Tuesday, 5 November 2019

TUESDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 2019

TUESDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia.

Speaker’s Observations

Chamber Audio—Microphones

SPEAKER: Can I just remind members, especially those on my right, that the Clerk’s mike is open and their conversations and laughter can be heard through it.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 9 to Minister, 22 October—Amended Answer

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I rise to correct my answer to a supplementary question in question No. 9 on 22 October.

SPEAKER: The Minister seeks leave to make a correction. Is there any objection? There is no objection. The Minister may proceed.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I was asked whether I stand by my statement that no one on the New Zealand Transport Agency board asked to stay on. At the time, I recalled that I had asked Mark Darrow to stay on the board until February 2020 in the interests of continuity; so I answered “yes”. Since then, I have reviewed my correspondence, and in May, in response to my request that he stay on the board for a short time, Mark Darrow said he would be interested in staying on for a second term.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

SPEAKER: I just remind people of the rules while supplementary questions are being asked, so that they will understand what’s about to happen.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): More good news: Friday’s ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence report showed consumer confidence rose four points in October to 118, with confidence rising in every region of the country. Consumer confidence in both current and future conditions lifted by two and six points respectively. [Interruption] There was particularly good news, Mr McClay, in consumers’ perceptions of their current financial situation, which rose to its highest level since 2007. I’m pleased to see New Zealand consumers are feeling more upbeat on the back of lower unemployment, more jobs, and higher wages under this Government. Kiwis are now finally starting to see a fair share of economic growth in this country.

Greg O’Connor: What reports has he seen on businesses’ confidence in the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Auckland chamber of commerce released its business confidence survey on Friday, showing business confidence in the top half of the North Island has “bounced back significantly” from the last quarter, up 24 points. The biggest concerns identified by those businesses were global uncertainty, compliance costs, and the ability to find skilled staff. It’s great to see businesses are joining consumers in feeling more upbeat about the economic outlook. If only members opposite could do the same.

Greg O’Connor: What reports has he seen on employment in the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’ve seen a range of reports from bank economists previewing September quarter labour market statistics due to be released tomorrow. While bank economists’ expectations vary, the consensus is for a small uptick in the unemployment rate, remaining around its maximum sustainable level. BNZ economists said, “Even if the unemployment rate edges up to 4.1 percent from 3.9 percent, it would still be a strong reading, suggesting conditions underfoot remain relatively tight. We think this and recent tightness will keep upward pressure on wage inflation.” We are committed to targeting unemployment of 4 percent in this term, bearing in mind that we inherited unemployment of 4.7 percent from the so-called rock stars opposite.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s actions and policies?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes, in particular her recent announcement that we have concluded negotiations to upgrade our free-trade agreement with China. This ensures our upgraded free-trade agreement will remain the best that China has with any country.

Hon Simon Bridges: How many more Māori are on jobseeker benefits since her Government took office?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I don’t know the answer to that question, but what I can say is that the Māori unemployment rate is well down and it is the lowest it has been for a number of years. It was considerably higher under the previous Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: Are there fewer or more—that is, Māori on a jobseeker benefit—than when National was in Government?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: There are more people—more Māori in New Zealand. I don’t know the answer around the particular question he’s asked, but the Māori unemployment rate—thanks to the great work that the Hon Willie Jackson has done—is considerably lower than when we became the Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: Sorry—are there fewer or more Māori on the jobseeker benefit than when National was in Government?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I refer the member to my previous answer.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why is it that since her Government took office, there have been more Māori on jobseeker benefit than Pākehā, every single quarter?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I’d have to check the veracity of the member’s claims, but I have to say that unemployment in New Zealand is at 3.9 percent. It is the lowest it has been in 11 years. We’re doing more in terms of getting people into employment than that previous Government ever did in their nine years of neglect.

Hon Simon Bridges: In light of that answer to that supplementary, then why are there more Māori on the jobseeker benefit now than at the height of the global financial crisis?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Probably because a greater proportion of people are Māori—population growth.

Hon Simon Bridges: So was the reason there are more Māori on the jobseekers benefit because there are more Māori?

Hon Aupito William Sio: Get out of the gutter.

SPEAKER: Order! Who interjected? The member will leave the House until the end of question time.

Hon Aupito William Sio withdrew from the Chamber.

SPEAKER: Right. Ask the question again.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept that at the height of the global financial crisis (GFC), Māori made up 31 percent of those on the jobseeker benefit; and does she further accept that that percentage is now 40 percent and climbing?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I’d really have to check the veracity of the member’s claims.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why, as a percentage of the population, are there more Māori on the job seeker benefit now than at the height of the GFC?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I refer the member to my previous answer. I’d really have to check the veracity of his claims, because we know on this side of the House that they say a heck of a lot of things; when we check them up, they’re not actually all that accurate.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she aware that the Ministry of Social Development’s annual report makes clear that “only 20 percent of engagement with clients in June 2019 had an employment-focused focus”, the lowest proportion since 2014?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Again, the unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent. It is the lowest it has been in over 11 years. That side of the House, when they were in Government, basically gave up on trying to get people into jobs. Within one year, the Hon Willie Jackson has worked miracles that that party over there had no idea of how to resolve.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has the Government given up on getting New Zealanders—and, on the numbers, especially Māori—into work?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Kāo.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister stand by her Government’s policy of prohibiting semi-automatic firearms, since only 32,000 have been bought back over the last four months?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes, that’s a very good result.

SPEAKER: Order! Just before the member asks his next question, I’m just going to ask him to tidy himself up slightly. Thank you.

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker—very helpful. When will the Government release its response to the Tomorrow’s Schools independent working group?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Within the next few weeks.

Question No. 3—Regional Economic Development

3. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Minister for Regional Economic Development: What recent Provincial Growth Fund announcements have been made?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Regional Economic Development): Dunedin is now coming out of the cold. After an awful episode of rejection, neglect, it fell to me and my colleagues to make an announcement of $19.9 million towards Dunedin’s waterfront development project, and, in addition to that, a sum of $20 million dedicated to create a more vigorous hub for KiwiRail and to restore the fortunes of those people that unfortunately were sold out over the past nine years.

Mark Patterson: What other projects received support?

Hon SHANE JONES: I stand to announce and to remind the House that a sum of $10 million has been allocated to establish the Centre of Digital Excellence. On the question of excellence, not only does Dunedin already have endowments of intellectual pursuits, engineering traditions; this opens new vistas for the gaming industry, and in addition to that a sum of $8 million in support for Scott Technology, leading the way to improve the ability of technology to lessen the reliance in many of our agribusiness sectors on labour.

Mark Patterson: What has been the response to these investments?

Hon SHANE JONES: The university, in the form of the deputy vice-chancellor and professor—a highly respected academic, someone I have met—said over the period of time that the university welcomed the exciting opportunity for the Centre of Digital Excellence. Scott Technology managing director—a highly successful business leader, in charge of an entity that earns nigh on quarter of a billion dollars, the majority of it from export dollars; clear evidence that these two significant entities back not only the policy but the travails of the champion.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements and policies?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context they were made and implemented.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can he stand by his economic policies when, according to his own Government’s wellbeing metrics released this morning, the number of people who say they have enough or more than enough money is falling under his watch, after six years of substantial increases under National?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There are a range of indicators that show how well this Government is doing, including unemployment being at 3.9 percent and wages increasing by 4.4 percent. It will—and we have said this many times in this House—take time to turn around nine years of neglect, but we’re making a good start.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does it concern him that the progress made under National, whereby the number of Kiwis saying that they had enough money went from 51 percent to 65 percent of the population, has now been reversed under his Government?

SPEAKER: I’ll let the member answer the question, but I’m going to advise the member that next time he asks an out of order question, I won’t.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I’m particularly interested by is the conversion of the member to the wellbeing indicators, which, previously, we’ve seen some cynicism about from the other side of the House. So, on that score, I welcome the member’s interest.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Well, isn’t it true that the previous Government improved wellbeing and his Government has not?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely not, no, because, on this side of the House, we want to see unemployment going down under 4 percent, we want to see wages increasing, we want to see children lifted out of poverty. That’s what’s happening, that’s what wellbeing is, and that’s what this Government’s delivering.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Regardless of what he wants, why does he think fewer Kiwis feel that they have enough money under this Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There are, as I said before, a range of measures. When New Zealanders see wages increasing, as they are under this Government, they will feel and see the benefits of that, but we have said from day one of being in this Government: when you have nine years of neglect, and when we have entrenched social problems left to us by the previous Government, it takes time to turn those around, but we’re making a good start.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So does he accept that the cancelled tax cuts, the increased fuel taxes, and regulatory changes driving higher rents will have contributed to the slide in financial wellbeing shown to date?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, and, once again, we have the member believing that the way to increase New Zealanders’ incomes is to cut their taxes. It’s not; we should increase wages. That’s how we increase people’s incomes sustainably, and that’s what’s happening at the moment.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: In this, the year of delivery, is he proud that so many New Zealanders now have to turn to electricity and gas hardship grants under his Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Speaker, can the member repeat the question?

SPEAKER: Yes, and in order this time.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: In this year of delivery, is the Minister—is the Speaker saying I’m being ironic?

SPEAKER: It’s totally unnecessary. Ask the question properly.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he proud that two-thirds more New Zealanders are having to turn to electricity and gas hardship grants under this Government than when they started?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I’m proud of is a Government that does not turn people away, that actually says: if you’re entitled to support to pay the bills or to make sure that you can put food on the table, you’ve got a Government that cares and actually does that instead of sending those people away like his Government did.

Question No. 5—Health

5. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he believe that timely updates of the Ministry of Health’s New Zealand Health statistics webpage are important?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Yes, provided the data is accurate and presented in its appropriate context. But I think what’s more important to New Zealanders is delivering doctors’ visits cheaper to 600,000 people—including many that are $20 to $30 cheaper—employing 1,500 more new nurses, 600 more doctors, and over 500 more allied health workers; improved cancer care; and a new front-line mental health service. This Government is focused on what is important to New Zealanders in the area of health.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is the reason the web page entitled Services received: Acute and elective patient discharge volumes has not been updated because the number of elective surgeries has declined and is an embarrassment to the Government?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Elective surgeries are not the only measure of success, of course, in our public health service—

Hon Amy Adams: Answer the question.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: —but what New Zealanders want, and what I want—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. Amy Adams will stop criticising me. Start again.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: What New Zealanders want, and what I want, is that people get the appropriate care where they need it, when they need it. Overall, we’ve seen an increase in planned care, which covers electives as well as minor operations, including many eye procedures, some gynaecological procedures, and skin lesion removals. In 2018-19, there were almost 5,000 more planned care interventions than the previous year. We’re treating more people in the right clinical setting, which is more appropriate and more efficient.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Can he confirm that if the website had been updated, it would show that 5,775 fewer elective surgeries were performed in 2018-19 than in the previous year?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: What I can confirm is that, overall, we’re seeing an increase in planned care, which covers electives as well as minor operations, including many eye procedures, some gynaecological procedures, and skin lesion removals. There were almost 5,000 more planned care procedures over the most recent year. We are a Government that’s not interested in pumping up particular statistics by performing surgeries in more expensive settings, like the previous Government did with Avastin injections and skin lesion removals. We’re interested in making sure more New Zealanders get more care and that the health dollar is spent wisely.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was about elective surgery, not planned care, and was not addressed.

SPEAKER: I think it was addressed. I think it was addressed in the middle of a far-too-long answer.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Can he confirm that if the website had been updated, it would show that 18 of 20 DHBs performed fewer elective surgeries in that period than in the previous year?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I can confirm what I said in my original answer, which is that it is important that data is accurate, up to date, and provided in the appropriate context.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Why, despite finally releasing elective surgery data to me, does he refuse to allow the reports to be published on the Ministry of Health website?

SPEAKER: Order! There’s an assertion in that question which I think is unproven. I think the member can ask it again but without an assertion of a fact which has not been established.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: I’ll reword the question to bring it under the Standing Orders. Does he stand by his answer to written question No. 33445 that publication of acute and elective surgery data sets has been discontinued with effect from 1 July?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I don’t have that detail in front of me, but what I can confirm is that the member has used the data in the written parliamentary questions, and, I think—I’m advised; if I’m correctly advised on the particular dataset he’s referring to—represented it in a way that is not the best way of using that data. In fact, it’s a data set that the previous Government didn’t use themselves.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Why is he treating the public with such contempt over information that is such an important indicator of health sector performance?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I reject the assertion in that, and what I would say is that after nine long years of neglect, this Government is finally investing in our health services. We’re investing in better-quality cancer care. We’re investing in making sure more New Zealanders get more surgeries in the appropriate context, because we actually care about New Zealanders. We’re rebuilding our public health system. If you want to talk about contempt, I think you need to look in a mirror.

Question No. 6—Health

6. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What progress is being made in improving access to new cancer medicines?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Good news. Cancer in New Zealand is our leading cause of death, and improving our cancer care and control is an ongoing challenge. Yesterday, Pharmac announced its decision to fund a new leukaemia treatment, Venetoclax, and just last month, Pharmac confirmed that Alectinib will be funded for ALK positive advanced non - small-cell lung cancer, and Kadcyla for HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer. That means three new cancer drugs have been funded this year alone, and Pharmac is expected to make decisions on another two cancer medicines in coming weeks.

Angie Warren-Clark: What are the benefits of Venetoclax?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Venetoclax is used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, which is the most common form of leukaemia in New Zealand. I’m advised that it’s proven to give people more time without their leukaemia getting worse—what is referred to as progression-free survival. It also has improved overall survival rates compared with currently funded treatments. This medicine will make a real difference to the quality of life of around 150 New Zealanders and their families in the next year and around 230 the following year.

Angie Warren-Clark: How does improving access to cancer medicines fit into the Government’s wider plan for cancer care and control?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Medicines are critical, but they’re not the only part of cancer care and control. Our Cancer Action Plan is comprehensive, covering everything from prevention and screening to radiation treatment, surgery, medical oncology, and palliative care. We want to ensure New Zealanders living with cancer have access to high-quality care no matter who they are or where they live. It is why we funded 12 new linear accelerators and are putting them for the first time into Hawke’s Bay, Taranaki, and Northland, and we’re also making progress on strong central leadership through the interim Cancer Control Agency board, who met for the first time late last month. Modernising our approach to cancer care and control will take time, but we are making progress.

Question No. 7—Social Development

7. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by her policies and actions?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Social Development) on behalf of the Minister for Social Development: Yes.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has the number of people stuck on the dole for over 12 months increased by over 15 percent since your Government took office?

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to invite the member to ask a supplementary which relates to the primary question.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has the number of people stuck on the dole for over 12 months increased by over 15 percent under that Minister’s policies and actions?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: On behalf of the Minister, we know that the increase is mainly driven by population growth and a softer economic growth outlook in the short term, but we want to ensure that everybody who is able to is earning, learning, caring, or volunteering, and our welfare system has a key role to play in that. On this side of the House, we’re here to help everyone who is entitled to this support.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has your department seen reduced performance—

SPEAKER: Order! Try again.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has Minister seen reduced performance by the Ministry of Social Development for all three of her own key performance measures relating to improving employment outcomes?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: On behalf of the Minister, I know that the work that we are doing in this area is exemplary. This Government doesn’t want to see vulnerable people getting further into hardship. We’re working hard to ensure that—

Hon Scott Simpson: Wrong answer.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I apologise. I assure the member it will be worthwhile listening to it when I find the answer. On behalf of the Minister, we’re working hard to ensure that people who are entitled to our support receive it. On this side of the House, we want to ensure that people are supported to be learning, earning, caring, or volunteering, and this Government is working hard to do so.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has the proportion of people who go back on to benefit after 16 weeks increased every year under her watch, when it was falling under National’s?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: On behalf of the Minister, I absolutely reject the premise of that question. In fact, what I can say is that under this Government, we are increasing the ability for people to come off the benefit. Under that Government, I know that people were coming off the benefit and then going straight back on in 18 months’ time. So I completely reject the premise of that question.

Hon Louise Upston: Does she agree with her department that, and I quote, “Because case managers spend more time responding to increased hardship need, they spend less time exploring employment outcomes with clients”; and, if so, is she happy that her department is spending more time dishing out cash than supporting people into employment so they can earn their own?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: On behalf of the Minister, this Government doesn’t want to see vulnerable people getting further into hardship, so they are accessing the recoverable assistance that they require through the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). People need this type of support to ensure that they can access the recoverable assistance that they’re eligible for through the Ministry of Social Development. People who are seeking employment also need to be supported through all stages of that, and that may mean that they have to access support through the Ministry of Social Development. I know, from the work I see done on the ground, that our MSD employment support is absolutely extraordinary. It’s getting more people into work. We’ve increased the numbers of jobs by 92,000 jobs in New Zealand, and people who need the support are getting it, as they should do.

Question No. 8—Trade and Export Growth

8. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister for Trade and Export Growth: What progress has New Zealand made on trade agreements to help our primary sector and other vital exporters?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police) on behalf of the Minister for Trade and Export Growth: We are making excellent progress. This Government is working hard to make trade easier for our exporters and to strengthen our economy. Just yesterday, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern announced that we have secured a free-trade agreement (FTA) upgrade with China—with China. The FTA upgrade ensures that our trade agreement will remain one of the best that any country has with China. This is great news for our exporters, including those in the agricultural sector, who are getting top prices for their food and fibre products into China. More good news—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon STUART NASH: Leaders of—

SPEAKER: No. Order! I’ve just had enough of inane interjections from the Leader of the Opposition.

Hon STUART NASH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Leaders of 16 countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) have completed negotiations on the text, as well as reaching agreement on virtually all market access issues between 15 countries. This is a significant milestone and is strategically and commercially important for New Zealand.

Dr Deborah Russell: How will these successes, including the upgraded agreement and new trade agreement, specifically benefit exporters?

Hon STUART NASH: China is New Zealand’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade recently exceeding $32 billion. Our farmers are getting record prices for their meat and other products into China. The Government’s latest trade deal will help underpin our exporters’ work and support a strong, robust economy. The China FTA upgrade will reduce compliance costs, saving New Zealand exporters millions of dollars each year; include strong commitments to promote environmental protections; and ensure that, by 2024, New Zealand will have the best access to China for dairy products of any country. The upgrade will also mean that 99 percent of New Zealand’s $3 billion wood and paper trade to China will have preferential access over a 10-year implementation period.

Dr Deborah Russell: What reaction has he seen to the recent trade announcements?

Hon STUART NASH: The trade announcements have been received warmly both here and by our trading partners. Independent observers say—and I quote—“It’s a big win for the PM”—Richard Harman. And another quote: “a political win for the PM”—Audrey Young. And another quote: “The PM is a rock star.”—US national security adviser Robert O’Brien. And another quote: “historical 24 hours for New Zealand trade”—Employers and Manufacturers Association.

SPEAKER: Order! I think that’s gone beyond the point of ministerial responsibility.

Hon Todd McClay: Can the Minister confirm that his office phoned New Zealand agricultural exporters and their associations asking them to put out supportive statements in as far as the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday?

Hon STUART NASH: What I can confirm is that the first free-trade agreement was signed in 2008, the second upgrade was signed in 2019—I have absolutely no idea what happened in the nine years in between.

Hon Todd McClay: Well, that’s evident; you were in Opposition. Will the Minister commit to holding out for the same agricultural access under the European Union FTA or with India under RCEP, particularly in dairy, as New Zealand exporters received under the China FTA?

Hon STUART NASH: Well, what I can say is that the reason I’m answering this question is because the Hon Damien O’Connor and the Hon David Parker are overseas at the moment talking to our trade partners about securing free-trade agreements—extremely hard-working trade Ministers.

Hon Todd McClay: Well, can the Minister confirm that the agricultural market access offer made by the European Union was so disappointing that New Zealand officials now don’t know what to do; and, if not, will the Minister table the EU market access offer in the spirit of openness and transparency?

Hon STUART NASH: I’m surprised that that member is being so negative. In fact, I suspect he should take advice from Audrey Young—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I think it’s unnecessary to continue in that line. The member is getting pretty close to being misleading.

Question No. 9—Transport

9. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: Is it correct that he said “there were a couple of reckless things said during the election” at the 2018 Informa New Zealand Rail conference; if so, what were those reckless things?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Yes, at the June 2018 Informa New Zealand Rail conference. An example is former transport Minister Simon Bridges when he said that National’s 10 second-generation four-lane roads of national significance were expected to cost around $10.5 billion, despite many of them having had no costings done by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and some of them not even being NZTA projects. A further example was when Simon Bridges said that NZTA was contracting a new route for the Manawatū Gorge replacement and that a decision would be made by the end of that year. After no such action under the last Government, we’re getting on with it, and construction is expected to start early next year.

