Smith Nick: General Debate 
Smith Nick: General Debate 
[Volume:635;Page:6301] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 Helen Clark’s incredible speech claiming that New Zealand will be carbon neutral is just not credible. We have had 36 Cabinet papers and 71 reports but 7 years after Labour came to office we still do not have a climate change policy. Emissions are going through the roof and are growing faster than those of any other OECD country; forest planting is going through the floorboards with this being the first year in over 50 years in which we have cut down more trees than we have planted; and we have the gall of a Prime Minister who somehow wants to pretend that New Zealand under Helen Clark will be carbon neutral. 
I am reminded of the goal set by Helen Clark that New Zealand would be in the top half of the OECD by 2010. We have all had to forget about that. We had the closing the gaps policy from Labour and the Prime Minister and that too has gone by the wind. Helen Clark has become so desperate to stay on as Prime Minister that she will say anything at all. 
I remind Labour members who have this carbon neutral fantasy of just what their record is not just on climate change but also on environmental sustainability. On Tuesday the nations of the world came together to discuss climate change. The figures came out for the last 5 years. Emissions in the UK have gone down by 1 percent over the last 5 years. In Japan they have gone up by 0.7 percent. In the USA—where big bad George Bush is in the pockets of the oil companies according to the Labour Party—emissions have gone up by 1.3 percent. But here in carbon neutral New Zealand emissions have gone up by not 1.3 percent but 5.4 percent—over four times the rate of the United States and over double the rate of Australia. But the Prime Minister says we should be carbon neutral. 
She told the Labour Party conference—and this was a good one as well—that she thought Labour needed to take leadership on afforestation. That is what she said. Well back in the 1990s we averaged 60000 hectares of new forest each year. Every single year that Helen Clark has been Prime Minister the amount of forest planted in New Zealand has declined. It is so bad that in 2005—for the first time since 1953—we hacked down more trees than we planted yet Helen Clark has the gall to say to us that she wants to show leadership in afforestation. 
Then we have the issue of electricity. Today I asked Helen Clark how come the amount of electricity we as a country produce from coal has gone from 3 percent to 10 percent in just the 6 years she has been Prime Minister. That is a trebling in the amount of power produced from coal but the Prime Minister talks about being carbon neutral. Labour said no to Project Aqua. It said no to Dobson. Yet New Zealand is producing less of its power from renewable sources today than at any time in our country’s history. But she is saying we will be carbon neutral. Right now one of the Government’s own companies Mighty River Power is proposing to build a 320-megawatt—absolutely giant—coal-fired power station in Whangarei. That power station will put out nearly 70 million tonnes of carbon over its 40-year life. Ministers back it but the Prime Minister says we are going carbon neutral. It is a farce. It is a nonsense.