Ardern Shane: Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Shane: Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7816. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 Along with my colleagues I rise in opposition to the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill and there is a range of reasons why we oppose it. 
First of all I will start with a personal story of what happened on our farm in the mid-1970s when we were hit with two oil shocks. At that time the mode of transport on the farm was a Holden Ute with about 400000 miles on the clock and a 3-litre engine. Petrol consumption used to get down to about 18 miles to the gallon when we were towing farm trailers and other such things with it. Because of the price of petrol going up to $1 a gallon our employer decided that we should get rid of the big gas-guzzling old Holden Ute and trade up to a new Mazda B1600 flat-deck ute with a 1600cc engine which was described as being much more suitable than the old Holden that it replaced. Guess what? This brand new Mazda utility did 5 miles less to the gallon than the old Holden Ute in the same application. Why would that be? We went from a 3-litre engine that was worn out down to a 1600cc modern efficient engine that was in perfect tip-top order and the fuel consumption went up. How did that happen? How could that be possible? The reason was simple. The application it was being used for the amount of weight we were pulling with it the trailers we were towing with it meant that that little B1600 was going at full revs the whole time and it used more petrol than the old Holden did lumbering along at lower revs per minute. That is an example of why the one-size-fits-all approach prescribed by the socialists and the Greens cannot fit and will not fit. 
Landcorp which is one of our Government departments is the biggest corporate farm in the country. Why do we not change all of the Landcorp vehicles from the big gas-guzzling Nissans or whatever they might have now with their 3-litre engines to vehicles with 1200cc engines and expect them to pull the same hay-balers farm trailers tractors and goodness knows what else that are pulled around by those vehicles and double their fuel consumption as well? I bet that is what would happen. Not only did the good old Mazda add substantially to the fuel consumption—it did not double it; I do not want to exaggerate—but it lasted about a third of the time that the old Holden did. By the time it had done 100000 miles equivalent it was worn out; it was shot. It was absolutely unroadworthy in fact and it was dangerous throughout most of its life because for most of its life it was overloaded. That is an example of why it does not make sense to prescribe by legislation a one-size-fits-all approach for Government departments or any other department or any other person for that matter. 
Let us look at some of the things that National has done since it has been in Government. We have heard a bit about what Labour proposed to do in its 9 years in office and never quite got around to. We also know that during that time our carbon emissions went up substantially across most sectors except the agricultural sector of course which is the sector the previous Government wanted to hit the hardest. I had a little bit of a personal campaign against that as most people will remember. What has National done? The first thing National did was to put $36 million into the biofuels grant programme promoting bio-diesel production. In my own electorate we have the Holden family who are very entrepreneurial. They are the custodians and managers of the Ruakuri Cave which is a great tourism venture. They could not get their bio-diesel plant off the ground under the previous Labour Government. Guess what? That plant is now thriving and prosperous in the small town of Te Kuiti. It is producing bio-diesel from waste material oils fats from cooking etc. and it looks as though it will grow and continue to thrive. The family came to me many times when they were trying to get the business off the ground under the previous Labour Government and they were not successful. 
National opposes this bill. There are a lot of other things I could talk about but I understand there is not time for that. That is my contribution. National opposes the bill.