Chris Bishop: Does he accept that when he said “there were a couple of reckless things said during the election”, he was referring to the promise to roll out light rail to Mount Roskill by 2021?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No, it was a light-hearted quip at the expense of politicians during election campaigns, such as the “ghost roads” that the National Party promised during the last election but had absolutely no way of funding.

Chris Bishop: Why was the Auckland light rail ministerial oversight group asked only in July 2019—nearly two years after the Government took office—to confirm the Government’s desired outcomes from the light rail project?

SPEAKER: Order! Order! There’s no link, other than a passing one, to the original question or the answers from the Minister.

Chris Bishop: Are there any other promises in the transport portfolio that he would now like to describe as reckless; and, if so, what are they?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No, not under this Government, but there is a long list under the former Government, and I’m happy to provide that to the member.

Chris Bishop: When will light rail begin to Mount Roskill?

SPEAKER: Well, the member can keep on wasting his supplementaries, but that’s no more in order than the previous one I ruled out.

Hon Simon Bridges: Too hard.

SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Simon Bridges: I stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Why was that question ruled out? It seemed quite a reasonable question.

SPEAKER: Because there’s a very simple requirement for supplementaries, and that is that they relate to the question or the answer, and two of the supplementaries didn’t.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, if I may—

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. I can probably explain it a bit more carefully. If the question had been more specific and had related to promises made in the election campaign by the Government, then I might have ruled them in order. But, as the member knows, it was a non-specific question and it received an answer which did not relate to policy announcements or comments made during the election campaign by any of the parties that make up or support the Government. As a result of that, the member did not have a hook on which to hang the supplementary. So, if he wanted to ask those supplementaries, he should have asked a primary question which was a direct question and not one of that sort. Can I make a suggestion? There are—well, only one of them is in the House at the moment—a couple of members on the National Party front bench who have quite a lot of experience in asking questions from Opposition, and can I suggest that they provide a tutorial to other members. [Interruption] Order!

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. So, then, are you saying that the last two supplementaries—just for everyone’s understanding—were both out of order?

SPEAKER: Not the last two; it was the last one and the third to last one.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The immediate supplementary prior to the last one asked the Minister whether any of his policies were, as he has recently described, “reckless”—or however that might be. He answered to that “No” and then offered a suggestion that there were numerous examples of the previous Government’s policies that he could have used. The last question you ruled out was: “When will the light rail to New Lynn commence?” Now, if he said that nothing he has previously said about his own policies was reckless or inappropriate, why couldn’t he answer that question?

SPEAKER: Because I felt that the more general question about whether his policies came within the general ambit of the primary question was fair but that, having had a “No”, then at that point there’s not a hook there. Grant Robertson will stand, withdraw and apologise for the interjection that was made during Mr Brownlee—or if it was another member. I think it was Mr Robertson who interjected. Well, who was it?

Hon Chris Hipkins: It might have been me.

SPEAKER: Was it Mr Hipkins? He will withdraw and apologise.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Thank you. We don’t interject during points of order.

Question No. 10—Energy and Resources

10. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Is the Government investigating geothermal resources for electricity generation on the West Coast of the South Island?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Investment in any particular electricity generation site is the purview of private electricity generation developers. However, I do note the Government is supporting research in science into geothermal resources across the country through a range of funding mechanisms—including, for example, through the Endeavour Fund and GNS Science’s $10 million programme on geothermal research. Alongside this investment, we’ve also allocated $20 million into an advanced energy technology platform and $27 million into the National New Energy Development Centre based in New Plymouth. Both these investments have the potential to explore opportunities associated with New Zealand’s geothermal potential. And, of course, any commercial business exploring geothermal resources can claim any R & D component through the 15 percent research and development tax incentive.

Jonathan Young: So if there are proven fields on the West Coast of the South Island, what confidence can New Zealanders and West Coasters have that a geothermal power station would be approved when a small hydro scheme on the West Coast was recently declined?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The member will have to be more specific as to what he means by “approved”. Is it a question about a resource consent? If it is, I suggest he put the question to the Minister for the Environment.

Jonathan Young: Does she accept the argument that wind turbines or geothermal power stations have a greater visual and environmental impact than the recently declined Waitaha hydro scheme?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I would have to see some more detail of what the member is asking, but I think what we do see is that across New Zealand we have a range of investment—in fact, over $650 million worth of investment this year—that has gone into renewable energy projects. They are across a range of different sources, geothermal and wind, and I welcome them all.

Jonathan Young: Well, what does the Minister say to the West Coast community, who want to develop electricity generation in their region in order to reduce what are some of the highest electricity prices in the country?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Any community can put together a community electricity generation plan and go through relevant consenting processes.

Question No. 11—Building and Construction

11. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What recent reports has she seen about changing trends in New Zealand housing?

Hon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction): Last week, Stats New Zealand released its monthly building consents information, showing a 45-year high for building consents for new dwellings and a 22 percent increase in the number of consents for high-density housing. This includes apartments, town houses, flats, and retirement village units. This is excellent news, and it shows the Government is delivering the right environment for Kiwis to build more homes and to build up.

Paul Eagle: How does this level of building consents compare to previous years?

Hon JENNY SALESA: The demand for high-density housing has contributed to this 45-year high for the total number of new homes consented. The figure of 36,446 new dwelling consents is up 12 percent from the previous year, showing real progress on delivering the homes we need. Each one of these consents represents a young couple or individual moving into their first home or apartment, a family getting off the waiting list, or an older person downsizing into something more affordable in their community.

Paul Eagle: How’s the Government delivering the right environment for the industry to build more and to build up?

Hon JENNY SALESA: We’re tackling the longstanding issues that are challenging the building and construction sector, which include some of the following: amending the Building Act to allow more innovative and efficient building, amending the eight sections in the building code—the HD eight—to improve support for high-density housing, getting thousands more young people into the construction sector through apprenticeships, and ensuring a pipeline of work which provides more certainty in the building and construction sector.

Question No. 12—Transport

12. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Associate Minister of Transport: Why was it only after an intervention from the Ombudsman that she released information in the public interest about her 26 March letter to the Minister of Transport, and does she stand by her view stated in that letter that work on rapid transit should be prioritised ahead of a second Mount Victoria tunnel?

SPEAKER: With the one amendment—I think the member knows.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Transport): With respect to the first part of the question, I note that I did release information in the public interest regarding the letter prior to the Chief Ombudsman’s opinion. That took the form of responses to oral questions in the House and answers to written parliamentary questions. The information released in the subsequent statement was entirely consistent with earlier information, and the Ombudsman’s decision states that. I absolutely stand by Cabinet’s decision to prioritise the roll-out of new bus lanes, rapid transit, and safe walking and cycling because that will deliver more reliable buses. It will make the city easier to get around, and it was what Wellingtonians clearly stated that they wanted to be the priority in the Let’s Get Wellington Moving consultation.

Nicola Willis: Well, does she agree with the Ombudsman that statements she made in the House about the letter have “generated significant public and parliamentary debate, as well as confusion, public disquiet and speculation.”, and will she apologise for her lack of openness and transparency?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: In response to the first part of the question, I agree with the Ombudsman that I could have been clearer, but I would note that members of the Opposition, and particularly that member, were directly responsible for false speculation and whipping up a lot of concern and confusion about the issue.

Nicola Willis: Does she stand by her statement on Facebook on 31 October that “National is lying and spinning” in relation to her letter; and, if so, what were the lies she was referring to?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: In so far as I have ministerial responsibility, I do believe that National has had a habit of misleading, and that is true with respect to the decision of the Ombudsman, because the Ombudsman said, and I quote, “my opinion is that the Ministers were entitled to withhold a copy of the letter in order to maintain the effective conduct of public affairs through the free and frank expression of opinions between Ministers,”. That was the decision of the Ombudsman, and I stand by it.

Nicola Willis: Would she support a resequencing of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving projects to get the second Mount Victoria tunnel under way sooner, as recommended by officials; and if not, why not?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: That’s a hypothetical question, but I would say that the reason why the Government is prioritising rapid transit is because it will move eight times more people than two additional lanes through the Mount Vic tunnel. What the public have said—and I think that the member hasn’t actually read the feedback from the public on Let’s Get Wellington Moving. There is overwhelming support for public transport, overwhelming support for mass transit, and overwhelming support for reducing congestion by reducing the number of the cars in the city, by reducing dependency of people on their vehicles, and by providing cost-effective alternatives like mass transit. I know that the National Party has a long history of opposing public transport like the Northern Busway, electrification of the Auckland rail network—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will not allow any such direct comment about another party made in a question; why is it acceptable in an answer?

Hon Grant Robertson: Mr Speaker, obviously it’s your power to rule on that matter. I would note that the Minister was subject to a continuous barrage of interjections, which related to anything from party political matters to other matters, and I think in that context it was fair enough.

SPEAKER: Yes, and I think she was being asked to differentiate between policy approaches as part of the question. She was being asked to change her view towards a position that’s been enunciated by another party. I think the Minister was getting pretty close to a finish, though.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That does not give the Minister, or any other Minister answering a question, the right to make a blanket statement about their own personal views on this party’s policy. Her comment was, “I know for a long time.” That does not relate, surely, to the last two years that this particular issue of the Wellington roading network or transport network has been subject to questioning in this House.

SPEAKER: No, and I think it’s a longstanding process in this House that Ministers take responsibility for their answers. It’s not my job to comment on their accuracy. If something is clearly not a fact, and can be proven as such, there are ways of bringing it up with me, but I have seen a series of Speakers’ rulings in the past, including those from my immediate predecessor, which indicate that, basically, if members disagree with answers to supplementary questions, there’s not very far that they can go.

Bills

Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I move, That the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Since I introduced the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill into the House five months ago, the Earth experienced its hottest month on record. Tens of thousands of people, led by those too young to vote, marched in our streets to demand action to stem the climate crisis, and councils across the country declared a climate emergency and have started deploying the resources to deal with it. A clear majority of New Zealanders, right across the political spectrum, are increasingly concerned about climate change and are looking to this Parliament for the strongest possible signal that the political leadership of this country is united in our response to the climate crisis.

It is within this context that I welcome the bill back from select committee and into the House for its second reading. The Environment Committee have performed a thorough consideration of this bill, and I would like to thank all members of that committee for their efforts. In particular, I’d like to thank the chair, Dr Duncan Webb, the former chair, Dr Deborah Russell, the Opposition’s climate change spokesperson, the Hon Scott Simpson, and former spokesperson, Todd Muller. This bill is much improved as a result of all of their efforts.

The primary purpose of this bill is to provide a framework for New Zealand to develop and implement clear and stable climate change policies that contribute to the global effort under the Paris Agreement to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to prepare for, and adapt to, the effects of climate change. The bill establishes a Climate Change Commission to provide independent expert advice on the transition to a low-emissions economy and a nation resilient to the effects of climate change, and to hold this and all future Governments to account for progress.

The bill sets in statute an emissions reduction target for reducing greenhouse gases by 2050. The target has two components: one an emissions reduction goal for biogenic methane and another for all greenhouse gases. The bill establishes a system of emissions budgets to step progressively towards the 2050 target and enable policy settings to adapt to within a predictable framework. Once an emissions budget has been set and notified, the bill places an obligation on the Government to prepare a plan that includes policies and strategies to ensure that the emissions budget is met.

The commission will prepare annual reports that track New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and removals and track progress towards emissions budgets. The commission will also prepare a report after the end of each budget period that determines whether the emissions budget has been achieved and evaluates the success of the emissions reduction plan. The bill requires the commission to prepare a national climate change risk assessment every six years to evaluate risks to New Zealand from current and future effects of climate change. In response to each risk assessment, the bill requires the Minister to produce a national adaptation plan to set up the Government’s plan to respond to the effects of climate change.

The bill also enables the Minister to require certain organisations to provide information on climate change adaptation. This provision is intended to improve our understanding of New Zealand’s preparedness for dealing with the effects of climate change and will be used to inform the development of the risk assessment, the adaptation plan, and the subsequent progress reports on this plan.

The Environment Committee received over 10,000 written submissions and undertook 29 hearings across the country, where they listened to 800 individuals, organisations, and groups express their views on the bill. The committee heard from parents, students, scientists, farmers, academics, health professionals, businesses, industry representatives, activists, iwi, local government, former MPs, and more. I want to thank all those New Zealanders who took the time—many for the first time ever—to submit at select committee. Your thoughtful contributions and your courage of conviction have been immensely helpful and enabled the committee to develop a stronger and more durable bill across a range of areas.

First, in response to submitters who wanted to see the purpose statement reference the bill’s adaptation functions, the bill has been amended to include adaptation in the purpose statement. This will send a clear signal to decision makers that preparing for, and adapting to, the effects of climate change is of fundamental importance.

Second, the bill will now require the commission to have regard for the Crown/Māori relationship, Te Ao Māori, and specific impacts on iwi and Māori when performing all its functions and duties and exercising its powers to assist the Crown to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Ministry for the Environment, with support from Te Arawhiti, will develop guidance for how the commission should engage with Māori.

Third, the purpose of emissions budgets in the bill will now include a reference to the need for New Zealand to contribute to global efforts to limit the average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This will align emissions budgets with the overall purpose of the bill and reinforce the need for decision makers to consider the global response to climate change when determining the level of emissions budgets.

Fourth, to ensure that we strike the balance between emissions reductions and removals, the bill now allows the Climate Change Commission to consider the form of the target in its reviews, including what the target should be and how the target should be met, including the use of offshore mitigation or domestic forestry offsets.

Fifth, when preparing advice on emissions budgets and emission reductions plans, the bill has been amended to require the commission to have regard to the implication and potential implications of land-use change on communities. This will ensure that impacts on communities are taken into account as the Government makes decisions on the role of emissions reduction and removal options and how impacts can be managed to achieve a just transition.

Sixth, emissions from international aviation and shipping are an important consideration globally. Although they are in the remit of processes that are parallel to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a number of countries are now starting to include these emissions in their policy frameworks. The bill has therefore been amended to enable the commission to provide advice to Government on whether emissions from international shipping and aviation should be accounted for in emissions budgets and the target—and, if so, how—when it undertakes its review of the 2050 target. That will allow the Government to decide at that point if these emissions should be brought into the scope of the emissions budget and target.

Seventh, to ensure consistency of Government policy with our climate change objectives, the bill has been amended to remove the clause that allowed public decision makers to exclude the 2050 target or an emissions budget from their decision making without the risk that those decisions could be invalidated. This should allow for common law to evolve over time. In addition, the emissions reduction plan the budget is required to produce in response to each emissions budget has been added as a permissive consideration that decision makers can have regard to when exercising their public functions.

Finally, to ensure that the commission has access to the requisite information it needs to support the effective operations of its functions, the bill now affords the commission the authority to request information on climate change adaptation from reporting organisations. This amendment will ensure that the commission is not reliant on the Minister for the information that it needs to perform its adaptation functions.

The improvements that I have outlined are important ones. The Environment Committee’s findings confirm that the bill will establish the regulatory architecture needed to continue the transition to a low-emissions economy and a nation with the resilience to adapt to the effects of climate change. It will provide stability and predictability for New Zealanders today and into the future.

I would like to remind members of this House that the window of opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of catastrophic climate change is very narrow and closing fast. We, as the elected representatives of New Zealanders, have a duty of care to them, their children, and their grandchildren to take that opportunity before that window closes. We have led the world before in nuclear disarmament and in votes for women, and now we need to lead again. I urge members to support this bill so that we may deliver a just, inclusive, and sustainable future for all New Zealanders. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to thank the Minister for giving a very good and comprehensive overview of the working of the select committee that got us here to the second reading of this bill this afternoon. The Environment Committee worked very hard and very diligently, and we had to because we were working to an incredibly tight time frame that was imposed, I think unnecessarily, by this Government. As the Minister said, there were over 10,000 submissions, and the committee heard more than 800 oral submissions presented in person, many of them around the countryside when the committee was sitting in subcommittee.

It was rushed unnecessarily, and the purpose for the rushing of this seems to have been now made clear. It was obvious in recent weeks that the timetable the Government wanted to complete this legislation was so that the Prime Minister could go to APEC in Chile in mid-November and then that the climate change Minister could also go to Chile to COP-25 and wave around a piece of legislation and say we’ve delivered—little New Zealand has delivered. Well, of course, since then, events have overtaken those things and both those conferences in Chile have been cancelled, but we still seem to be proceeding now at breakneck speed to get this bill through the House. Today, we have the second reading; tomorrow, the committee of the whole House; and then, on Thursday, the third and final reading.

When the bill was first introduced, the National Party supported it at first reading, and we did so on the basis of a speech that was made by our leader, Simon Bridges, back two years ago at Fieldays at Mystery Creek, where he set out the parameters upon which we wanted to engage with the Government in an open and bipartisan way to try to achieve the objectives of bipartisanship on this bill. I have to say that those principles that we outlined are still the same principles that we hold to today in considering the second reading of this bill.

Now, I do want to acknowledge that in the course of discussions between introduction and second reading today, there have been continuous and ongoing discussions between my predecessor, Todd Muller; the Minister; and now myself, and, indeed, our leader.

I appreciate the Minister being willing to engage on those matters, because it’s still our view—it’s still our view—that there is benefit in the establishment of an independent science-led commission that will advise Governments, present and future, on what steps and what policies need to be taken to achieve the commitments that we made at Paris. So we are at a position where there are several changes after select committee—notwithstanding the changes that the Minister has indicated and that have occurred at select committee, there are still several concerns that we have. They’re the concerns that have been raised not only by members of the National Party on the select committee but also by a large number of members of the public during their submissions, written and oral, and also by people such as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. So there are several changes that we are seeking and will continue to seek as this bill proceeds.

What we are led to believe is that the coalition Government is at one on this bill and that New Zealand First has agreed to support the conditions of this bill as reported back by select committee, and that would appear to be the case. The Rt Hon Winston Peters no less has said publicly that his party will support this bill; that they will endorse, for instance, a methane target reduction by 2050 of somewhere between 24 and 47 percent, knowing full well the implications of what that might mean for agricultural New Zealand, and knowing full well what that might mean in terms of our competitiveness as an export nation reliant on the income for our collective wealth as a nation largely on the back of agriculture and exporting primary products from New Zealand.

So we still do have these several concerns and I want to take a moment just to outline them in broad terms, because I think that they are relevant as we proceed through this debate. The first one is that we feel strongly that actually it shouldn’t be politicians that set the targets for reductions in methane. We support the split-the-gas approach, by the way. We think that’s a good initiative and a good, sensible piece of practicality. But why should it be that the politicians—who, let’s face it, other than the member Shane Jones, are not the experts that they might think they are. Now, the member Shane Jones is a well-renowned expert on all matters, not the least of which is his own importance. But he’s not an expert on what the biological methane targets should be by 2050 and what they need to be in terms of a reduction over that period of time.

So it’s our view that it should actually be the role of the commission, that it should be this expert-led, independent, science-based commission that has been established to give advice to the Minister and to future Governments. We think that they should provide information on that. So we will at the committee of the whole House be putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper that reflects that change that we seek.

The second area where we seek to make change is in relation to food protection. We would like to see the words used in the Paris Agreement that provide for food production to be protected in terms of emissions reductions. We’d like to see those words reflected in the purpose clause of the bill and they currently are.

The third point is that we want to make sure that initiatives and steps taken by New Zealand are in step with those taken by other global players, by other countries, particularly the signatories to the Paris Agreement. We would like to see stronger consideration for global action and review of global action, particularly if other countries a few years down the track are not making the same sacrifices, are not making the same changes, are not making the same impacts that we will be taking if this bill is passed.

The fourth area is that we think there should be a stronger focus on the economic impacts that the commission must consider when providing advice to the Minister and Governments on what emissions targets should be and what the impacts of those targets will be in terms of actions for individual New Zealanders, for their families, and for their businesses.

The fifth point is that we are worried, as so many New Zealanders are, about the ability to offset forestry or use forestry as an offset and the potential for out-of-control afforestation. Now, there are some limits and the Minister has made mention of that. We don’t think that the bill goes far enough in supporting those.

We take as a sixth point the sensible suggestion made by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that the emissions budgets be split between biogenic methane and carbon dioxide, as recommended by the commissioner. We think that’s a sensible addition and should be made.

