Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. In my first speech in this debate I talked about how important it is that we have meaningful action on climate change and transport where we have huge opportunities to get benefits right across the board by making it easier for New Zealanders to live and get around in ways that use less carbon and cause less harm to the environment because the less we use fossil fuels and the more energy efficient our transport system is and the more land efficient it is we will be taking action on climate change but we'll also be making it easier for people to get around towns and cities in terms of the financial costs. So it's one of those areas where what's good for the environment is good for people and is good for the economy and we do have to address different market distortions that have led to this situation we're in.Now most OECD countries have had fuel economy standards for quite a while now and many have had a type of price incentive on cleaner vehicles to help support people to buy vehicles that consume less fossil fuels. And it's fair and reasonable for those who buy more fuel-inefficient vehicles—gas-guzzling vehicles—that use more petrol and diesel that they make a contribution to that because the way that we pitched this or explained it at the time when we went out in consultation on this policy quite a few years ago was that not everybody can get into an electric vehicle or a low-emissions vehicle but that everybody who's getting a new - to - New Zealand vehicle can be part of the solution. And the way that they're part of that solution if they're buying a gas-guzzling vehicle is that they're helping to chip in to get more low-emissions vehicles on the road. And that's how we all work together to reduce our emissions as a country. Of course there is a classic way of pitching this in a kind of individualistic way that says there are winners and losers from the policy. But I think it's entirely fair that those who are buying more polluting vehicles make some contribution to cleaning up the rest of the fleet because we're all responsible. Now some people have suggested that we can do everything through the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and that's really interesting. When it comes to vehicle efficiency we know from evidence that the only policies that work are fuel economy standards and price incentives at the point of purchase of the vehicle. We can't do it through ETS on fuel and that's why transport fuels actually aren't in the ETS in Europe but they lean very heavily on fuel economy standards and price incentives and that works very well. It's really because when people are making a choice about purchasing a vehicle the ongoing cost of fuel is not something they're thinking about well into the future. And the technology to have more fuel-efficient vehicles is a little bit more expensive for the manufacturers and so they make bigger profits off less efficient vehicles. And so if you don't have standards then they supply less efficient vehicles to the market and we had clear evidence of that. So you know Toyota Corolla—no wait what was it? Yeah a Corolla or other vehicles of similar nature consumed more fuel per kilometre in New Zealand and Australia than they did in the UK. Now left-hand-drive vehicles—wait it's right-hand-drive vehicles that drive on the left—that are supplied to the UK or Japan. Those are the big markets and they have fuel economy standards much higher ones than New Zealand. So there's really no issue with supply other than that without the standards we actually struggle to get the supply of low-emissions vehicles in New Zealand for people to buy. And that's why the standard's so important. We're well behind on bringing standards in because they were cancelled in 2009 or late 2008 by the last National Government. So New Zealand's really really far behind and if we're going to address our need to respond to climate change then we have to do something about the vehicles that are coming in. So the discount and the standard have worked together. We're already seeing a huge drop in average fuel consumption per kilometre since the discount was brought in. The Green Party is not voting for this bill because it's delaying the implementation of the standard which we think we just don't have time to do. But I do feel that there's a lot of misinformation or disinformation that comes around from the National Party on these topics. They keep talking about coal consumption. If their Government had done something about phasing out coal from Huntly and having a plan for a transition to renewable electricity then we wouldn't have had this problem during the dry years. But you can't magic up that type of storage in just a few years. It's just not possible. These are huge investments. Huge planning has to go into finding these solutions and the truth is that the last National Government didn't care about climate change didn't do anything to futureproof our electricity system partially privatised the energy companies and then they blame the Government of the day for importing coal as if we didn't have you know a wholly independent organisation that was responsible for making those decisions. You know it's Genesis that makes the decisions about how much coal gets imported. But that's why we need a national strategy and why the Greens were calling for a plan to phase out coal from Huntly 20 years ago. And this was brought up in the debate so I just feel I need to correct—it's very confusing for people at home when they think that the Government is responsible for importing coal or that—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! David Bennett will just calm down.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —somehow poor people are paying fees in the feebate" system which is ridiculous because the only people buying new - to - New Zealand vehicles which were the most polluting vehicles which contribute to the fees are people who can afford extremely expensive brand-new vehicles. The most polluting vehicles are these luxury sport utility vehicle (SUVs) like Range Rovers and Land Rovers. Those are the most gas-guzzling vehicles. I see a lot of brand-new Range Rovers driving around Central Wellington carrying one person. It is their choice and it's their choice to pay an additional fee to get some more zero-emissions vehicles on the road.So the truth is that the National Party doesn't care about equity. If they did they would have different tax policies and different income support policies. These policies are about reducing emissions and it's a fair and empirical way—it's a way in which we actually have evidence that this is going to work to reduce our emissions as a country. And we can work together to do that. But if the National Party cares about equity and helping poor people then they might want to look at their tax policies and their income policies and their proposal to make things easier for landlords and maybe they'd like to look at rent freezes and they'd like to look at their minimum wage policies. There's all sorts of policies you can do to help working people and subsidising highly gas-guzzling luxury SUVs and double-cab utes—which are really largely lifestyle vehicles in the leafy wealthy suburbs—is not the way to get a fairer New Zealand. They are just misleading about that because in truth they don't they don't have any policies that are going to work to reduce emissions. And we saw that when they were in Government. Luckily they had lots of rainy years so they didn't have to worry about dry-year storage for renewable electricity but they implemented zero policy to actually increase the uptake of zero-emissions vehicles and low-emissions vehicles and you can see a clear difference between when National was in power and they did press releases with other people with private investment installing vehicle chargers but the Government doing nothing about it. You can see now we have a huge uptake in low-emissions vehicles. That's because of policies like the Clean Car Discount and standard which make it available to people. They make those low-emissions vehicles available to more people and they provide an incentive to buy them. And so that's why that is a logical policy. I remember when Todd Muller said that he supported the policy. He was in a television interview. It was wonderful. There used to be National Party members who were curious about problems and interested in evidence-based solutions but sadly that's not where we are today and I think it's very sad for our country because we do need to work together and we do need evidence-based policies not ideological claptrap driving what we're doing to solve the climate crisis. The people of this country and our children and our future generations deserve politicians across the House who are going to be curious and open to effective solutions and who will work together instead of standing up and misleading and just making things up about how policies work.Hon David Bennett: Point of order.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Point of order the Hon—Simon Court: Oh Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry I'm dealing with a point of order.Hon David Bennett: Earlier in the day the Minister was accused of exactly the same thing and the member was asked to withdraw and apologise. And that member has actually been proven incorrect in select committee last week—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK. All right. Thank you. [Interruption] No. Thank you. The member—[Interruption]. No. The member—[Interruption] No. The member started out OK and then strayed into a debating point."