. He will be able to go out to New Zealanders and say the Government cares about climate change and really worries about it. He will also be able to say he has a bill in place but when we look at the fine print we see that it will increase our carbon emissions for at least the next 10 or possibly 20 years. The Minister in the chair Dr Nick Smith is shaking his head. The Minister will not tell us for how long emissions will increase but it seems that it will be for the next 10 and possibly more years. 
Here we have a bill that we are pretending will reduce our emissions when it will increase our emissions. Here we have a bill that basically tells the major industries of New Zealand: “Look guys it’s business as usual. Just carry on using your coal. Let’s carry on building our motorways. Let’s just carry on as we are. We have this fig leaf this emissions trading system in place so we can say to the world and to New Zealanders that we really care about climate change. Let’s just pay for the polluters and just carry on as usual.” 
Then we had the extraordinary spectacle of a member of this Committee standing up to say that we should be doing nothing about climate change and that climate change is all nonsense. It is interesting that my colleagues Moana Mackey and Shane Ardern are here in this Chamber. All three of us went recently to Tanzania for a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference. The major issue there was climate change. Were the delegates there sitting around and debating whether climate change was real and whether we should do nothing? No they were not. There was an intense discussion. Delegate after delegate said they were not discussing in the abstract whether climate change existed; delegates said they were confronting the reality of it every single day. They were horrified by the slow progress of nations like New Zealand in the face of what they saw as overwhelming evidence of climate change—for example floods and droughts. 
When the President of Tanzania opened the conference he said that everywhere in Tanzania people were confronted with the effects of climate change. The snow on Mount Kilimanjaro is melting there is salination of coastal islands there is coastal erosion in the whole coastal area and there is desertification. We went on a trip and everywhere we saw animals—cows—that were starving and so thin that the SPCA would consider them to be cases of animal cruelty. Everywhere there was evidence of desertification. Animals are stressed. Tourists go to Tanzania to see the migration of the magnificent animals but the animals are very stressed. Because their breeding grounds are affected people worry that there will be no migration of animals so the tourists will have nothing to go to see. Those are just some of the examples from Tanzania. 
Last year I went with my colleague Steve Chadwick to a Viet Namese seminar on climate change and I found the Viet Namese were passionate about it. They said that 20 million people who are living in their low-lying coastal areas will be affected and this could happen in the next few years. The Bangladesh delegates said a 1 metre rise in sea level would inundate 17 percent of their country displace 15 million people and so on and so forth. The fact is that everywhere I have been every developing nation delegate whom I have talked to says— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Before the member proceeds can I just have a wee go at this bell. I want to see whether I can give it a decent work over. No so we will be working to a manual system. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: We can all pretend to ignore the bell and say we cannot hear it. 
I want to talk about the idea from the ACT member. It is embarrassing that we have someone sitting here like King Canute with his head in the sand and pretending that all of this is nonsense. All of us will not just be called to account by future generations but will be called on to assist the millions probably billions of people who will suffer if we do not respond to climate change quickly enough. But also more particularly there will be the millions—billions—of environmental refugees. They will be heading for New Zealand and here we are with our heads in the sand. 
John Boscawen 
: Speaking up for the poor. Speaking up for second-class citizens. Speaking up for the underprivileged. Speaking up for the have-nots. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: Here we have the member saying he is speaking up for petrol users and about the price of petrol or electricity next year. 
John Boscawen 
: Everyone. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: Hang on a minute. I presume the member has children. We all say in this Chamber that we are worried about children. We are always wringing our hands about children. But the single most important thing for our children is that they will have a world that is habitable. The idea that we can just sit here and worry about the price of electricity next year while allowing our children to inherit a world that will be uninhabitable is quite frankly unthinkable. But the trouble with many members of this House is that we think in terms of 1 or 2 years; we do not think about the future. 
At the conference on climate change in Viet Nam there was a debate about the idea that countries with the highest per capita emissions—and of course we do not need to be reminded that New Zealand has the sixth-worst carbon footprint in the world per capita—should have added global responsibilities for combating climate change and assisting low carbon - emitting countries. In particular delegates said that countries with the worst carbon footprint like New Zealand should have a special obligation to take in the millions of climate change refugees who will need to find somewhere to live. That is already being debated so we need to be aware of that. That debate may well develop momentum. We can sit here like the ACT member saying we contribute only point something or other of one percent of global emissions but the truth is that we are on a per capita basis the sixth-worst country in the world. We may well find ourselves being confronted with an obligation because we are a high-emitting country on a per capita basis to take in all of those climate change refugees. 
To get back to this bill I say that most of us in this House accept that there is an issue that needs to be dealt with. That is progress considering that only a few years ago many members of this House perhaps most were denying that there was even an issue. However what we have now is a bill that makes it look as though we are doing something when we are not. That is really what it is; it is a public relations bill. It is like a fig leaf that we put in front of ourselves in order to pretend that we are taking action and doing something. But this bill will actually increase our emissions not decrease them. So it is an Orwellian bill: it makes the bad look good; it makes the unacceptable look acceptable; and it gives the Government and the Minister Nick Smith something to talk about. But how can the Minister in all conscience come up with a bill that he knows will increase our emissions and will enable the major polluters to carry on polluting? 
This bill sends the signal that it is business as usual. In the rest of the world particularly in Europe everyone is switching to a low-carbon economy yet we have no incentive to switch to a low-carbon economy. Because there are no incentives to do so we will be left behind. If we think of this issue simply from a business perspective why would we allow New Zealand to be left behind and not give anyone incentives to move to a low-carbon economy? This bill does not make sense. It is Orwellian and is designed simply for public relations purposes. As Russel Norman said our children and our children’s children will curse us for doing this. Thank you.