Then the last point that we think the bill should include is some sensible application of significant research and development investment in helping to provide solutions, particularly for agricultural emissions. When the select committee travelled to Europe a year or so ago, most of the countries we visited when we asked what they were doing in terms of agricultural emissions said to us, “Well, look, agricultural emissions are so far down our list of priorities that we hope by the time we get to them, New Zealand will have solved those problems for us.”

And so we think that some very serious commitment to investment in finding the tools, finding the technology, finding the science that will give our farmers the answers to reduced emissions actually not only helps the New Zealand economy and New Zealand farmers but helps the world. We think if there is a potential for New Zealand to be a world leader in an area of climate change leadership, then it is in providing answers to agricultural emissions questions.

So these are all issues that we take seriously and we will be prosecuting further on. My colleagues will go into more detail further into this debate. But I think what’s important for the House to know is that the National Party has entered into this bill on the basis of good faith, on a sensible, balanced, pragmatic approach where we want to engage with the Government to try to achieve a result that can be, if it could possibly be, bipartisan and across the House. So it’s for that reason, given the reservations that we still have, that the National Party will be supporting this bill at second reading.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe, e Te Mana Whakawā. Well, it’s great to hear that the National Party will be supporting this bill at second reading at last. The National Party have been sitting on this issue for nine long years and they gutted the emissions trading scheme, and this Government—this coalition Government—has come together to pick up the wreckage of climate change that has been left behind.

To suggest we are doing this now because it’s important, it’s critical, and it’s urgent—now, I must say I was privileged and honoured to chair the hearings at the Environment Committee but it is entirely wrong to say that it was a rushed process. It was a careful and considered process and it does a great disservice to this House and to that member’s colleagues who sat assiduously throughout hours and hours of hearings and listened carefully to those submitters and to the officials who helped us meticulously go over iteration after iteration of this legislation to make it what it is today, which, as the Minister for Climate Change kindly said, is a much improved piece of legislation.

This was not a rushed process but that’s not to say it’s not urgent. It’s not a time to delay and defer any more. Thank goodness, at least, the Opposition isn’t denying—at least, most of them aren’t denying—any more. So it’s an important piece of legislation. I think that this is the first piece of legislation which is going to put obligations on a Government 30 years down the track. We’re not looking forward just a few years—not one, two, three, or even 10; this is a 30-year piece of legislation, and beyond.

We had 10,200 submissions, and can I say, I want to make it clear to submitters that they were all considered. One of the really gratifying things about it was that many submitters came with different views but they came, almost universally, with an acceptance that something had to happen now. Whether they were farmers talking about how they recognised that farming practice had to change, that land-use change would occur—but the farmers, to their credit, came to talk about how that should be managed. Not to oppose it, but to talk about management. Industry came, and, again, recognised that zero carbon, zero greenhouse gases in 2050 is a non-negotiable target: it’s got to happen. We have an existential threat, and it must happen. They wanted to talk about how we get there, how we move along that track, how we innovate, how we manage the changes that are going to be necessary. City folk came along as well, plenty of them; in their droves. They know they have to change as well. The economy—we saw the projections, we saw the economic modelling. We know this is going to have an economic impact, and people’s lives and their lifestyles will have to change. That is a good thing.

So I want to say to those people that we went and heard from in Christchurch, Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Nelson, Tauranga, Dunedin, and Wellington that you were listened to and a lot of the things you said have found themselves in this next version of the bill. But what is clear is that we were told to get on with it, that we have a strong mandate and a mandate to be ambitious, to be zero carbon, and to go for that 1.5 degrees Celsius warming target, to keep warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius, because we know change outside of that would be truly catastrophic. It would have consequences for New Zealand and elsewhere. I want to say that New Zealand is leading here, as we should, because we can. Because New Zealand has the resources, the ability, the knowhow, and the political will to get on with it. We’ve got to do not only our fair share but more than, because our Pacific neighbours need our leadership and they need our help.

So there are some major changes in this bill. One I want to go straight to, that was touched on by the Minister, is the fact that public bodies, local authorities, departments, and Crown entities can take into account targets and budgets. That is important because when a Crown entity of some kind comes to make a decision, it is entirely appropriate that they can say, “We want to factor climate change into our decision”—whether it be a purchasing decision, whether it be a management decision, whether it be where they buy their paper from, they can take into account climate change.

Importantly—that section is new section 5ZK, inserted by clause 8—new section 5ZK(2) was removed from the bill. Now, that removal is important because that clause said that a failure to take into account does not render any decision void or illegal or ultra vires or whatever. Now, we have deferred—the Environment Committee considered this and thought it appropriate to defer that question to the courts. So it is now open to the courts to look at what effect not taking climate change, budgets, and emissions targets into account might have on any particular decision. It is possible that a court could find that the decision was so climate-relevant that the entity ought to have taken that into account and it was wrong for them not to. So I leave that to the courts, and I trust that the courts and judges will look at that very carefully indeed.

Another important insertion into this bill is found in new section 5L(ea), inserted by clause 8, and that is the recognition of the impact on Māori and iwi: that, in making decisions, the commission must consider—mandatory consideration—the Crown/Māori relationship, Te Ao Māori, and the effects on iwi. We know that many of these effects—economic impacts, land-use changes—will affect our Māori communities more than others. I’m very glad that we were able to listen and put that in there.

Also, a lot of submissions—many, many submissions, and I’m not going to name them, and a lot from, I think, the Extinction Rebellion group—identified maritime and aviation fuels as a really important point. Whilst there is a set of negotiations going on at an international level, they were quite right to point out that at the present time there is simply a gap, and so new section 5OA, inserted by clause 8, says we’re going to relook at that. We want to give the commission the ability to come back and say: “That problem still exists. It’s a large part of the carbon emissions and we want to be able to bring them back into this domestic scheme.” So I do think that that’s a very important change, and, again, the submitters had a real impact there.

And what’s more—the other thing that I really want to emphasise is that we listened to submitters who were concerned about the impact on communities and land-use change, because land-use change is important and, along with that, the economic impacts. The National Party—and I’m really glad that they’re supporting this bill at second reading—have really pushed for explicit recognition of economic impact. Well, throughout this bill the impact on communities, on their incomes, on how they do business, can be appropriately taken into account. It’s all there.

So I’m hopeful that we will get cross-party agreement on this as we come through the subsequent readings of this bill, because this is an issue which requires political consensus, and any party that takes this matter seriously, recognises the urgency of the problem, and is prepared to make hard decisions and ambitious choices, absolutely we need to be on board with. But it’s not time for being weak-kneed or for any delay.

The really important thing, of course—the centrepiece of this bill, which we all agree on—is the independence of the Climate Change Commission and the fact that this body will be giving clear, strong guidance to the Government about what steps need to be taken. That needs to be absolutely preserved and promoted. I’m hopeful that we will indeed get to the third reading of this bill and we’ll be unified on it, because this zero carbon bill is absolutely at the centrepiece of what this Government and this House needs to do, not for today, not for tomorrow, but for 10, 30, 50 years and for ever. I commend the bill to the House.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Dr Duncan Webb, who is the chairperson of the Environment Committee, has ended with quite a considered contribution, but I note at the commencement of his speech, he was quick to forget that it was in fact a National-led Government that signed up to the Paris Agreement, that it was a National-led Government that invested heavily in an electric vehicle (EV) fleet and EV technology, that it was a National-led Government that invested heavily and promoted renewable energy in the electricity sector, and that it was a National-led Government that, again, invested very heavily in our natural environment in cleaning up waterways—hundreds of millions of dollars—and investing in Predator Free so that our natural landscapes could flourish and, equally, contribute to reducing carbon in our atmosphere. So this Government should acknowledge the contribution that the previous Government made.

With that, we on this side of the House have taken our commitment to climate change seriously throughout this process, undertaking due diligence as we have gone through the select committee process. I want to first of all thank the officials. Certainly, I did not come into this as a climate change expert; I certainly don’t leave as a climate change expert. I want to thank the officials’ patience for taking us through some very detailed and technical information, answering our questions so well and helping us understand the full ramifications of what this architecture bill could bring about. As my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson has said, we do rise in support but we do have some concerns about the bill moving forward.

We heard from 800 individuals and organisations throughout the width and breadth of this country. Certainly on this side of the House, we took it very, very seriously. We heard from students who are passionate about climate change, we heard from industry, we heard from activists, and we heard from farmers. We acknowledge the anxiety that is out there with respect to climate change. Equally, on this side of the House, we acknowledge the anxiety that some industries and farmers feel as they have been isolated and alienated throughout this process. That is not fair, and that needs to be taken into account and acknowledged equally as we move forward. Nobody is denying that this country shouldn’t move together and do something about climate change. However, it is our contention that the so-called just transition needs to be measured and only move through at a pace in which everybody is comfortable and that we don’t unnecessarily pick winners and losers at this point in time. There is no point having an absolutely green country with no wealth to go with it where our people cannot live, cannot produce for their family and allow livelihoods moving forward. There is absolutely no reason to destroy New Zealand as we move forward.

So National has taken this process very, very seriously. We have been very respectful of people with opposing views who have submitted, but there is an underlying set of rationales that we have subscribed to as we have gone through this process. Our thinking is that this process must be a science-based approach and that we must have a focus on innovation and technology advancement and not solely be focused on reduction of consumption only. Again, that’s called picking winners and losers too early and moving at a pace that is out of step with our international friends and colleagues. We want to make sure that New Zealand is strong moving forward, in an economic sense, in a social sense, and, equally, in that environmental space. That, ultimately, comes back to the economic impacts. Often, a National Government gets hauled over the coals for being focused on the economics, but, quite frankly, if you do not have a strong economy, there is absolutely no way that you can invest in essential services that help people, and, of course, it is people, at the end of the day, that is that underlying necessity; it is people that we need to take care of moving forward.

So, look, this is a framework bill. The National Party agrees with the 2050 target, but we want to see more alignment with the Paris Agreement. We don’t support the methane target because that’s not based on good science and it certainly, at this stage, is tying our good farmers’ hands behind their backs with regards to food production, and as the Paris Agreement says, the protection of food production should be noted and looked at as we move forward as a global community. The other thing is that we certainly support the formation of an expert-led commission. That is important because we want decisions, we want plans for budgets moving forward, to be the most objective that they can be, based on good information, based on good science.

I have a couple of concerns that I want to pick up on before I conclude my contribution, and the first is this over-reliance on forestry as the panacea that is going to get us through this so-called crisis. We have looked throughout this process, at the select committee process, at economic modelling, at the tools that are currently available to us to reduce our targets and move towards the 2050 targets. Forestry is a main part of that.

What it boiled down to is that what we needed to do was basically plant out the size of the province of Otago in pine trees, finding suitable land throughout New Zealand, land conversion, to do that. In my mind what we’ve already seen with pine plantations taking off is a devastation of our rural communities. If you continue to plant pine forests you take away arable land from our farmers, who are the most efficient producers of food in the world; you devastate rural communities; families leave those towns, and that could mean that the local doctor ends up leaving; the teacher ends up leaving the rural school; the roll drops; and next thing you’ve got the school closing and rural communities are completely—

Hon Shane Jones: Scaremongering.

SARAH DOWIE: —devastated. It may come as a surprise to Mr Jones, but not all of us want to live in high-rises or in cities. Some of us want to live in the provinces, some of us want to live in rural communities, and some of us have lived a life off the land, conserving our land and producing some of the best food exported across the world, and they want to continue for generations to do that. It should be supported, certainly acknowledged in the Paris Agreement, that food production is a necessity and therefore we want to make sure that the framework that this bill puts in place acknowledges that there should be a cap on forestry and a cap on land-use change, at least some sort of strategy—

Hon Shane Jones: More regulation.

SARAH DOWIE: —behind it so that New Zealand’s way of life can be protected—

Hon Shane Jones: National Party red tape.

SARAH DOWIE: —across the main and that food production is protected, moving forward. That was certainly a sentiment illustrated by many submitters and it is something that needs to be looked at moving forward, acknowledged, and certainly not shouted down, Mr Jones, as something that is simply scaremongering.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to stand and take a call on this, the second reading of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill.

It’s a pleasure to be a member of the Environment Committee, and I’d just like to start my contribution this afternoon by thanking our previous chair, Dr Deborah Russell, who was absolutely fantastic to work with; our new chair of equal quality Dr Duncan Webb; all of the members for their contributions throughout this process; and particularly also too the officials who have worked diligently with us. It was noted in the previous member’s contribution—the member Sarah Dowie, who’s just resumed her seat—that we were given a great amount of expert advice, that this was a space for many of us where we had limited knowledge. The officials were very patient, ensuring that we had the information that was needed for us to progress this bill through the select committee process. Also, I would make note of all those who contributed to these important discussions on climate change.

I note that the Minister in his speech this afternoon has said that the select committee has done a grand job and that the bill is much improved because of this. So thank you to the Minister for those comments. We do believe that we all worked genuinely very well and very hard together to make those improvements so that we see this bill now fit for purpose.

There has been criticism of the zero carbon bill. Some of the farming community have said that they believe it actually goes way too far. However, on the other hand, environmentalists have feared that it doesn’t go far enough and that it won’t end up saving our planet. But this legislation, I believe, is ambitious, and it is far-reaching, and I believe that we have found and landed in the right place.

Limiting climate change to no more than 1.5 degrees over the next 30 years will become legally binding. We’ve had many commentators, particularly over the last year or so, who’ve actually missed the importance of farm emissions being included inside the legislation. What we’re doing in New Zealand is we’re actually including all the tough stuff in terms of the climate change strategy, the framework that we are looking to pass into legislation. In the UK, when the committee travelled there last year, we heard that over the 10 years that the UK has had their contract legislation they have just been knocking off all the low-hanging fruit in climate change. But, for New Zealand, we don’t have that luxury, because we’re already very high in terms of our renewable energy, so we don’t have those easy initiatives to get through. So we are going straight to the hard stuff and that’s something that I think the committee were well aware of. At 85 percent renewable already, we’re light years ahead of many other countries around the globe.

Nevertheless, it’s also very useful, I think, at this juncture to point out New Zealand First’s position when negotiating with our coalition and our confidence and supply partners about developing an enduring response to the challenge of our changing climate—weather events that we’ve seen, particularly in our own neighbourhood, in the Pacific. Where I live, near Warkworth, we have the largest Kiribati community. Why are they living in New Zealand? Because their island has seen the sea level come up through it. I was just at the Inter-Parliamentary Union last year up in Geneva, and Tonga called for an urgent debate on climate change, which I was honoured enough to chair. So we had Pacific Island nations all debating how important it is that we make this move.

We do acknowledge that the last National Government recognised this as well by signing up to the Paris Agreement in 2016 and committing us. They did tinker around the edges, taking a few tiny steps, so we’re really pleased now that we’re getting down to business and therefore no longer will the status quo be sufficient for us. It became untenable and so we had to seek, with our coalition agreement with Labour, the creation of an independent Climate Change Commission and also the introduction of the zero carbon bill.

We received a large number of submissions: 10,200 submissions. We heard oral evidence from 800 submitters across the country, in Christchurch, Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Nelson, Tauranga, Dunedin, and Wellington. There was huge interest in people having their say, and it was a privilege to be able to share the commitments on New Zealand for New Zealand First, and to have my colleague to help with the heavy lifting from our perspective. Mark Patterson was able to sit in on some of those subcommittees to hear concerns and thoughts from those submitters.

One of the things that I was particularly interested in was the level of engagement that we had. For example, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council in their submission were very clear that setting a clear target in law will provide much-needed certainty and clarity of direction, and they also talked about focusing on how they will reach their target as a region. So there is buy-in from our regions to this. They also commented that the agricultural sector will be important in a regional context and they noted that water security is a very important focus for them as well.

Some of the other submissions that I found interesting: we heard from one farmer who had been farming in the Waipukurau region for 103 years on that land, four generations of farmers, and they’ve already reduced their stock by 10 percent to become a more sustainable production unit. So already we are seeing where farmers are taking responsibility and making those changes as well. One of the other submitters was concerned where the bill will land for farmers, so they actually acknowledged that the split-gas approach was a very good thing. The Interim Climate Change Committee spoke to the committee, and one of the comments that they made, which I think was something that the entire committee agreed with, was that it was critical to depoliticise the commission and that the independent Climate Change Commission should be experts in their fields. I think that is something that we all, as a committee, agreed to.

We did make several changes to the bill, and certainly it has improved the bill. Several people have already acknowledged what those changes are, so I don’t want to relitigate too many of them, but I would like to speak to the one around consideration of technology. Now, we believe that the commission must consider, when performing its functions and duties, existing technology and anticipated technological developments, including the costs and the benefits to early adoption of these in New Zealand, and we made this recommendation that they need to consider the costs and the benefits of adopting new and existing technologies early. This will help particularly for our rural sector, the agricultural sector, to make the transition once these new technologies come on board, and I think we need to be forward-looking in terms of what those new technologies will be. At some point they will come on stream, and that will give hope to various sectors of our community. So we’re forward-looking. We are, basically, taking a positive approach to this and not being negative Nancys about it at all, unlike some on the other side of the House.

I’d just like to reiterate, finally, in conclusion—I turn my mind now to the long methane target, and I’d just like to make a comment on that. This is the methane that does not live long in the atmosphere. The emissions budgets leading up to 2030 will determine the actual target post-2030. Now, that’s as it should be, and the scaremongering around the long target is wrong. That scaremongering is damaging to the agricultural sector as it works with the Government to turn green into gold. I commend this bill to the House.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. Contrary to the views on the other side of the House and that they would have everyone believe, National are concerned about climate change. I am concerned about climate change. We understand the consequences of inaction. We understand the urgency of the world to come together to combat what is probably one of the, if not the most, significant issues of our time. National signed up to the Paris accord, an acknowledgment of the need for us to play our part as a good global citizen.

Hon Shane Jones: Sold out the cockies. Sold out the farmers. Went to Paris.

ERICA STANFORD: That member continually bellowing nonsense from the other side of the House should perhaps consider the amount of carbon dioxide spewing out of his mouth with every single obnoxious comment, and perhaps consider the effect of his own global warming, and perhaps shut it for five minutes and listen to this young woman who has something to say.

In 2017, we brought Lord Deben from the UK to speak about the experiences of the UK in setting up their own Climate Change Commission and to see how we could perhaps do that here in New Zealand to similar good effect. We have acknowledged for some time that the establishment of a climate commission, a body of independent, dispassionate experts to provide advice on how best New Zealand can wrestle down our emissions and decarbonise our economy, is broadly the right direction of travel, the right proposal.

We worked on this bill in a cross-party, collaborative manner for the good part of a year. National spokesperson Todd Muller, to my right here, worked very closely with James Shaw on this—as I say, for a good part of a year—to articulate National’s five key principles that our leader Simon Bridges articulated at Fieldays: that the approach must be science-based, that it must be technology-driven, that our response must be in keeping with our global trading partners, that we must offer long-term incentives to businesses and to consumers, and that we want to ensure that the economic impact is, of course, minimised so Kiwis who are already doing it tough are not overly burdened by this bill. Up until James Shaw went radio silence on us up to around six weeks prior to dropping the bill in the House, we had a good working relationship to get these principles embedded into the bill.

We broadly support the idea of a Climate Change Commission, outlined in the bill as reported back from the Environment Committee. I’m not sure that there are many who would vehemently oppose the setting up of a panel of experts to provide dispassionate advice to advise successive Governments on how we can best reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But the problem, in our view, is that this Government keep trying to forestall the work of the Climate Change Commission. Here they are in this very bill, setting up a panel of independent, dispassionate experts to advise on some very meaty technical issues, and yet the Government are pre-empting that work, firstly by banning oil and gas on the one hand—a decision that would have been perfectly handled by an independent Climate Change Commission. They’ve got taxes on cars. Here in this bill, as reported back from select committee, they are proposing a methane reduction target by 2050 of 24 percent to 48 percent, a figure which was an indicative target in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and which was not to be used as a guide for individual countries’ reductions. Yet here we are, having it baked into the bill. This Government can’t help themselves but do the work of the Climate Change Commission—and very poorly, I might add. If they truly believed in a Climate Change Commission and the emissions budget process, they wouldn’t have been pre-empting all of the work of the Climate Change Commission.

There are some very complex issues to be taken into account, and we heard this from numerous submitters to the bill. Methane has a very different effect, because while it is a very potent gas—unlike carbon dioxide, which has thousands of years of a lifespan in our atmosphere—it has a lifespan of about 12 years. While methane from our agricultural sector does make up 50 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions in this country, it would make sense for the Climate Change Commission, a panel of dispassionate, independent experts, to advise successive Governments on how to reduce emissions from the sector. The commission would need to take into account the unique way the short-lived gas acts in our atmosphere and the ability of our agricultural sector to mitigate their emissions. They could investigate and advise on farmers’ ability to actually accurately measure emissions at the farm gate, the availability of technology to reduce their methane emissions, and the effect that any reduction would have on the sector, on our rural communities, and on our economy as a whole.

There were a number of submitters, both in support and opposing the bill, who, when asked by me on many occasions, and my colleagues, “Would it be better to have the Climate Change Commission set the methane target?”, for the most part, they all agreed. So in light of these comments by submitters, and with our firm view around the role of the commission in setting these targets, we will be proposing a Supplementary Order Paper, an amendment, that would propose the target for biological methane reduction be recommended by the independent Climate Change Commission. This is pragmatic, fair, and reasonable solution to what has been one of the most contentious parts of this bill, and an idea that was very well received by submitters as a way to move forward.

We can see from earlier examples of this Government trying to make climate change decisions on the hoof for purposes of image rather than actual climate change mitigation—these decisions end up quite often having the opposite effect. The Government’s own eventual advice suggested the oil and gas ban would, in fact, increase global emissions. The car tax wouldn’t have the desired effect. Here we are burning more coal, backing down on our promises to electrify the Government fleet. The Minister himself, James Shaw, is telling us that our greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise through to the mid-2020s. It has been a complete shambles, the way that this Government has had very little effect on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. So here we have the perfect opportunity for this Government to make better decisions. Despite National’s position on the select committee, they are sticking to their guns with that position that they know best when it comes to the methane targets, but we will be making the very strong argument at committee stage to have this target set by the independent Climate Change Commission.

The second thing I want to focus on in my contribution is the number of submitters that we saw who spoke to our select committee about their fears around the afforestation of our fertile farming land. They talked about the number of farms that have recently been bought up and converted into pine plantations. They spoke about the decimation of rural communities. They talked about the loss of teachers. They talked about the loss of their communities. They were emotional when they spoke. In some cases they broke down in tears. They spoke about the mental health of farmers and the pressure that these sales were having on farmers and their communities, and it’s something that we need to listen to—

Hon Shane Jones: You don’t know.

ERICA STANFORD: —despite Mr Jones’ continual bellowing.

One comment in particular stayed with me: she said, “Why should the polluters continue to pollute and transfer their dirty problem to the agricultural sector by having rural communities destroyed by mass-planting of farms in pines?” National members on the committee were very concerned to hear that the level of planting required to reach our zero carbon goal was 1.7 million hectares by 2050, and by 2070 we’d have to double that—another 1.7 million hectares just to maintain our zero carbon goal.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment shared our concerns, preparing a number of papers for us. He noted that his key concern was the absence of any effective mechanism for managing the risks of forestry offsets, and, in particular, he said that they, in fact, may be overused at the expense of achieving reductions in gross emissions, and that there was a real risk that their relative impermanence means that they will not actually provide the climate mitigation hoped for. He went on to say that, in his opinion, these risks were serious and would fundamentally compromise the purpose of the new framework. To this end, we will be proposing a Supplementary Order Paper at committee stage to ensure that the commission consider the appropriate use for forestry offsets.

As I said at the beginning, National broadly supports the idea of an independent Climate Change Commission to advise successive Governments so that we may set budgets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, wrestle down those emissions, and move towards a zero carbon economy. We have some quite major concerns about this bill, and we will set these concerns out in a number of Supplementary Order Papers that we will argue passionately for at committee stage. But, in the meantime, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Earlier this year, a 10-year-old Enoch led a whole range of students as they marched through Invercargill’s streets, demanding urgent action on climate change. Once the group of students got to the Invercargill City Council they were met by Mayor Tim Shadbolt, who asked them whether they needed a microphone. Enoch replied, “No we don’t, because our voices are already loud enough.” I think the thing is that across New Zealand over the last few months, New Zealanders’ voices have been similarly loud as they’ve come and talked to us as a select committee around the submissions on the zero carbon bill. Over the last few months we received about 10,200 submissions and we heard from around 800 submitters. Like many of the young people that spoke to us—like Enoch—what they were asking for was urgent action on climate change.

So just reading one of these submissions from Cashmere High School, what they said is, “The whole of Cashmere High School believes that the zero carbon bill aiming for zero carbon emissions by 2050 must be drastically altered to have any chance at reducing the catastrophic effects of climate change … the government needs to plan for a strong carbon bill so that we will have a strong future and a chance against climate change. If they were to not do this it would [directly disregard] the future of our youth.” They also talked about bringing carbon emissions to zero within the next 20 years, and also talked about the need for the agricultural industry to be properly included in the bill.

Similarly, we also heard from many in our primary sector. Many of them also supported a lot of the aspects of the bill, but a number of them also urged caution, and particularly around the methane targets. Just reading from Fonterra’s submission, they said, “The 2050 target for methane reduction is very ambitious and will be extremely challenging to meet with technology currently available. We support a 2050 methane target that is provisionally set at up to 24 percent net reduction from 2017. Regular reviews of this target must be based on scientific and economic analysis.”

So as a select committee we heard both sides in terms of making this bill much stronger and going much faster, but also from our primary sector, saying, “No, we need to stop and think about the science and what’s achievable.” So, as members of the Government side of the Environment Committee, we were happy with the targets as introduced in the bill because, basically, the 2050 methane target, and the range that was set, was set with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report of us staying within 1.5 degrees of warming.

The other thing is that the commission already has the opportunity to recommend changes to the targets when it reviews them in 2024-25, based on the best available evidence at the time. So there are those opportunities to review those targets at that point.

But, in the rest of my contribution, I’d just like to focus on some of the changes that we did incorporate within the recommendations for the bill in response to the feedback from submitters. There were quite a few submitters that were talking to us about reducing forestry offsets—for example, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association. What they were pointing out in their submission was their view that “Overly relying on trees can be risky … because trees are not permanent—they can be lost to fire, pests, and climate impacts.” In their view, while they supported tree planting, they thought that it was a poor substitute for stopping carbon emissions. Similarly, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment also expressed some concerns about forestry offsets and suggested possible legislative limits in terms of those offsets.

So in response to a lot of this feedback that we got, some recommended changes to the bill have been made. As Government members we feel that these adequately address those concerns. Some of those changes are around clause 8. In new section 5Q(1) this relates to reviewing the 2050 target, and in the addition of new section 5Q(1)(c) it states that as a result of reviewing the 2050 target, the commission may recommend a change to “the greenhouse gas emissions and removals to which the 2050 target … applies.” In this context, the removals it refers to includes emissions that are sequestered by forestry. The addition of new section 5Q(1)(d), inserted by clause 8, allows the commission to recommend changes to “how the 2050 target … may be met, including limits on removals [or] offshore mitigation.” So, again, what these amendments actually allow is the Climate Change Commission to recommend that those limits be placed on the removals by forestry—so already doing what many of the submitters have been asking for.

Then in clause 8, new section 5Z(2)(b) relates to the matters the administering commission must have regard to when advising on setting emissions budgets. An extra addition, 5Z(2)(b)(ixa), states: “the implications, or potential implications, of land-use change for communities:” This reflects the feedback that we’ve been getting from rural communities in terms of the impact that forestation may be having on their livelihoods and makes that an explicit requirement that needs to be taken into account. So it’s our view that it’s not appropriate to set hard limits in the primary legislation, but the independent Climate Change Commission needs to do some of that background policy work and then move forward, as per already allowed for in the bill.

We also had submissions requesting that we include international shipping and aviation into the bill. The committee acknowledged that that was actually important, but there were some uncertainties around the global situation in terms of where that’s currently at. So what we’ve recommended is adding a new requirement in new section 5OA that “The Commission must, no later than 31 December 2024, provide written advice to the Minister on whether the 2050 target should be amended to include emissions from international shipping and aviation (and, if so, how the target should be amended).”

I think that’s really important, but the issue we’ve got at the moment is, in a lot of overseas jurisdictions, while the emissions are reported in their national greenhouse gas inventories, they’re not actually included in their greenhouse gas emission totals. So what we’re recommending is that further work be done internationally to work out how those emissions are accounted for before we sign up to something in the primary legislation. Similarly, tools for abatement for some of the emissions aren’t there at the moment, and also some may be constrained by international rules. So the thought was to have a look at it a bit further down the line and then get the independent Climate Change Commission to provide further advice on that.

We also heard a lot of submissions about prohibiting use of international carbon credits, and there are also some extra changes in the bill that would lay out how we can strengthen that so the requirement is that those are used only when unforeseeable circumstances have come up. So we can probably discuss some of those more in the committee stage or as we move through the various stages of this bill. So there was a lot of feedback and a lot of submissions on a range of different areas, and I suspect many of these will be canvassed over the next few days as we debate this bill.

But what I’d like to leave you with is just a quote from one of our submitters Alicia Hall, who’s the co-founder of Millions of Mothers. In her submission she said, “Today my ten year old asked me if we can stop climate change and what will happen to him if we can’t. I am not willing to lie to my son [and] so I and we as a group, [Millions of Mothers], want the New Zealand government to step up and do what needs to be done in order to stem the worst effects of climate change. We consider anything less to be unconscionable.”

So, thank you, Mr Speaker. I therefore commend this bill to the House.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to make a contribution on the zero carbon bill. I came into the Environment Committee when Todd Muller and I had a bit of a changeover, and Todd Muller said to me, “Get in there and shore up the right flank.” So that’s indeed what I did. I want to acknowledge all of those on the select committee, and I want to pay a tribute to Todd Muller who, when he was our spokesperson for climate change issues, worked very closely with James Shaw.

Indeed, it was just unfortunate that for a couple of months leading up to the first reading the phone somehow just fell off the hook. I think what happened there is New Zealand First woke up to the fact that Mr Shaw had reached out to this side of the House and perhaps hadn’t consulted with New Zealand First. So, for whatever reason, whether that indeed is correct, we find ourselves in this position—

Todd Muller: Obviously correct.

Hon NATHAN GUY: —this afternoon. Mr Muller is indeed confirming that it is correct, that’s exactly what happened.

What we’re interested in—talking about the politics of this bill before I get into the substance—is what New Zealand First is going to do when we put our Supplementary Order Papers, the changes that the National Party want to this bill to strengthen it up. What are New Zealand First going to do? And that’s going to play out in the next day or so.

What I thought is also telling is that James Shaw has sent out an invitation to everyone. The invitation reads something like this: “Dear such and such, come to drinks in my office on Thursday night, this bill will be done and dusted and it’s an opportunity for celebration.” I wish Mr Shaw well with his little drinkies on Thursday night, but I thought that might have been a little bit presumptuous, because we have got a committee stage to go, and I think it’s going to be a long debate because we have got some concerns with this bill, and I want to go through those now.

Of course, we all know our position on this bill: that things need to change. I’m not a denier. Yes, I’m from the agriculture sector and I’m a farmer myself, and I know that there are challenges ahead. But, importantly, our five key principles are, of course, we need to focus on the science—and I think that’s certainly a given. Everyone on this side of the House nods. We know that the Green Party are focused on science when, indeed, it suits them, but they like to ignore it when it doesn’t suit their rhetoric. Technology is a real focus as well, and we don’t think that it has come to pass in this bill enough. I want to make a few more comments about that shortly.

We want to ensure that there are long-term incentives for change and that we don’t want to get ahead of the world. We don’t want to be the laggards, but we don’t want to be just fast followers and out of the blocks first or second. We want to ensure that the big growing economies of the world are playing their part as well. And what about the economic impacts? Pretty much silent in this bill, and I want to come on to those in a moment.

Chlöe Swarbrick: It’s because you didn’t understand officials.

Hon NATHAN GUY: I acknowledged the officials and I acknowledged the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE). In fact, I asked officials, specifically, if they could come back in and take me through the economic analysis because I was new on the committee. I appreciate the officials doing that, and I think the rest of the committee actually learnt a little bit through that process as well.

This is economic modelling—and, yes, I know it’s out 50 years, but here’s the impact of this bill, where one of the economic modelling scenarios says that it could indeed cost $3,000 to $7,500 per household out to 2050. Mr Shaw shakes his head, and he’ll probably shake his head on this one as well: it could reduce GDP by $300 billion—that’s about $10 billion a year over 30 years; shakes his head on that one. So that was really important, and I don’t think that’s very clear in the bill. Yes, it does mean that the commission has to take account of the economic impacts, and so does the Minister; that’s really important. But I think the numbers—the highlight numbers—are nowhere to be seen in this bill.

Now, I want to talk specifically about the methane targets, because this has been a big bugbear for the rural sector, and all of the industries that came in and addressed the committee were really concerned about it. In law, in this bill right now that we are debating the second reading of, and if it goes through, these methane targets out to 2050 will be in legislation. They’ll be enshrined in law—minus 24 percent to minus 47 percent. There was hardly anyone in the agriculture community that came into the select committee and said, “Bring it on, we can do this.”

I’ll tell you what’s really important: all of the technology gains in this bill have already been banked. So if the methane inhibitors—if the vaccine doesn’t turn up, what is the agriculture community going to do? What is the Government proposing to do to turbocharge R & D? What is the focus of the coalition Government on GE—genetic engineering, genetic modification? What is the Government’s view?

On one hand, we have Labour Ministers and New Zealand First saying, “Yes, we should look at it”—and I was heartened that, about two months ago, Minister Shaw said, yes, he was keen to have a look at it, but what’s happened is that the Green Party membership have rounded on James Shaw. Just in the last week or so, he’s now saying, “Oh, no, it’s off the table, we’re not going to anything around GE; we’re not even prepared to look at it.” That’s not surprising to me, because Eugenie Sage stopped officials and the group that are leading Predator Free 2050 from doing any work on making possums sterile to reduce those terrible pests that we have in this country. All that GE work has stopped. So it’s not surprising that the Green Party have this view.

The reason that I raise the importance of technology, and I’ve talked about a couple of examples, the really important thing about GE—and that’s why on this side of the House we are prepared now to have the debate and have the discussion with New Zealanders—is that there is a ryegrass being developed through AgResearch that has to go offshore to the US to be field trialled, and it reduces methane emissions by about 25 percent. It’s also drought tolerant. So if you think about technology—that is the opportunity for our farmers to make change to try to meet this horrendous target that I’m really concerned about. But that is silent from the Government coalition benches because they know that the Greens won’t have a bar of it at all.

I want to acknowledge the contribution that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment made through the select committee process. He came in several times and presented to the committee. Simon Upton is doing a good job as the Commissioner for the Environment. In fact, his staff stayed with the committee right through this process—and I want to acknowledge them. The important thing that resonated with me was when the PCE came in and said, “If forestry offsetting is not curbed, we could be in a situation”—this is New Zealand—“that 1.3 million to 1.7 million hectares of land is in forestry.”

That’s by 2050, and then, if you multiply that out to 2075, that’s 3 million hectares. To give you a sense of those numbers, there’s about 10 million hectares in New Zealand under productive land use. So, potentially, you’d wipe out a third of that—that’s the size of the Otago region—in trees. That’s why we’re going to be debating over the next 36 hours the importance of curbing the offsetting of forestry. We have a real concern that if this aspect of this bill is not constrained, it’s going to hollow out rural communities and it’s going to impact on our food and fibre production that we are world leading in. I bring it back to when the National Government signed up to this agreement in Paris. A big part of that agreement is a focus on not threatening food production, so that is a very significant point.

Finally, I want to just wrap up by saying—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member’s time has expired. This is a split call. I call Kiritapu Allan—five minutes.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): I want to acknowledge and thank this House for having this debate this afternoon. Sometimes in this House we don’t actually often debate the points and we get up here and we read out key lines, but today, because of the contribution just made by Nathan Guy, the member prior, I want to set out some facts that I think were omitted from the previous speaker’s contribution in this House. One of the things—and why I feel so impassioned to do so—is that on an issue that is so fundamentally significant not only for our nation but for our global world, as can be seen by the thousands and thousands and millions of people that are mobilising around the world right now on climate change issues, we can’t afford to be so cynical or to be playing political point-scoring games when it comes to a bill as significant as this.

So I want to turn to the member who just made some interesting remarks and, I say, has been behind—not just that member but the party in Opposition at the moment has been behind some of the most divisive rhetoric that this country has seen over fundamental issues like the future protections of our nation. Now, I want to start with the methane target that the member just alluded to. There was widespread support amongst the primary industries for the split targets and there was widespread support for the initial target of the reduction of 10 percent by 2030. Now, the member just mentioned the second target: the 2050 target.

Look, there has been a lot of discussion about that, but what the member failed to do and what the member’s party has failed to do and what those naysayers have failed to do in the propagation of misinformation about these targets is to say that there is a Climate Change Commission that this bill entrenches and establishes. By 2024, that Climate Change Commission will assess this target and determine whether or not it is appropriate. This isn’t a bygone, forgone “It’s all done and dusted, the paint is dry, and it’s over Rover.” This is a target for now. But that side of the House has constantly been putting out misinformation that there can be no further amendments and it’s all over.

The entire purpose of the Climate Change Commission is to ensure that the targets are right. All we’re doing today is setting a target. Those things will be looked at in due course, and that was something that I respected about the prior spokesperson when it came to working with Government members on this side of the House—actually engaged at a pragmatic level, understood the nuances, tried to play down the misinformation that was being spread throughout the nation. We all agree, I think, on both sides of the House that we have to get the infrastructure and the regulatory environment right. But I say that that kind of divisive rhetoric and that misinformed rhetoric is a deceitful act for our constituents, and we owe our people a lot more than that.

I also want to turn to the second point that the member spoke to, and that has come up a number of times on that side of the House. It’s around the economics of this bill—the economic implications of this piece of legislation. Well, it was interesting to note that there were five key principles that the Opposition wanted to talk about. First of all, we’ve got to be based on clear science—clear science—and I couldn’t agree more. But when it came to the economy, oh, it was sufficient to say—and he relied on those remarks in this House—that there could be economic impacts of a loss of GDP. There might be impacts per household ranging from $3k to $7.5k. The principled basis for opposition that that side is applying across their own core principles is completely out of sync with its own side, so it’s frustrating on this side of the House to hear that as a consumer.

I want to acknowledge the work, though, that our Minister for Climate Change, the Hon James Shaw, has done not just with a broad range of constituents—you know, we’ve got our young climate change activists; we’ve got a broad range of people—but also with the primary sector. This week—actually, on 24 October—we saw the groups DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb, Federated Farmers, Horticulture New Zealand, Irrigation New Zealand, the Meat Industry Association, Apiculture New Zealand, the Dairy Companies Association New Zealand, and the Deer Industry New Zealand all come out in support of the work that this Minister has done to ensure that the agricultural emissions that are done are done right.

So I want to acknowledge your work. It has not been an easy ride, and it’s being fundamentally undermined by the perilous rhetoric that is being put out by the Opposition and supported by a few naysayers. So I want to congratulate you, Minister, for continuing to be at the forefront of ensuring that this legislation is right.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Nicola Willis—five minutes.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): It’s my pleasure to take this opportunity to outline why National is supporting this bill at second reading and our ideas for how it can be improved. I think it’s a shame that Kiritapu Allan, the member speaking prior to me, threw out words like “devious” and “deceitful” in relation to the conduct of the National Party on this bill, because, in fact, the case here is that National has been working in good faith with members on the other side of the House since mid-2018 to make this the best piece of legislation it can be because, at a fundamental level, we agree on some of its core objectives. We believe in the benefits of having an independent, expert-led Climate Change Commission, we believe in the concept of targets that send long-term signals to the economy, and we believe in aligning our action with the Paris goals of limiting global warming.

We also believe that this should be done in a manner that does not threaten food security, which is also a goal of the Paris Agreement, and we also believe that this should be done in a manner that both considers, measures, and manages the economic impacts of our climate change response. That is why today, in this speech, I will be addressing the areas that in good faith we think this bill could be improved on. The reason we offer those suggestions is because we genuinely think that for the zero carbon bill to reach its goal of being an enduring piece of legislation, it needs to have bipartisan support, and for the zero carbon bill to really fulfil its goals, it needs to be something that addresses the concerns of sectors and individuals and communities across this country.

I have met with the different people who are involved in this debate. I have met with the young people who have striked at Parliament who have come from Generation Zero, and I understand their concern to see long-term action on climate change. I understand that they want this Parliament to commit to action. I have met with the leaders in the business community who say, “Actually, what we really want is some policy certainty. What we don’t want is the policies changing from one Government to the next.” I have met with the farmers who say “Don’t take away my ability to produce food that will feed the world in a lower-emission way than my competitors offshore.” I have met with the families who say to me “Climate change is real, but please don’t make me wear a hair shirt to address it.”, who are already struggling to feed their families and make the budget balance each week, and who say, “What cost impact will this have for me?” I think it is the obligation of members in this House to listen to all of those people and to come up with a piece of legislation that does the right thing and that can be genuinely enduring, and for it to do that it has to consider—it has to consider—economic impacts and it has to recognise New Zealand’s strengths in food production.

So let me quickly outline the seven pragmatic areas that, in good faith, National is suggesting the Government should incorporate into this bill. We think the methane target should be set by the independent Climate Change Commission. We think that saying that the Paris Agreement action should not threaten food production should be incorporated into the very purpose of this bill. We think that the provisions to keep us in line with the actions of other countries should be strengthened. We think that the commission should be required to consider the economic impacts of action and to advise Governments of the day on that, because anything else is negligent. If the commission is not advising what impacts this bill will have on the livelihood and on the very wellbeing of New Zealanders, their children, and future generations, then it is not a piece of legislation that will endure, because New Zealanders will simply not accept recommendations that do not consider the full economic impact. We think that this bill should split the emission budgets between methane and carbon dioxide.

Finally, because we’re an optimistic bunch on this side, we believe that this bill should strengthen its commitment to research and development, because we are optimistic that, actually, New Zealand can make a significant contribution to reducing global emissions and, in fact, lead the world in some areas, including the way that we reduce emissions from agricultural production. But if we’re to do that, we must take the opportunity on all sides of this House not to accuse each other of bad motives, not to accuse each other of having been divisive, but to instead focus on creating a principled, pragmatic piece of legislation that gets the incentives right, that’s fair to Kiwi families. I urge members in the Green Party, members in the Labour Party, to consider our proposals in good faith so that this can truly be a long-term, enduring zero carbon bill that actually continues to make a difference for future generations. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call David Seymour—five minutes.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to stand again alone in opposition to this bill in its second reading. I carry on a kind of serialised commentary from the first reading, about why this bill is such a bad idea if you are concerned about climate change, or if you’re not. I said in the first reading speech that there’s a fundamental problem: that if the bill is ambitious in its targets, in a country with 0.2 percent of the world’s emissions, carbon leakage will make it counter-productive. You can see the evidence for that, because the country that’s been most aggressive—in fact, the country that we model this legislation off—has for 20 years had no better performance on tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP. Of course, that’s the UK. They overtook us in about 1997, and they’ve tracked our progress at reducing emissions ever since, despite having had legislation just like this for the last decade. So, fundamentally, it doesn’t work, but it’s worse than that.

You go to new section 5W, inserted by clause 8—one of the clauses in this bill—and it says “(1) Emissions budgets must be met, as far as possible, through domestic emissions reductions and domestic removals.” Well, what does that mean in practice? That means that when other countries can access cheaper carbon credits, when they have projects to sequester and store carbon that are more cost-effective than those available in New Zealand, can New Zealand families, New Zealand businesses, and New Zealand exporters purchase those cheaper, more efficient credits? No. New Zealanders are put at a disadvantage by this completely pointless clause. That means New Zealanders can end up paying more than the rest of the world to achieve the same environmental goal.

If you’re concerned about mitigating climate change, then having a law that says it’s more expensive for New Zealanders to do it than anyone else has got to be one of the stupidest policies imaginable. People will say, “Ah, but that’s in order to ensure the emission credits, or the units purchased by New Zealanders when they emit, are higher quality, because there’s some junk from overseas.” Well, the interesting thing is that this bill doesn’t actually have any effective controls on the quality of credits produced in New Zealand. So it’s nothing to do with the quality of credits; it’s all about controlling the New Zealand economy.

That’s what takes us to new sections 5ZD and 5ZF, and this is where the bill, in my view, becomes not just ineffective but actually pernicious, because you’ve got a plan made by a Minister that must include—if you go to 5ZD(3)(a)—a sector-specific policy to reduce emissions and increase removals. The powers that are put in the hands of Cabinet and of a Minister, under this bill, take us back to a place that New Zealand has not been for 35 years, and that is when we were under the Economic Stabilisation Act, where a Minister or Cabinet could actually make economic decisions about not just what the general rules of the game are but how much and at what price people could trade in different sectors. What does that mean in practice? It means a Minister can decide whether a sector or an industry—particularly, perhaps, a steel mill, or who knows, at the current time, an aluminium plant—lives or dies. Where does that get you? To an enormous amount of the kind of lobbying that I thought the Green Party was against.

So in summary, the ACT Party opposes this bill, because not only will it be ineffective in achieving the goal of mitigating emissions, it will also be inefficient because of its requirement for New Zealanders to use New Zealand credits at almost all times, and therefore inefficient, and more expensive, and also pernicious, because it introduces a level of central control over economic decision-making that this country has not seen since 1984. Those are reasons why all New Zealanders, and especially my erstwhile colleagues in the National Party, should be opposing this bill.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. We are in a climate crisis. If we don’t get this right, nothing else matters. This is where we draw the line. Aotearoa New Zealand is a Pacific nation. We are in the top 10 nations for pollution per capita. Our diplomats and our negotiators are seen as amongst the best in the world. We are responsible and we must be responsible.

How many world leaders for how many decades have seen and known what is coming but have decided that it is more politically expedient to keep it behind closed doors? My generation and the generations after me do not have that luxury. In the year 2050 I will be 56 years old, yet right now, the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old.

Hon Member: That’s impossible.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: OK boomer.

Current political institutions have proven themselves incompetent at thinking outside of a short political term. Change is so regularly sacrificed for power. Slogans are easy, but this stuff—this action—is hard. Climate action cannot be sacrificed any more for political convenience. Climate change is a deeply inconvenient truth. If climate action is indeed our nuclear-free moment, it should be and it must be transformational.

This Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill is our starting line. On the Environment Committee, I sat with members across this House as we heard the call from the majority of over 800 New Zealanders in person and over 10,000 in writing, asking this Parliament to get it together and to get it right. Many asked that we pull targets forward, others that we didn’t split our gas targets. As I put to many of those submitters, if I can be straight up about the problem there, ambition and consensus sit on opposite sides of the see-saw in this bizarre place. Prioritising one means risking some of the other.

The Greens want more. We recognise the need to go further and to go faster, but we are eight of 120 MPs in this House, and to keep momentum up, we need more of us. If you marched in the streets, it is time to get political. This bill represents the greatest consensus that we have managed to reach in this Parliament and across this Government as a blueprint for climate action.

On that point, I must weave in the comments by National Party’s spokesperson for climate change, who stated, “it shouldn’t be politicians [who] set the targets.” Those being the methane targets. The Hon Scott Simpson called for targets to be set by an expert-led, independent, science-led commission. As it turns out, there is room for agreement there. Targets should be science-led. But more than that, politicians—who my other colleague from the Environment Committee, Sarah Dowie, noted just before are not climate change experts—should be and must be bound by the science. That is exactly why, on page 5 of the Government’s commentary in the committee report on this bill, I saw it stated, and I quote, “The Green Party member notes the significant number of submissions which proposed that the best way to produce scientifically robust, enduring and depoliticised emissions budgets is to empower the Commission to set emissions budgets itself rather than to advise the Executive, and supports this proposal.”

The only reason that we would keep the commission advisory only is because there is an option to ignore that advice. We have heard that this law will impact our economy, particularly from members of the Opposition. You know what else will impact the economy? Climate change. You know, if you are worried about the economic impacts of our climate change response, just wait until I tell you about the economic impacts of climate change. And regardless of whether we change, our climate is.

Today is both Guy Fawkes and the commemoration of the invasion of Parihaka by colonial forces, which, as we know, was met by a deep strength and peaceful resistance. Well, we’re not quite blowing up Parliament today but I am reminded of the Pacific Climate Warriors chant at the front of the school strike for climate only a few weeks ago: “We are not drowning. We are fighting.”

I want to bring into focus a line that has been ringing in my head while we’ve been considering this legislation, from the submitter, Kelly O’Neill, who said, “We are far too late for this to be easy.” Colleagues, we all know that if you have come here to make easy decisions, you don’t belong here. The young people standing outside this Chamber today have stated, “We fought in the street, so you can fight in your seat.”

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member’s time has expired.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in favour of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. Well, what a journey this has been. Just reflecting on the speeches that we’ve listened to this afternoon, my mind—

Hon Shane Jones: Following New Zealand First.

TODD MULLER: —went back to 2017 when Lord Deben came out to the National Party Bluegreens conference to outline the approach that the United Kingdom take in terms of managing their emissions reduction over time in a way that works for their country. The singular message that he gave to us at that time was, “As you impart on this journey, make sure that you have as your guiding star the fact there must be bipartisan support for the bill or it is not worth pursuing.” Not only did we get that very clearly from Lord Deben here as an Environment Committee, when we went to the United Kingdom recently we got that from the UK and we also got that from those linked into it in terms of stakeholders from Great Britain.

So we now sit here at a time of reflection around “Have we got this legislation to a point where we can have bipartisan support?” When I reflect on this journey over the last year or so, I’m struck by the fact that what we have seen here is an ongoing wrestle between the character and integrity and willingness to reflect on other people’s perspectives, as personified by the Minister for Climate Change, and the random, pock-marked, irrelevant-at-times, highly partisan political contributions from New Zealand First, which at every point of the process has sought to derail that consensus.

We had, as has been discussed before in this House, a process that went on for a number of months between me, when I was in the Opposition spokesperson role, and the Minister, and we had reached a number of fundamental agreements around the importance of this commission being advisory, about the importance of ensuring that economic impacts were considered, and that you do take into account both the capacity of the country to change and also its connectedness in a global trading world with our competitors. These were fair points. They were robust debates. As we know, it stopped on the insistence of New Zealand First.

Then, once we had the first reading, we went to a select committee. We had had a process—again, credit to the Minister—prior to the first reading and, in fact, prior to finalising the bill, where he had run a process with significant opportunity for people to contribute around the sort of thematic choices that sit in front of us. I know that he wanted to have a similar process in the select committee. Again—and those on the select committee know this is true—there was an edict from one of the three coalition partners that “No, we want this truncated. We want this sorted by Christmas because we don’t want to be talking about climate change stuff next year.”

So I will not stand here and be lectured and yelled at by Shane Jones, in terms of his contribution to this debate, because he gives voice to an element which has looked at every opportunity for a partisan point and an opportunity to erode the consensus that actually can exist.

Hon Shane Jones: Farmers agree. Farmers agree.

TODD MULLER: And the consensus is still potentially in front of us.

Hon Shane Jones: NZ First leading the way.

TODD MULLER: And I would like to just simply outline—if I can, over the continuing harping, amplifying the point that I’ve just made—the points that we think are worthy of consideration by this House for a bipartisan and collective view. I want to step it through in the next few minutes, for people at home to reflect and say, “Does this sound like positioning from a National Party that is partisan or does this sound like a contribution to enduring framework?” I argue the latter. You’ll be the judge.

Firstly, that the target for the biological methane reduction, looking out to 2050, is to be recommended by the independent Climate Change Commission, as opposed to the target range that’s in the bill. The precise purpose of establishing this commission is that they not only provide the capacity to review these targets—for both the methane and the CO2—but to change them if necessary. We are giving them the power to do this every five years. We are asking them to start this journey by confirming what the target should be—not acceptable.

The second point is that we include in the language of the purpose of the bill—as we commit ourselves to a decarbonising journey that seeks to reduce our contribution to global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius, and ideally 1.5—that we do it in a manner that does not threaten food production. That is not a National Party narrative; it is in the Paris Agreement. We are simply asking for it to be in the purpose. Silence again from the other side of the House.

The third is that we strengthen provisions that consider the level of action from our trading partners. This is not in any way a view that we are not committed to a path of reducing our emissions over time, but really, I absolutely believe that New Zealanders hold the view that we should do that in a way that makes sense for our communities and our businesses and our exporters and our country. Part of doing that is linking yourself in a global trading context to what the rest of the world is doing. It doesn’t mean you can’t show leadership where it is in your competitive advantage to show it, like we have done with agriculture. The previous Government set up the Global Research Alliance precisely to show leadership in the agriculture space. It is not—and I repeat, it is not—a reason to suggest we don’t proceed; it is a reason to suggest we do it in a way that is anchored and calibrated with the conditions in which we trade—namely, the response of our trading partners. That is not unreasonable. It is not partisan; it is adding to the strength of this bill.

We then ask that the appropriate economic impacts—it is mentioned in the bill—we think it could be strengthened. I don’t think that is in any way an unusual or insensitive or partisan request. We then asked the commission to consider—simply consider—in its role as an adviser to successive Governments, how we should use forestry. To what extent should we rely on it as the crutch that we lean on if we can’t actually reduce our gross emissions?

I ask again to the House, to what extent is that partisan rhetoric? It is not. It is simply a party that, right from the start and right from the direction when Simon Bridges said, “Let’s engage in this. Let’s bring a good-faith, principle-based approach to our discussions with the Government.”—there is nothing in these suggestions and expectations that diverge from that. It is entirely consistent of an Opposition party who, when the invitation was put forward by the Minister for Climate Change, endorsed by the Prime Minister, to engage in a manner that could develop a piece of legislation that endures—they were the principles that underpinned the conversation. They were the principles that underpinned the conversation at the start, at the middle, and now at the end.

I repeat back to what Lord Deben, who is the chair of the United Kingdom climate commission, said: “We must decarbonise our economy. It is challenging. It requires all sectors of the economy to embrace innovation and have tough decisions around the pace of change. But, above all else, ensure that when you have legislation in front of the House, it has bipartisan support.”

The National Party has outlined the principles that have underpinned our engagement. It has outlined the five to six areas that we think are justifiable. They are not extreme partisan buffoonery. They are considered additions to this legislation to make it enduring, to actually make a difference. The challenge stays on the table for the leaders that sit in this Government to take up that challenge and actually create something that reflects the better angels of them as opposed to the worst angels of them.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise this afternoon to speak on this bill. It’s pretty important to all of us in this country, and so I am quite humbled by the opportunity.

I want to acknowledge the Hon James Shaw for bringing this bill to the House and for the ongoing work that he has done in this area across all parties to try to get us to a point of agreement. I think he’s done very well. I also want to acknowledge—and I have to really acknowledge—the officials in this process. We have had so many special briefings to help us understand the complexities of this work. We have been absolutely privileged by those officials helping us to understand and allowing us to ask the questions. I’d like to acknowledge I still don’t quite get “fungible”, but that’s OK. It is what it is.

I’d also like to acknowledge my colleagues across the House. We sat through over 800 oral submissions, and we saw more than 10,000 written submissions. That was a lot of work. Because we had so much work to do, we broke into subcommittees, and we had an agreement that if something happened or went wrong and our numbers weren’t quite right, we wouldn’t collapse our committees. I want to acknowledge everyone for recognising that. We met in many places, and we heard lots of things. In my own community of Tauranga, we sat there, and it was quite fascinating—it was quite fascinating—the number of submissions that came through around climate denying in my city was absolutely surprising. Nevertheless, we did listen with respect. I want to, finally, also acknowledge our original chairperson, Dr Deborah Russell, and then also Dr Duncan Webb, who took over this work. It was a huge piece of work, and we met many, many days to do this.

Finally, to Todd Muller, who we very much missed on the select committee: you offered and brought to the table tremendous skill and knowledge, and I’d like to acknowledge that we did miss you, Todd.

Now that I have waxed lyrical and thanked everyone, I would also like to address this bill. In its entirety, it is a massive piece of work. There are a lot of very tricky parts to the legislation. One of the things that we have heard from the Opposition, while they will be supporting this bill, is that they have some concerns about how we got to where we got to and what the limits were. So I want to talk about a couple of things that are a little bit different about this legislation that I believe we here in this House have an obligation to discuss, and that is that this is not a piece of legislation that will sit for the next three years. This is a piece of legislation that looks out beyond the horizon—beyond the horizon that we here today cannot imagine. We hope in our hearts that we are putting in place steps to turn around climate change. We hope in our hearts that what we will be doing will enable us to survive this climate crisis.

What we are doing in this piece of legislation is enabling our community by putting in place a commission to be the experts to make these decisions. We’re looking at not just this three years or that three years; we’re looking to 2050. So we’re not saying that the targets that we set today are the targets that will get us there. They may have to be higher. They may have to be lower. But they certainly enable us to sit down and think very carefully and be advised by the independent climate commission about what needs to happen.

This bill gives us certainty. It gives us absolute certainty that there will be a plan and stepping stones to get there. But what it won’t necessarily do is it won’t say, “Oh, well, you know, we won’t do this.” or “We won’t do that.” It leaves the opportunity open. It leaves the opportunity open with the Climate Change Commission to advise.

There are seven members, and these are expert members. We had huge amounts of discussion from the floor, from all sorts of people who wanted to have young people represented. They wanted to have business. They wanted to have farmers. They wanted to have environmentalists. What we, basically, came to as part of this legislation is we need to pick a set of independent and non-biased members who would sit on that commission, who have a huge job—a huge job—to present for us. They absolutely have to look at all of the science. They have to predict and look at what will happen or may happen in the future, and then they have to give us that advice. That advice has to come back to this House, and the Minister has to respond, and, if the Minister doesn’t respond, he or she has to explain why.

These are the things that we’ve built in—the safeguards that actually talk about this legislation not just being about a partisan situation; it’s about all of us moving forward. If we cannot agree that we have to do this—and we hear this from the Opposition. They do tell us that they agree that something has to happen, but they’re really concerned about the economic implications. My friend and colleague Chlöe Swarbrick put it well: what’s going to happen when climate change hits and we don’t have any food? What’s going to happen when most of our housing, which is based around the coastal areas, starts disappearing and our water table shifts? These are things that we need to consider, and this bill does that.

It is complex, and there’s a whole pile of fives in here. Because it’s an amendment bill, everything was amended with 5A, B, C, D, Z, and on and on and on it went. I do wish that we didn’t have to use it in that manner, but it is what it is.

I want to finally just talk about one thing that has been raised, and that’s around food production. I’d just like to read around food production and the stated claim about the Paris Agreement. The Opposition talked about how the Paris Agreement refers to the need to adapt to the effects of climate change in a manner that does not threaten food production. Following on from that, it says, “Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;”. So it is a process that does not threaten food production; not about food production being more important than climate change.

It is a great pleasure to stand and talk to this bill and I commend it to the House.

SPEAKER: The question is, that the amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority be agreed to. Those of that opinion say Aye, to the contrary, No—the Ayes have it.

Hon Member: The Noes have it. Party vote.

SPEAKER: A party vote is called for. The Clerk will conduct a party vote. [Party vote commences] Mr Seymour, you voted “oppose”—is that right?

David Seymour: Well, I’m in favour of the amendments; I’m opposed to the reading.

SPEAKER: Who called for the division?

David Seymour: I did.

SPEAKER: When I declare the Ayes have it, if the member supports that, he’s not meant to call for a division.

David Seymour: Well, I wasn’t aware that you were unable to.

SPEAKER: The member is premature. The Ayes have it.

Amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 119

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.

Noes 1

ACT New Zealand 1.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I move, That the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 2 April 2020. I also intend to move that the select committee have the authority to meet on Fridays of sitting weeks, outside of Wellington during sittings, during sittings of the House, and during the evening after 6 p.m. on sitting days. I would also like to direct the committee to consider, circulate, and hear submissions on draft Climate Change Response Act amendments relating to agricultural emissions pricing, which I will send to the committee before Christmas.

This is the second of two bills that we are taking through Parliament to amend the Climate Change Response Act 2002: the zero carbon bill introduced in May this year and the bill I am introducing today, the emissions trading reform bill. Together, they put in place the architecture, the institutions, and the framework to support our transition to a low-emissions economy. The New Zealand emissions trading scheme (ETS) introduced by the previous Labour-led Government, and supported at the time by the Greens, is our primary tool for reducing climate pollution in Aotearoa. It operates on a simple premise. Businesses that are responsible for the greenhouse gases that cause climate change face a price for those emissions, and those that reduce emissions or plant trees to take carbon out of the atmosphere get a financial reward. But for the decade that it has been in place, it has not been allowed to do the job that it was designed to do—to cut climate pollution.

These reforms were initiated by the previous Government when Cabinet made a series of in principle decisions following a review in 2015-16. These reforms are the result of five years of hard work by officials, and I thank them for that. They have been well planned and well signalled to the market, and they will ensure that from now on, the emissions trading scheme can and will do the job that it was designed to do and cut climate pollution.

The bill will refocus the Climate Change Response Act to incorporate the goals of the Paris Agreement and the zero carbon bill. Our long-term emissions reductions targets in the five-year stepping stone emissions budgets will be set through the zero carbon bill. The settings in the emissions trading scheme will reflect these emissions budgets through unit supply decisions. These will ensure that we have a strong link between our climate change goals and the main policy tool for achieving them.

The emissions trading scheme is known as a cap-and-trade system, but ours has been operating with no cap. For the first time since it was introduced in 2008, we will actually be able to cap emissions covered by the scheme. This limit is likely to reduce steadily over time in line with the emissions budgets set under the zero carbon bill. This will create a predictable sinking lid on climate pollution. Auctions will be introduced to allow the Government to align the supply of units into the market within the cap. Auctioning will support but not disrupt the secondary market for tradable units that already operates within New Zealand.

Price controls will be enabled through the auctioning system to help manage unacceptably low and high prices. The current $25 fixed-price option will be replaced by a new cost containment reserve. Retaining the fixed-price option would prevent us from capping emissions because there is no limit on the extent to which it can be used. The cost containment reserve is a safety valve, but one that still allows us to cap and reduce emissions.

We need actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to meet our targets. The emissions trading scheme is currently closed to international units. These reforms mean that if the scheme were to re-open to international units in the future, their volume would be limited to maintain our focus on reducing emissions at home. The bill does not open our ETS to international units now, but it does help to clean up some of the mess from dubious international units in the past by allowing the Government to cancel units that don’t actually represent real emissions reductions. Other units with legitimate origins, but that are now out of date or of negligible value, will also be cancelled.

The bill will also start the phase out of free industrial allocation. Free allocation for some industries has been in place for nearly 10 years now to manage the risk of what is known as emissions leakage, when production moves offshore, leading to higher overall levels of pollution globally. A phase out was always planned but was suspended in 2012. These reforms will put us back on track. The bill will start reducing allocation at a modest rate from 2021 and increase the rate of phase down after 2030. The independent Climate Change Commission will be able to recommend changes to the rate of phase down after 2030. This ensures that robust, evidence-based analysis will drive decisions and will allow us to distinguish between industries with differing risks of emissions leakage.

This reform bill is not just about reducing the pollution businesses emit into the atmosphere. It is also about removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, both discouraging deforestation and encouraging afforestation. I want to acknowledge and thank the Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry, for leading the development of the forestry changes in this bill. The bill will add a permanent forest option for post-1989 forests into the emissions trading scheme. This will provide more incentives for landowners to integrate permanent trees into their landscape, better use their less-productive agricultural land, and diversify their income.

Averaging accounting will be introduced as an option to eligible forests registered from the beginning of 2019. It will be mandatory for forests registered from 2021 onwards. Averaging accounting means that a forest owner will earn units as their forest grows up to a determined average level of long-term carbon storage. They will not face any liabilities upon harvest, provided that they replant. Forest owners using averaging accounting will be able to trade more carbon at lower risk. They will also have the flexibility to change the location of their forest and will not have to pay back units after adverse events such as fires—again, provided that they replant. The introduction of averaging and other policies that support this new accounting approach will incentivise new forest planting in New Zealand. The bill will also reduce the scheme’s complexity and provide foresters with flexibility for changing land-use needs. New forests will increase the value that the forestry sector adds to regional economic development; an outcome which benefits all of us.

New Zealand farmers have made many improvements in emissions efficiency per unit of production over the last few decades, but voluntary efforts to reduce emissions have so far not led to absolute emissions reductions at the scale needed to avoid a climate crisis. Therefore, this bill will put a price on agricultural, livestock, and fertiliser emissions from 2025. Livestock emissions will be priced at the farm level, so that the efforts taken by individual farmers to reduce emissions can be recognised and rewarded. Farmers will receive 95 percent free allocation, which reflects the Labour - New Zealand First coalition agreement.

Some of the more detailed provisions to deal with the interim period to 2025 have not been included in the bill upon introduction. These will become part of the bill through the select committee process. These decisions include that the Minister for Climate Change and Minister of Agriculture table a report to Parliament in 2022, setting out further details of an alternative farm-level pricing mechanism. The bill will also reflect a formal agreement between the Government and the agricultural sector. This agreement will work to encourage on-farm emissions reductions prior to 2025, and will collaboratively build the systems and capability for a workable and effective farm-level pricing system by 2025. These changes will bolster the level of accountability and enforceability of that agreement. This includes the requirement for the Climate Change Commission to report on progress on the commitments contained in the agreement in 2022, and the ability to start emissions pricing before 2025 if progress is deemed insufficient.

Our emissions trading scheme was one of the first in the world. There are now 20 emissions trading schemes around the world. This is an important stage in the evolution of our emissions trading scheme and will lead, I believe, to it finally living up to its promise and its purpose to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to help avoid a climate crisis. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s appropriate on this, the first Tuesday of November, with the running of the Melbourne Cup, that this is the second leg of the double, in terms of climate change, that Parliament is considering today.

This piece of legislation is complicated, it’s detailed; it runs to something like 200 pages of detailed policy analysis and work, and it’s going to take the Environment Committee quite a lot of time and effort, I think, to get their heads around the fine detail of the bill. So I’m pleased that the Minister has indicated that the bill needs to be reported back after a lengthy and appropriate length of time at select committee. I’m hoping that that will mean that the select committee will take plenty of time to hear submissions from interested and affected parties, particularly industrial emitters and business people who, I think, will be wanting to come to terms with what exactly the precise meaning of this bill is, in terms of their particular business or sector.

What is interesting about this bill is that it is the result of a long, detailed piece of work done by officials over a long number of years. The Minister’s made mention of that, and I too want to thank officials for the work that they’ve done. It was, in fact, work that was commenced by the last Government, and many of the provisions in this bill are provisions that would have been put in place had the Government not changed. But there are a couple that cause us, on the National Party Opposition, concern, and we’ll be looking to tease those out during the select committee process. We’ll be wanting to investigate and analyse the impacts, and see whether they measure up against our broad principles about climate change policy, and particularly the implementation of it.

One of the primary concerns has been in relation to including agriculture into the emissions trading scheme (ETS). I’m delighted, if for no other reason than it now seems that for the first time in this Government’s administration, they appear to be dealing with farmers rather than dealing to farmers; that’s a small step in the right direction. By pushing out the introduction of agriculture into the ETS to 2025, I think that’s an acknowledgment by this Government of the practical difficulties with doing what they proposed when they were campaigning in this area. The Prime Minister, when she announced this piece of legislation last week, made a big deal of the point that New Zealand in 2025—by passing this piece of legislation—will be the first country in the world to include agricultural emissions in an ETS scheme, and she lauded that as something good and fantastic. Well, actually, the risk for New Zealand agriculture, the risk for our economy is still there, in that if that is the case, New Zealand will in fact be the only country in the world that disadvantages its domestic primary producers to a point where farmers in New Zealand—who are acknowledged as some of if not the lowest emission producers of food in the world—are disadvantaged competitively against less emissions-efficient competitors in the international marketplace. And we have real concerns about that.

It’s always been the view and the position of the National Party that agriculture should not be brought into the emissions trading scheme until there are sufficient tools and technology available for the primary producers to adopt that allows them to effectively minimise their emissions without the necessity of simply culling cows or lowering production. We don’t think that that is effective, and we don’t think that it is overall of benefit, not only to New Zealand but, indeed, the globe, because, simply, if New Zealand’s primary production is, through carbon leakage, replaced by dairy or meat or other primary products that are produced in other countries less efficiently, then there is no net benefit to global emissions reduction, and that would seem to be an obvious problem with this bill. So there’s no point, from our point of view, of disadvantaging New Zealand farmers simply on the basis of ideology and political slogan-making.

We’re also concerned about the issue of the planned phase down of industrial allocations, and the Minister alluded to issues concerning emissions leakage in this area as well. They are real concerns for some of the country’s top emitters who produce products like cement, like aluminium, like steel, like glass, like fertiliser. These are all sectors that—even if by 2050 we are at zero carbon levels in our economy, we’ll still have a need for steel, cement, aluminium, fertiliser, I suspect, and glass. I can’t imagine that those products will not be part of the New Zealand economy in the New Zealand that we are living in in 2050, at that stage. But there is, again, no benefit to the global total emissions reduction if we are simply then importing those products from countries that are less efficient producers and manufacturers of them than here in New Zealand. I can’t see the sense of that. And so there are issues around that that need to be addressed, and we will be investigating and looking at that as we go through the select committee process.

But we’ve had, as I said, in the National Party—and we mentioned it in the last bill—some basic principles around how to approach climate change policy. And until we are sure and convinced that the sensible, practical, pragmatic science can be applied to New Zealand producers, then we will have difficulty supporting this bill through to its conclusion. But I want to let the House know at this stage that it is the intention of the National Party to support this bill at first reading. We want to have an understanding of the detail that the Minister has included in the bill. We want to see the bits of the bill that have been left out because, as introduced in the introduction to the bill, it makes it clear that there are still details to be worked out, that there will be Government Supplementary Order Papers put forward, that there will be new material, other than what we have presented to us in the House today, presented at select committee. And so we’ll wait and see what that is, see what the detail is, and then we’ll make our appraisal of its merits going forward on that basis.

So we cautiously, but with optimism, support this bill at first reading. We do want to see the detail. We do want to have certainty and clarity, and we will, as we have done on the zero carbon amendment legislation, want to try and find a pathway through if we can. But we do have some policy perspectives that we want to make sure are in place to protect the future wellbeing not only of the New Zealand economy but the future wellbeing of New Zealanders as we transition to a low-emissions economy. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I look forward to working with the member Scott Simpson at select committee on this bill. This emissions trading bill is admittedly a complex piece of legislation, and what it really is doing is going back and revising the emissions trading scheme that’s been left in disrepair. What is happening here is we are putting an effective market in place for carbon. It’s well recognised that the most effective way in which to manage carbon emissions is to require people who are emitters to pay the true cost of those emissions, and that hasn’t happened to date, for a number of reasons. There have been a plethora of free units, there has been the use of corrupt offshore credits, and there has been a weak market. So what this does is it seeks to set up a market which has those features of any good market, one which has integrity—it is not flawed by dishonest practices, as was the case in respect of some of those offshore credits—it has clarity, certainty, and predictability.

That is exactly what’s going on here. We want to put a clear set of rules in place so that farmers, industry—across the board, people will know what will be expected of them into the future. It has stability. It’s not highly volatile, being able to be gamed and with unpredictable prices, and the bill itself sets out a number of techniques, including the removal of the cap but also the ability to intervene in the market, to make sure that it doesn’t run amok, in a very similar way to the powers of the Reserve Bank in respect of the currency, and also wide applicability. The fact is that you cannot have a workable emissions trading scheme unless all key sectors of the economy are included in it. So we’ve got to wind back some of those free units over time. Industries have to come up to speed and, over time, transition to being zero carbon and bearing the cost, because we know that if industries don’t bear the cost, if they’re given a free ride, they will, quite rationally and reasonably, take that free ride.

So, over time, it’s absolutely essential that the true cost of carbon emissions is borne by those who are creating those emissions and downstream, ultimately, consuming those goods, and that is going to include farmers, but a unique and innovative arrangement has been negotiated where farmers have been invited to self-manage. Here in the emissions trading scheme, farm emissions are included, as they must be, but if down the track we see that farm practices and reporting are robust, then farmers will be able to self-manage their own emissions, because this kind of intervention won’t be needed. But the onus lies very heavily on farmers, and I’m sure here in New Zealand our farmers are up to the challenge—the best farmers in the world.

So this really is about creating a market. It’s lining it up with the zero carbon bill, which we’ve just been debating, making sure we’re aiming for that Paris target of 1.5 degrees but also capping those emissions, saying that if we’re going to get there over time, there has to be a cap and a thinking cap on emissions, and that will drive the price of carbon units up, but that cap is absolutely essential, and also real caution about the use of any overseas emissions, because we’ve seen already that a laissez-faire approach, an entirely open market, led to an absolute corruption of the market, and it became pretty much a meaningless exercise.

It’s also important that we have a transparent market, that people can see what goes on. So there’s going to be clearer reporting and greater transparency so that people will be able to understand exactly what the carbon budgets are like and who’s adhering to it and who’s breaking the rules, and also, just in closing, better rules around compliance, which really fall into two categories: an infringement category, minor infringements, but then one where there’s a failure to trade and hand in emissions units. There will be real penalties which are linked to the price of carbon, and that sends, again, a financial incentive to businesses that work in this world.

So it’s absolutely appropriate that we have a framework, we create a market which has integrity, is transparent, has clarity, is stable, and is universally applicable. That will lead us to a zero-carbon future on the back of this excellent emissions trading scheme. I look forward to examining this before select committee. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Oh, thank you, Mr Speaker. I too rise in support of this Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill after an exceptional contribution from my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson and, prima facie, one that I would agree with from Dr Duncan Webb, but I note that while he talks about integrity and predictability of a system, the devil is in the detail, and that’s where the rubber hits the road with this following on from the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. This is where the rubber hits the road, and we really need to understand that detail in this 200-page bill that is about to go to select committee. We will support that and we will attend and undertake due diligence and be very interested to hear from those key stakeholders, such as those industries that emit carbon as part of their manufacturing process.

As Mr Scott Simpson and Mr Duncan Webb said, this bill is New Zealand’s main tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s acknowledged that it’s not currently used to its full potential, but as the Hon Scott Simpson said, this was work that was commenced under the National-led Government, it is now being progressed, and we need to send it to select committee to look at that further. But one thing that piqued my interest was, of course, allowing for a cost containment reserve scheme and that the bill will remove the current $25 fixed-price option and replace it with this reserve, which will operate with the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme options. So there will be a limited reserve supply of New Zealand units, and the Government will release these only when the price reaches a particular point, termed the trigger level. The Hon James Shaw said that this will allow the mechanism to be adjusted when some polluters are paying an unacceptably low price and when some polluters are paying an unacceptably high price. Again, the devil is in the detail.

As a Southlander, Mr Shaw should note that I would probably get a little bit excited about that given that Southland houses New Zealand Aluminium Smelters and now also Ballance Agri-Nutrients. So while the smelter is undertaking an audit of its affairs at the moment and is one of the smelters in the world that produces the cleanest aluminium, powered, of course, by hydro, and the only smelter in the world to be paying a carbon price, we’re getting a little bit excited at the fact that prices could go up again, notwithstanding that they’re struggling with regards to electricity prices and now, potentially, a higher carbon price. They’ve openly admitted that if the price goes from $25 to $50, then that will mean definitely out of business. Equally, then, you’ve got Ballance Agri-Nutrients, that is housed down at Awarua, employing around about 700 people—again, a significant contribution to the Southland economy. If that was to be penalised with high carbon emissions prices, again that could ruin the Southland economy and potentially put us and our livelihoods out of business well and truly. So we’re very interested in making sure that climate change is taken seriously.

But, again, we need to be looking at the economic impacts of this. We need to be making sure that we hear from these key stakeholders and that the framework is in fact fair and transparent, that it does have integrity, and that the pace at which we move is not so far out that we become green at the expense of people’s livelihood and wellbeing. We do support this bill at its first reading. But again, as I say, I am looking forward to the select committee to undertake due diligence and to see how it goes.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill—

Hon Nathan Guy: Say what you really think.

MARK PATTERSON: —which, of course, amends the current—

SPEAKER: Order!

MARK PATTERSON: —legislation, which has proved to be ineffectual at best and fraudulent at worst. I would like to take the majority of my time to discuss the agricultural element to this. This is a watershed day for New Zealand agriculture. The passing of the bill sees us once again lead the world, as we have so many times in the past, going back to probably that first frozen shipment of meat out of Dunedin in 1882. And of course, this reflects the significant challenge we have of meeting our Paris agreements. We are a country that prides itself on the international rule of law, and if we make a commitment on the world stage, we must honour it.

Previous attempts at this by the National Party, who I would remind everyone were the ones that signed us up to this agreement, had bordered on being morally bankrupt, looking to outsource carbon credit purchases—

Hon Nathan Guy: You’re better than that.

SPEAKER: Order! Second warning.

MARK PATTERSON: —with what were often fraudulent offshore carbon credits. So the issue with, of course, our agricultural emissions is: it is the inconvenient truth. Forty-seven percent of our greenhouse gas emissions do originate from agriculture and we cannot meet those Paris commitments without addressing this elephant in the room. I want to quote David Frame, who is our pre-eminent climate change scientist in New Zealand: “For too long, we have circled the drain[pipe] on agricultural climate change issues so it is great to see a sensible, practical, scientifically-defensible deal being worked out.” This Government deserves credit for listening to good scientific and policy advice and being prepared to reject outdated approaches, and this is a victory for common sense, because we do know that this will be a challenge for our agricultural sector.

Currently, there are no tools outside of destocking to meet our commitments, and we do have to work hard to make sure that those tools become available. And if we had gone to a processor-level levy, even at the modest sums that were negotiated in terms of the coalition agreement—where there’s a 95 percent discount for farming entering into any emissions trading scheme—that would have still totalled up to about $50 million annually for the farmers of New Zealand.

I just totalled it up roughly on my farm. It would have been about 3,000 bucks for a modest-sized family farm, which would have essentially been money that didn’t get an actual outcome. There would have been no motivation for me. It would’ve been a blunt tool. There would’ve been no motivation for me to really do anything, because even if I was efficient, more efficient than my neighbour, we would have been paying exactly the same amount of money. So credit where it is due to our farming leadership. They recognised the social expectations of the public of New Zealand, and they also acknowledged that there are rising consumer expectations.

I would like to pay tribute to the commitment of the 11 organisations that have supported and signed up to the He Waka Eke Noa proposal. I just want to run through them because it gives you an idea of the breadth of the support within New Zealand agriculture. The National Party need to listen to this as they grudgingly support this, because this has been signed up to by Apiculture New Zealand, Beef + Lamb New Zealand, DairyNZ, the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand, Deer Industry New Zealand, the Federation of Māori Authorities, the Foundation for Arable Research, Federated Farmers, Horticulture New Zealand, Irrigation NZ, and the Meat Industry Association. I’d like to pay tribute to that farming leadership led in many ways by Andrew Hoggard, Andrew Morrison, and Tim Mackle, in the main, for the way in which they’ve negotiated with Minister Shaw, Prime Minister Ardern, and Deputy Prime Minister Peters to get this outcome.

This outcome allows for five years for the farming sector to develop an on-farm level emissions profile for farmers so that any pricing that might come in down the line is done on a case-by-case basis, so that we’re actually incentivising good practice and we can design a system that does account for things like riparian planting, soil sequestration, and we can develop our farming systems and the continual progress and supporting of technology.

There is some opportunity in this as well; considerable opportunity now. Actually, many sheep and beef farms would be carbon neutral now, I would imagine, if the accounting was able to take in all of those things. Merino New Zealand actually has a brand of carbon negative, where they have got extensive farming systems, and the woollen garments coming off those merino sheep—of course, there’s carbon in the wool too. So they’ve actually figured out that they’re carbon negative, and I think it’s that sort of innovation that is a major opportunity actually for us to monetise this type of legislation in this direction that New Zealand agriculture is going. It’s a provenance story.

We’re still—and I hear it across the floor—a little bit in that mindset of production and just total kilograms produced. It’s actually about the value returned to New Zealand. If we can do that in another way—there’s more than one way to skin a cat. We are up against these emerging artificial proteins, genetic modification, and the like, and the only way we can go is down that provenance line, in my view. Of course, one of the meat companies—a guy fairly high up in one of New Zealand’s largest meat companies—said that there could actually be somewhere between a 20 and 50 percent premium for red meat coming off a carbon-neutral farm. So that will be quite an incentive. It puts into perspective the size of the prize that we’re playing for here.

Just in terms of the farming leadership, there has been some suggestion, probably in some urban quarters, that maybe farming’s been getting let off. Don’t think that for one minute. There is, of course, the provision to re-check in here in 2022, but it will not be needed. I quote Tim Mackle, Chief Executive Officer of Dairy New Zealand: “Our future is now in our … hands as we work in partnership with the Government to deliver … [on] our commitments.” I think that says it all. In fact, actually probably what did say it all was the response from the National Party, which was: crickets.

Of course, the bill does a number of other things which are important. It simplifies the accounting for forestry, and, as Minister Shaw has pointed out, Minister Jones has worked well to make sure that that evens out and it has some flexibility in there. It also starts the phase-down of the industrial allocation, because what we really actually need to do is address our actual carbon dioxide—those long lived gases—and we have to have those levers in place to make that happen. So this does start that phase-down period, but it does have some flexibility in it to acknowledge the fact that there is the potential for carbon leakage.

As Sarah Dowie pointed out before, a business like the smelter in Invercargill may be unfairly disadvantaged when it is actually more efficient than others. So New Zealand First does have pleasure in supporting the bill, but I would like to conclude my contribution by commending Minister Shaw. This has been a longstanding conundrum, and the fact that you have found a way forward through all the noise and the competing motivations has been an absolute testament to your political skill as you lead New Zealand’s response to meeting our Paris climate change commitment. So we do salute you on this watershed day for you, actually, in terms of the both legs of the double, as Scott Simpson said. So New Zealand First absolutely support this bill. Thank you.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to make what will be a short contribution on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill. As my colleagues have previously mentioned, the National Party will be supporting this bill at first reading. We’re going to support it to select committee on the proviso that—look, the bill is 200 pages long, and it needs intense scrutiny. Now, I hope that we will get the time in select committee to undertake that process in a thorough manner, and that we won’t be, like we did with the zero carbon bill, racing through it at breakneck speed, and actually give it the time that it deserves to make sure that the detail in this bill is scrutinised, and that we have enough time for submitters to come in and tell us what they think. Duncan Webb, the chair of our committee, even said in his contribution today that it was a very complex bill, and I would have to agree with that, and I do hope that we won’t be given a couple of weeks prior to Christmas to race through this. I do look forward to scrutinising the bill at select committee.

The bill proposes various changes to the Climate Change Response Act, but the biggest one of these, in my opinion, is that legal backstop for the agricultural sector to be brought into the emissions trading scheme (ETS) by 2025. It, essentially, creates an interim period up until 2022—a bit of breathing space for the Government to work with iwi and the farming sector to develop an alternative mechanism to price emissions at the farm gate. Now, in 2022, the independent climate change commission will conduct a review. If that pricing mechanism hasn’t been developed, the bill creates the ability for agriculture to be brought into the ETS before 2025.

Now, we have a number of concerns about this, which I will outline in the body of my speech, but I should acknowledge at this point that we are pleased to see that the Government are finally getting alongside farmers. For two long years, they’ve basically beaten them with a big stick, and it’s nice to see that they’ve finally learnt their lesson in that, actually, you can work with and alongside the sector to get the results that you need. This is one of National’s key tenets: incentivising and collaborating with the industry. It’s better late than never that this Government has finally decided to sit down with the farming sector after uncertainty around the freshwater proposals. Farmers are being hammered. They’ve had pressures from the water reforms, flooding, Mycoplasma bovis, farm debt, and it’s all well and good that this legislation buys the sector a little bit more time, but ultimately, they still have the threat of being brought into the ETS hanging over their heads as well. We all know the impact that this has had on our rural communities, their families, and, in particular, the mental health of our farmers.

Despite all the scapegoating that they’re often victim to, it’s worth remembering that our farmers are actually world leaders when it comes to producing fibre, dairy, and meat that is low emissions—amongst the lowest in the world per kilo of meat, milk, or fibre. So reducing production here and either importing it or having overseas farms exporting to the world what we’re not will have the exact opposite effect of what we’re trying to achieve. Let’s remember that no other country in the world is putting agriculture into the emissions trading scheme. It’s no excuse for our inaction—we need to do something—and it’s not up to us to rest on our laurels and say “Well, look, we’re already the best in the world and we shouldn’t have to do anything else”, but I think that it is important at this point that we note that farmers do care about their environmental footprint. We actually need to give them the credit that they deserve, and we also need to acknowledge that there are opportunities in this sector for New Zealand to be world leaders and sell some of that knowledge to overseas.

But to bring down our agricultural emissions, we need to incentivise behaviour change, and it’s all great that this Government is starting the conversation with the sector, but we still have very serious misgivings about the ETS and its ability to drive down emissions. We don’t think that this is the right way to go. Every farm has different stock numbers and different feeds, and, ultimately, this means different emissions profiles, and there is no current ability for us to effectively measure that at the farm gate. If the agricultural sector is brought into the ETS without the technology and the tools to measure emissions at farm level, then we’re stinging all farmers, regardless of how efficient or inefficient they are. Furthermore, if there’s no technology to actually reduce their emissions, then we’re in trouble.

At the select committee stage, like I said earlier, it’s really vital that we hear from farmers about their ability to get environment management plans in place. Anecdotally, when I’ve been out on farms, I have heard from the sector that, you know, they don’t just come up with these themselves; they have consultants that come in, and often there is a shortage of these people to actually come and put these plans in place, and it takes some time. So, look, I don’t know, but it will be really good to get these people into our select committee to let us know if this is going to be an issue or not, because there’s no point in telling farmers that they need to have farm management plans and environmental plans when they, in fact, can’t get the people in to do that for them.

These are just some of the issues we need to tease out and explore at the select committee stage. But we need to design policies that actually deliver emissions reductions, and there need to be mitigation options available to farmers that don’t involve just culling cows and herd reduction or shifting production overseas, which will, ultimately, lead to carbon leakage and the increase in global emissions.

The other point I’d like to make today is the potential effect this bill will have on our trade-exposed industries. Under this proposal, we’re potentially putting our steel, cement, fertiliser, and aluminium industries at a competitive disadvantage. We will be potentially closing down industries which are huge employers and contributors to regional economies. We still need those products and we will be importing them from overseas—and, again, from countries that potentially have higher emissions. It’s something we need to be very mindful of and spend significant time at select committee getting our heads around and understanding the risks to key industries.

This 200-page bill needs a thorough and detailed examination, which is why we are tentatively supporting it today. But we are very concerned about the potential effects on our trade-exposed businesses and the need for on-farm management tools to incentivise changes. So while we support the bill, we look very much forward to examining it thoroughly at select committee over many weeks. Thank you.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thanks, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise. This has been a great day for the environment, hasn’t it? I’m really enjoying myself in the House, even though I didn’t manage to have lunch today. It’s wonderful to be part of the Government, doing and taking care of the long-term issues that have failed to be addressed by nine long years of neglect from the Opposition.

Hon Members: Oh, stop it!

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Nine long years of neglect from the Opposition. I would like to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon James Shaw, for this bill—

Simeon Brown: Reading those researcher’s lines.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —and for actually pushing forward and getting this piece of legislation—

Simeon Brown: Reading the research lines.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —very complex legislation—into the House, something that the Opposition failed—failed—to do. So I’m really proud of our Minister for doing that—

Simeon Brown: Read the next line.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —and I’d also like to acknowledge, as well—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. Can I say that I am getting a little bit sick of repetitive reflections on my chairing of the House, and if it happens again, the member will be out. Angie Warren-Clark.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So where was I? That’s right—nine long years of neglect. No, moving on. I just want to acknowledge our actions in this coalition confidence and supply Government as being tremendous. We’re doing a whole pile of work, and, of course, we’ve just heard about the zero carbon bill, and we just spoke to that in the previous sitting.

What I would like to say in regards to that, though, is we hear often that this side of the House knows nothing about agriculture. I grew up on a farm, I grew up with lamb and beef, and I grew up in forestry. My father has been in the forestry business for over 55 years. I get a little bit tired of hearing constantly that we know nothing about the agriculture industry and that we have—

Kiritapu Allan: This lot all live in the cities. They can tell you all about it.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —no, that’s true, actually; most of them do live in the cities—no idea and that we don’t care about our farming or our agriculture industries. Well, the reality is we do—we do. Thank you, back to the bill.

In this country, we saw an estimated 170,000 people marching around climate change. We’re really privileged to be on the right side of history here in this House. We have signed and agreed with—and the member Mark Patterson has articulated this very well—a world-first plan for farmers to reduce emissions. We have a mechanism in the Climate Change Commission for monitoring progress. Where progress is not being made and not being achieved at the farm gate, we have a mechanism to bring farmers into this scheme earlier. This plan provides the primary sector with certainty and it puts the responsibility of reduction into the hands of the primary production community. That is a wonderful, wonderful thing, because, actually, our farmers want to do this, and we have seen that.

This bill aligns the purpose of the emissions trading scheme with the zero carbon bill and the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. I like that the entire Paris Agreement is contained in Schedule 2. I like that because whenever the Opposition talks about the Paris Agreement they often misquote and confuse us. It’s sitting in this bill in order to support us following and referencing the Paris Agreement. It puts a cap on emissions to align a five-year emissions budget with the zero carbon bill. It enables auctions of units, which enable the Government to control the amount of units.

Something highly complex—and I’m awaiting a briefing on this, which, apparently, we will have this week—is the transition away from the fixed price option price ceiling to a cost containment reserve. This is a big bill, and it is complex. It also provides transparency by publishing more emissions data so people will be able to tell where they’re at, and then it also updates the compliance and penalties regime.

I’m interested, absolutely, in what submitters are going to say about the culpability measures that are contained in this bill. There are a whole pile of percentages based on culpability of understanding and of not filing, etc. I think that that’s going to be very interesting and I look forward to hearing from the submitters around that.

Finally, another thing that this bill does is introduce averaging accounting. Now, I have explained that my family is involved in forestry and my sister is a forestry accountant, so she specialises in forestry. I rang her and I said to her, “What on earth is averaging accounting for forests about?” And she explained to me that it’s looking at the average growth of a block versus small samples, and then you get the average of the growth rate, and that’s the calculation you use at that point to then, when you sell or your forest is cut down, reforest under.

I got a little confused. I became a lawyer because I’m not very good at maths, and this stuff confused me. It is complex. One of the things, I think, that will be very interesting is the number of pages that we have to go through with a number of calculations on where this gets to. So I think we’re actually going to have a very complex and detailed examination of this bill. It is not going to be fascinating, but it is very important.

So today I’m proud that we’re getting on with the hard work. I’m proud that we’re daring to tread where National has failed to go. A real Government is about doing hard things, and we are taking on those challenges. Doing the hard thing, with compassion, with collaboration—these are the things that will get us there as a community. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The member has the call now.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes, I appreciate it. It’s going to be a very good call: quite succinct.

Todd Muller: Oh, that’ll be a change.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes. This is an important bill. In fact, I had a good read of it before. This bill here is extremely technical. Here are the supporting documents. Now, I sit on the Environment Committee.

Todd Muller: Lucky you.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes, that’s right, Mr Muller, lucky me. Thanks for swapping jobs with me and putting me on that committee. We have got a huge amount of work ahead of us. This is a very technical bill. For a lot of people, even members of this House, they won’t understand the detail about what is proposed. We’re going to, I think, have a period where we’re going to need to get up to speed on the emissions trading scheme (ETS)—what exactly these changes actually mean for New Zealand, for farmers, for trade exposed industries, and for the foresters. So this bill is going to, indeed, require a lot of input, not only from members of the committee but from officials over at the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry for Primary Industries.

Before we talk about what is included in this bill, I want to talk about the politics of it, because that’s what I find fascinating. So the National Government kicked off the review of the ETS, and then the ICCC—Interim Climate Change Committee—did some work on whether agriculture should be brought into the ETS, and had a look at processor level or whether it should be somehow incorporated at a farm-by-farm level. I read their report—and it was a fascinating report. It was long, it was in-depth, and it was well-considered. They summarised by saying that they believed agriculture should come into the ETS at processor level, but most of their report said it’s very hard to do at farm level, and that’s why they ended up saying at processor level. For those listening, that means kilograms of milk solids or kilograms of carcass weight—basically, a tax on farmers for their stock or for their milk.

So that was the proposal. Now, Minister Shaw received this advice, and then he started socialising it with his coalition parties. Of course, there was an allergic reaction from New Zealand First, because they realised that we’d just had the debate about the capital gains tax. In the end, the coalition, for whatever reason, backed away from the capital gains tax, and then New Zealand First were worried about the cost of living and the cost of production. The most efficient producers of food come from here in this country. We are the world’s best. Then they realised—and Mark Patterson didn’t cover this off in his contribution—that “Holy moly, we can’t do this processor level tax because it won’t change behaviour inside the farm gate.”

So we knew that there were several occasions where Minister Shaw was going to stand up with people and say, “Here’s the report. We’re bringing agriculture into the ETS and it’s going to be a cost to farmers at processor level.” But something happened in the murkiness of politics and around the Cabinet committee and the Cabinet room, and suddenly it all went quiet. Then industry worked away—11 organisations, our future in our hands, in this document. It’s a good document, led by Mike Petersen, leading the Farming Leaders Group, in touch with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. They said, “Well, if you bring in the processor levy, it’s going to change nothing on every individual farm.” And industry stepped up to the plate and said, “Let’s not forget we’re investing $25 million a year in trying to reduce our overall emissions.”—not well understood. And, actually, there needs to be more invested not just from the primary sector industries but from the Government as well.

So what finally happened is that the Government realised they needed to accept the goodwill of the agriculture industries, to say, “Give us five years, we’ll have a go at doing it ourselves.” I commend the industries that have stepped up to the plate and said, “Give us five years, but we’re going to need some help.” The help that the agriculture industries are going to need are these environmental farm plans. Now, in a lot of cases—in fact, most cases—there is an environmental farm plan required for the dairy company, for the dairy farmers’ supply, and for the regional council. So I think it would be a great opportunity to combine all of those plans into one document.

Are there enough people to go out and do the audits? You need people, whether it’s farm consultants that are going to need to be approved, that are going to need to do the audits; how is that going to work? I’m looking forward to understanding that through the select committee process.

But, importantly, what is missing in this debate so far is that the Government is going to drop a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) either in the select committee or in the committee of the whole House to say that we are going to change the law, and agriculture is coming into the emissions trading scheme (ETS) at 2025. That’s not in the bill at the moment, but the Prime Minister’s already said—and the Minister alluded to it—that there’s going to be an SOP coming, that’s going to be attached to this bill, that is going to force the agriculture community into the ETS. And the agriculture community is saying, “Well, hold on, aren’t you going to take us at our word that we can do all of the things that we’ve proposed in this working document?” And the Government said, “No. To appease the Green Party, we need to put it into law.”

So my challenge back to James Shaw, the Minister for Climate Change, is: will he put the SOP into the committee—which he can do—so that we can ask for submissions on the SOP? I’d like to hear from the Minister now: will the SOP go to the select committee so that we can ask for the public and industry to have their views heard? Brilliant, thank you; thank you, Minister. I appreciate the nod and the thumbs up that you will do that—not you, Mr Speaker, the Minister—because I think that that part of this process is going to be really important. Full transparency—and I commend the Minister for that.

So in summary, this bill is going to be one that’s going to require quite a bit of technical advice for the committee to get their head around it. It’s an important bill. And, fundamentally, I look forward to seeing the SOP, because that is really going to be where the rubber hits the road. I look forward to industry having their voices heard through this process. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): It’s always a delight to follow the previous speaker, Nathan Guy. I quite like him at a personal level, if I can say so myself. He’s full of charisma and he can be quite compelling. But if there’s anything that previous speech just informed this House, it is that whilst the member may be on his way out, it’s very important to listen to the things that are being said in this House in order to not perpetuate misinformation.

Now, when the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, introduced this bill into this House this afternoon, he was very clear on his instructions that the Supplementary Order Paper—that discusses all those matters that the prior member wanted to have discussed—would be put before the select committee. So I want to commend the Minister on his foresight and, I guess, ensuring that the broader public have the ability to do that.

The second statement—or “misfact”—was my colleague from New Zealand First Mark Patterson’s position when he gave his remarks in this House.

Mark Patterson: Right the record.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: Now, he was—yeah, I’ve got to right the record because your good name was thrown under the bus there a little bit, Patsy, so—sorry, Mr Mark Patterson; not known as “Patsy” to anyone. [Interruption] You’re welcome; Ha, ha! He was very, very clear in his remarks that the blunt tool of a processor fee was not useful and it would not assist to change behaviour on farm, and he gave a number of examples from his own farm about the tangible costs and why the current proposal, as set out here [Holds up document] and designed by the primary production leaders and that has been worked through with the Minister James Shaw and other Cabinet colleagues, sets out a plan that will ensure that we can bring the net emissions down in a reasonable time frame.

And, I think—if I reflect on the remarks—the Prime Minister and the Rt Hon Winston Peters, when they made their announcements about the way that Ag would be brought into the emissions trading scheme or not, there was a really strong emphasis that, actually, you know, he waka eke noa—that the future is in the hands of those that have to develop the solutions.

My colleague, just prior, as well, alluded to the fact that we do have to be pretty blunt about the fact that 47 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Aotearoa do come from the Ag sector. That’s a fact that we all have to just accept on its face.

When you go through the detail of this plan, it’s a five-year working plan that really does ensure that there is an incentive scheme, that there is a regime that enables those farmers who are working diligently—and there are so many of them all throughout my electorate, throughout the work, and it’s not just farmers; it’s food producers, and we are exceptional food producers—and it puts the power back in the hands of those that are doing things on the land.

There’s a range of investment, as well, that’s already going into, I guess, trying to mitigate the impacts of agricultural emissions. Even some of the smaller industries, like Horticulture NZ, they’re setting aside 1 million bucks per annum to focus on R & D to ensure that they can bring down their emission footprint. Beef + Lamb: they themselves are setting aside $5.4 million every year to reinvest into ensuring, again, that we can bring down those net agriculture emissions.

Look, this is a world-leading position. It’s one that hasn’t come about by sitting on anybody’s hands. The Opposition may laugh but it’s an actual fact that for nine long years we sat with a Government that did sit on their hands and failed to take action. This side of the House—

Nicola Willis: Do better.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: —is taking action. Nine long years, to the member; she was actually working on the precinct so she knows that particularly in areas around—for ages they were doing this—climate change, you know, there was a real hesitancy. They signed us up to the Paris accord, and had no infrastructure there to support us actually meeting those objectives. But, anyway, that’s a story for another day.

I’m really proud of the work this Government’s done. I can only take my hat off to the Minister in charge of bringing these reforms through. It’s a monumental piece of work and something that we can all, as a generation and this House, be exceptionally proud of. So I commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill. I think it is worthwhile remembering a little bit of the background of how this bill came to be introduced into the House, because, of course, the ETS—the emissions trading scheme—is a piece of legislation that has actually endured through Labour- and National-led Governments. It’s a piece of legislation that, yes, National’s made reforms to through the years, but there has been agreement that an emissions trading scheme is a useful way of encouraging the reduction of emissions across the economy. The way it’s been seen is that it creates financial incentives and it ensures the efficient reduction of emissions because it encourages the least cost mode of reducing emissions to be used. So in that regard it has been a useful mechanism.

Now, of course, National kicked off a review of the emissions trading scheme in 2015. That has gone on. There was public consultation in 2018, and some of the goals of that are really laudable: providing certainty to business, improving the administration of the thing, making the scheme more accessible, strengthening the compliance regime—and we can see some of that coming through in the 200 pages of this bill. These are complex, technical matters. These are things around the accounting treatment of forestry, technical improvements around the cost—

SPEAKER: Order! I apologise for interrupting the member, but it is kai time. The House will be resumed at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

NICOLA WILLIS: When we took off, I was going through in some detail some of the technical aspects of this amendment bill, which are many and varied, but the aspect I hadn’t yet dwelt on was its way of dealing with agriculture. Of course, previous speakers have talked about the fact that the Minister for Climate Change and the Minister of Agriculture have agreed that agriculture wouldn’t enter the ETS until 2025. At face value, National thinks that that’s a good thing because, actually, we don’t think that farmers should be facing a tax for something that they can’t actually mitigate on-farm because there isn’t yet the technology to do so. We would go back to the Paris Agreement, which was very clear on the need for the world not only to work together to reduce emissions but also to do so in such a way that it didn’t threaten global food production. We on this side of the House think it is not productive in any way to ask farmers to reduce their own production by culling herds or making other changes of that sort simply to meet an ETS target while others are farming in less sustainable ways in other parts of the world.

But I want to draw the House’s attention to some technical aspects of this bill which I think are going to require a lot of further examination during the select committee process, because even though there are 200 pages, there’s quite a lot of detail that’s yet to be worked through and which the select committee will need to investigate thoroughly. What the bill currently says is that it requires the Minister for Climate Change and the Minister of Agriculture to report back on the development of an alternative farm-level pricing mechanism in 2022, which is quite different from 2025—it’s not too far away—and in the meantime, it uses the New Zealand ETS as a fall-back option for emissions pricing. Essentially, what that sets out is that if an alternative farm-level price mechanism isn’t found, then the ETS will kick in. So we on this side of the House are very interested in how that will be worked through.

We’re also interested in this question that’s posed where it says that “Some of the more detailed provisions to support decisions during the interim period to 2025 have not been included in the Bill on introduction. [They,] among other policy decisions … will be incorporated into the Bill through draft text provided to the select committee or via a Supplementary Order Paper.” I was in the House earlier when the Minister for Climate Change acknowledged the question from the Hon Nathan Guy, who said, “Well, this is going to be pretty important to the way this ETS operates and the way that this functions.” Will the select committee have the opportunity to examine that Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), because, unfortunately, as members will be aware, there have been previous occurrences where the Government has introduced SOPs late and has not taken the opportunity to avail itself of the advice of the select committee nor to hear submissions from the public.

So it was very pleasing to see the Hon James Shaw nod his head in agreement that, yes, that SOP would be presented to the select committee, because what is very important here, I think, is that the decisions that are made on the ETS are done so with good evidence and they are done so with full awareness of the impact on these economic actors downstream, because in the end, what we are talking about here is communities, livelihoods, and how much money people can take home and how much money they can spend in our local towns. That stuff’s really important, and it’s important that the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill gets adequate attention from the select committee. Thank you very much.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill. It’s difficult when speaking on this bill and having had the zero carbon bill debated earlier today not to have some admiration for the bill’s sponsor, James Shaw, and the for the way that he has come into Parliament and worked assiduously to change public policy in a way that, in his view, is essential to the future of New Zealand. Nevertheless, when I look at this bill and the provisions within it, it’s not one thing or the other.

The intention of it, I’m sure, is to introduce a truly market-based system that will allow New Zealanders and their families, their businesses, and exporters to find a way to meet their carbon reductions, or at least their emission reduction obligations, at least cost, in the most efficient way, and with the least political distortion of economic decisions in New Zealand. That’s a noble intention—a market-based solution for people to be able to solve a problem without politics getting in the way—and it’s an important way to do it, because our small, open economy at the bottom of the world relies on people being able to make commercial decisions and being able to invest their capital, decide where to work, and decide what to buy and sell without political interference. Our country has been down the other path of having a Government that attempts to control almost every aspect of the economy before, and it nearly bankrupted us.

Well, unfortunately, this bill, while promising to be a market-based trading solution, fails in a couple of important areas. The first is that it sets a cap on the total supply of New Zealand Units—in effect, the total number of tonnes of carbon dioxide that can be emitted—and already in that is a presupposition about how much carbon-emitting activity should happen in New Zealand versus the rest of the world. Well, the easy way to solve the problem is actually to allow New Zealanders to buy credible units on an open market from the rest of the world. It may be that there are things that are better off happening in New Zealand from a global perspective and that New Zealanders would like to buy units—the right to emit a tonne of carbon—from offshore. Well, this bill is designed to make that, if not impossible, then extremely difficult.

So we start off with a cap on the total number of tonnes emitted within New Zealand, and that might be OK if there was a true market place with no politics inside it. The problem is that the bill gets worse. It says that there will be a cap but that the Government will regulate what the cap is. So you’ve already got a political decision about the total amount, and then it says, “Actually, if we think that an industry has nowhere else to go and there’s no danger of leakage”—i.e., activity they do being done elsewhere—“then we’ll whack them harder.” Then it says “If there are industries that are going to lose out to international competitors, then we’ll relax things a little bit.”, and how are those numbers really going to be decided?

Well, the only way is politics, and so, again, we go backwards 35 years to a world where if you want stuff done and if you’d like your industry to survive and prosper, then one of the most important inputs you can have—being carbon credits—are going to be awarded based on whether or not the Government has regulated this five-year period that your industry should have more or less. That politicisation of the economy is not only unnecessary in order to have a truly market-based emissions trading scheme but it does enormous damage in repoliticising the New Zealand economy—something that we moved away from a long time ago.

In summary, this bill does things that are not necessary that introduce additional political control over the New Zealand economy, and yet it doesn’t achieve better environmental outcomes for doing it. That is a reason why all New Zealanders should be opposed to trying to do climate change policy this way. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

JO LUXTON (Labour): I rise with real pride to support this piece of legislation, because one of the things that this piece of legislation does, among several, is acknowledges the importance of working in partnership with our agricultural sector. That is just one of the things that this piece of legislation does, but more importantly it’s about tackling New Zealand’s long-term challenges, and we know that climate change is one of our biggest challenges that we face in today’s day and age. It reforms the New Zealand emissions trading scheme (ETS) to drive emissions reductions and help New Zealand meet its domestic and international climate change targets.

I’d like to acknowledge the Hon James Shaw for bringing this piece of legislation to the House, when it is such an important issue that we cannot ignore. As Minister Shaw said earlier, the emissions trading scheme was not being used to its full potential, and we know that the emissions trading scheme is actually a key tool to tackling climate change. We can no longer sit on our hands. We can no longer put our heads in the sand and say “It’s all too hard.” and put it in the too-hard basket. We must act now.

What we have here is a progressive Government that is working hard towards making real and meaningful change and is not afraid to make some of the hard decisions. But I am really pleased that we have seen the Government has listened to the concerns of the agricultural sector and has put into place a sector-led plan to reduce emissions at the farm gate, which means that each farm will get the benefits individually for their reduction of emissions, and I think that is extremely important. We do know that agricultural emissions are going to be brought into the ETS by 2025, but this does allow the sector time to develop the tools and systems that they need to account for on-farm emission in 2025, and I have every confidence in our agricultural sector that they will achieve this.

We know that our farmers are innovative and practical people, and I have no doubt in their abilities to achieve this goal. They are already doing so much work on farm to care for the environment, because they understand that climate change affects them and actually affects our ability to keep our reputation as a country that provides exceptional quality and sustainable produce to the world. They know the importance of what this piece of legislation means.

There’s going to be a backstop measure to bring agriculture into the ETS earlier, in 2022, if there isn’t enough progress being made, but I have every faith in our agricultural sector’s ability, and I am certain that we are not going to need to use this backstop. There will be no need for this at all, because our farmers care about the environment, they care about agriculture’s global reputation, and the majority out there are actually already doing the right thing.

As my colleague Angie Warren-Clark said earlier, sometimes I think the Opposition underestimates the knowledge that this side of the House holds around the agricultural sector and just assumes that none of us care about agriculture. They think we don’t care about the farming sector, we don’t care about farmers, we hate farming, and all the rest of it. That is actually completely untrue. They would be very surprised to know how many of us on this side of the House come from rural agricultural backgrounds, and we do care deeply about our farming sector, our agricultural sector, and acknowledge absolutely the work that they are undertaking in caring for not only their farms and their productivity but their environment.

I visit farms regularly within the electorate that I live in, and I am so thrilled to see how many of them are working so, so hard on their environmental footprint. They are family farmers and they want to leave the land better than they found it. They are working so hard because often they pass their farms on, generation to generation, and they want to leave it in better condition than they inherited or bought it themselves, for their children and their community. So I absolutely commend this piece of legislation to the House.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in favour of the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill—the second half of the quinella—following on, of course, from our zero carbon bill discussions earlier today.

Mr Speaker, I’m sure you will understand that I would like to bring, in particular, an agricultural perspective to this debate tonight, reflecting the role that I have in the Opposition. Listening to the Government’s approach to talking about the merits of this bill, I’m struck by that saying that someone on our side said—I can’t recall who exactly—that this Government doesn’t meet a problem that it doesn’t think tax is the solution for. I’d just like to step through why I say that, in the context of agriculture and their exposure to the emissions trading scheme.

The genesis of agriculture being included began when the Government, under the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, instructed the Interim Climate Change Committee to reflect, initially, on whether and how agriculture should be included into the emissions trading scheme. For some reason, the “whether” part disappeared from the brief, and it ended up being a report back to the Minister on how agriculture could be put into an emissions trading scheme. It said, “Look, it would make sense if you were to proceed down this path, to do it at a farm level.” And that sat in the Government’s good offices for a number of weeks while the Government parties debated between themselves how, actually, they were going to respond.

Eventually they put out a discussion document, and it included in that some good thinking that the industry leaders had put on the table. That thinking is worth reflecting on. That thinking—and I acknowledge here the leadership of DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand and the other peak bodies of our primary industries—said to the Government that if you are actually seeking to genuinely make a difference with respect to emissions reduction in an agriculture context, first give us the ability to measure them accurately. Secondly, give us some tools in a co-investment context—innovation and tools underpinned by science—to be able to apply, and if we have those two, we back ourselves to reduce emissions over time.

That was the premise of the industry’s response to this issue. So I found it quite interesting when I looked at the language that surrounded the Government’s announcement that they had reached a historic first with the agricultural leadership of this country to price emissions in 2025. If you actually look at the responses from the various industry bodies, that was not included in their response to the public. What they were focused on was the ability to work with the Government around the sensible initiatives of Farm Environment Plans having the capacity to measure emissions, getting tools in place to be able to mitigate, and, over time, making the difference.

The Government, however, framed that up in the context of a world first of pricing emissions by 2025. That is the core, and it is included and enabled here in this legislation. That is the core difference of philosophy between that side and this side in terms of the journey that we need to go on in primary industries to reduce our emissions.

For a start, this side holds the view that the efforts of our farmers, the 23,000 of them around this country, deserve to be celebrated and acknowledged—for the work they have done over many, many years in reducing emissions. I see New Zealand First immediately shaking their heads because they know, typically, that my point here is accurate. They are putting a huge amount of effort into being able to reduce their environmental impact. Climate change is a part of that journey, and they understand the importance of being able to apply the best of their capacity to be able to reduce it over time.

That is what farmers are expecting in terms of this journey, but what the Government focuses on as a priority, and what is included here in the bill that we are debating tonight, is a framework that is yet to have flesh put around it—and I acknowledge the Minister for saying that we will get to see that through the select committee process—that frames up a complex tax arrangement to incentivise farmers to make the change.

On this side of the House, we see success in, firstly, acknowledging that we are the best in sustainable food production in the world, that that should be amplified, and it should be amplified through investment by Government in support of the industry, and the ability to measure emissions, and over time, manage them with tools—that is success. For this Government, success is having a piece of legislation that taxes farmers to ensure that they make that difference. We don’t think you need to. We actually believe that if you invest with farmers, give them the tools, align them with the obvious commercial imperatives to be able to respond, and to continue to be world leading in terms of emissions efficiency, that will drive the change.

The Government do not believe in that philosophy. They think change can only happen if you tax it. It is a punitive view on how to partner. It will not sustain itself. They don’t understand the realities of farming, they don’t understand the realities of our global supply chain relative to the rest of the world—and yet again, New Zealand First looks to the heavens. Well, when has New Zealand First gone over and had a conversation with a European farmer and said, “Let’s compare our systems. Let’s actually look at the efficiency of New Zealand versus the subsidisation of yours.” They do not—they absolutely do not. That is a core difference that we are calling out here tonight.

In this bill is a fundamental philosophy that change comes when you punitively tax individuals to make the difference. In our view, change will come and continue to progress—because let’s acknowledge the work the farmers have done already—when you partner in a genuinely collaborative way with your farmers, acknowledging the work that they have already done, being clear around the information and technology and capability gaps that exist, and have a plan around how to close those gaps, and give the industry the best chance to continue to lead in a world context. That is how you actually make change. This Government has a fundamentally different view in terms of how to incentivise that change in an agricultural context.

To conclude, with respect to agriculture and to the emissions trading scheme and the particular components that sit in this legislation, when it goes through the select committee I have a very high expectation that this committee will ask some pretty pointed questions of officials around what is the capacity for our farmers to be able to measure the carbon sequestration that occurs on their farm. What is the capacity for farmers to be able to measure their riparian strips, their shelter belt, and potentially their soil? There is absolutely no excuse for a weak Government response coming back saying it’s too hard. You cannot ask of farmers to lean in to the challenge of reducing their emissions and at the same time take off the table technology to apply to reduce their burden and the opportunity for them to truly capture and benefit from the carbon sequestration that occurs on their farms today. Anything less than that will be letting farmers down in a materially serious way. We will hold you to account because, as a Government, you have to listen to farmers’ expectations on these matters.

I look forward to hearing how the select committee progresses, and I will have every confidence that our National Party colleagues will ensure that the farmers’ perspectives are front of mind as we land the final version of this bill. Thank you.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. So the previous Government signed us up to the Paris Agreement, which was good. They did so, unfortunately, without having the framework in place to actually achieve the reductions that were required. So what this bill does is put in place that framework that will allow us not only to achieve our commitments under the Paris Agreement but also the carbon budgets and the targets under the zero carbon bill. But it also creates that ability to work in partnership with the farming community, agricultural community, to develop new pricing mechanisms for our agricultural emissions. And unlike the framing of the previous speaker, this is a true partnership. It’s working alongside the primary industries to develop that way forward.

So this is a substantive bill, 225 pages. I silently apologised to the trees as I hit print on my computer. But what I want to do is talk a little bit about some of this partnership with the agricultural sector before I move on to talk about what the bill will do in terms of allowing us to meet some of those emission budgets and targets under the zero carbon bill. What this does is create a new agreement with the agricultural sector to develop a new way of looking at agricultural emissions and looking at whether we can, indeed, price them on farm, which is critically important.

All the farmers that I know care about the environment—absolutely care about the environment. What they’ve been telling me is this is the way they want to go, on-farm carbon pricing, because what it allows them to do is all those investments they’re making in their farms at present—particularly looking around water, around just environmental plans—it allows that to be acknowledged and the work that they’re doing. So this is particularly important in making sure that we can develop those mechanisms for taking into account riparian strips, shelter belts, and on-farm carbon sequestration, so taking those into account in terms of on-farm accounting. It also, basically, puts in place a mechanism where we can look at our farm environmental plans, working out the detail on this, and thinking about how we can look at greenhouse gases at the same time as thinking about our plans for water quality.

So what the aim of this is is to look at farm-level pricing of livestock emissions and process a level pricing of obligations for fertiliser emissions from 2025, but also looking at starting reporting for livestock emissions at farm level from 2024, so putting in place that framework to make sure that this is working well. This is incredibly important because of the huge contribution that the primary industries make to our economy. But also taking into account that this is also incredibly important because just under 50 percent of our emissions are coming from agriculture. And so the work we do here is not only going to be significant for us as a country but it may well be significant on a global scale, developing up that way of looking at on-farm carbon pricing.

So what will happen, as people have already mentioned, is the Ministers of climate change and of agriculture will be required to report on progress in 2022, and basically having a look at the NZ emissions trading scheme (ETS) being the fall back option if the Climate Change Commission provides the advice that not enough progress is being made. But with the goodwill and the commitment of the primary sector out there, I know that there’s a real commitment to making sure that this works.

So while some of the detail of this hasn’t been worked out yet, we’ve already had an undertaking that that further information and detail will be provided to the select committee so we can look at this in the select committee process, because this is incredibly technical and a detailed bill—as I said, it’s over 220 pages. And so I’m really looking forward to the submissions that we’re going to be receiving from our agricultural sector and from others to talk about how we get this right.

But looking at some of the other key elements of this bill—because it’s also important that we’re meeting our targets under the zero carbon bill and also those emission budgets year on year. So one of the important things that this bill will do will enable the NZ ETS to be capped. What it does is introduces this decision-making framework that can restrict the overall supply of units into the scheme. Then what’s accompanying that is regulations that set the overall limit each year. But then they always have to be out for five years, so that provides certainty in the sector about what’s coming further forward. That not only provides that certainty for the sector but it’s also a key mechanism for looking at meeting our carbon emission budgets under the zero carbon bill.

So the other thing the bill does is it removes the current $25 fixed price option and it replaces that with a cost-containment reserve. So what happens there is if those prices start to rise, what can happen through the ETS auction is that the Government can release some more NZ units into the auction when things hit a particular level. So, basically, it allows the Government to look at managing supply of units in much more detail.

The bill also looks at phasing down our industrial allocations from 2021, because under the Act at the moment, a number of activities are either specified as 0.9 or 0.6. What this bill does is between 2021 and 2030 it allows for about a one percent reduction each year, and that has got the capacity to actually speed that up after 2030. But it also has mechanisms to make sure that the Climate Change Commission can then recommend that we go faster or slower because what we don’t want to do is end up in the situation where we get emission leakage, because if we end up having industry moving offshore, we may well, paradoxically, end up with higher emissions if they move to countries which, basically, don’t have the access to a lot of the things we have here like a lot of renewable capacity and generation in our electricity sector.

So, basically, what this bill does is not only create that framework for being able to meet our targets and our budgets under the zero carbon bill but it also allows us to start developing in partnership with the agricultural sector some on-farm pricing of emissions. But it also does another range of things, looking at strengthening compliance and transparency. It also introduces averaging accounting for forestry and also has the new permanent forestry activity in the ETS. So there’s a whole range of other things that this bill does, but it’s an incredibly important bill and is particularly significant for us as a country. I’m really looking forward to hearing those submissions during the select committee process, so I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 119

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.

Noes 1

ACT New Zealand 1.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I move, That the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 2 April 2020 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c), and that the committee have authority to consider and, if it thinks fit, adopt amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 relating to agriculture emissions pricing, despite Standing Order 292.

I understand that this is a debatable motion, so I wouldn’t mind just saying a little bit about why I’ve moved for unusual sitting hours. I have to point out that the report back date of 2 April 2020 is within the Standing Orders, but the reason I’m asking for, essentially, the unusual hours, which are debatable, is because the bill—as has been pointed out most eloquently by the Hon Nathan Guy when he lifted up the regulatory impact statements—is quite complex and quite technical and, I think, will take some getting through.

If I had the option, then we would take more time, but the issue is there are a number of things that are time-bound which this bill would give effect to when it passes into legislation. For example, we are setting up an auctioning system for units inside the reformed emissions trading scheme, which is due to start at the end of next year. In order to start auctioning at the end of next year, we need to have the regulations in place. In order to have the regulations in place, we need to have the legislation in place, and we also need to actually build, test, and roll out the auctioning platform. So for those reasons, I am asking for the unusual hours to be given permission of the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I’d like to speak in opposition to the shortening of the select committee process. If climate change legislation is worth doing, then it’s worth doing well. We know from long and hard experience in this House that legislation that is made in a rushed manner ends up being bad legislation. There is a reason why we ask the public to submit and allow select committees to seek advice and deliberate over a period of time, and that is because often the public know things that we in this House do not. Often, the public are able to provide advice that actually helps us as members of Parliament make better laws than we would otherwise. I draw on a typically impassioned and very good speech made earlier in the House today by Chlöe Swarbrick where she lamented that politicians are unable to tackle long-term problems because of the fact that too often we are focused on short-term electoral cycles rather than what is good public policy for generations of New Zealanders to come.

In this instance, by reporting back, as the Minister in charge, James Shaw, has asked, on 2 April, well, it mightn’t seem so bad standing here on 5 November. It mightn’t seem that five months was too bad. But, in actual fact, this is a place—the only place in New Zealand I’m aware of—where the workers are allowed to vote for their own holidays. This coming summer, members of Parliament have elected to be in recess from 18 December—or perhaps 19 December if we sit the full term—all the way through to, if I recall correctly, 8 February.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. I’m going to draw the member back to the motion, which relates to the select committee and not the sitting of the House.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I don’t wish to depart from the motion, but I feel it is important to note that while there are nominally five months, the real time that Parliament will be able to operate, that it will be hearing submissions from the public, and that a select committee will be able to deliberate is going to be much shorter than it might appear from the report back date itself, because the sittings of the House are adjourned for quite a long period over the Christmas break.

SPEAKER: Order! I’ve now warned the member a second time. We are debating when this should go to the select committee, for how long, and the conditions when the House is sitting. We are not debating how often the select committee will sit during the recess, and it can sit every day but Sunday and Christmas Day by way of the Standing Orders.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Mr Speaker, I feel I’ve made that point, and I’ll say no more about it.

I think it’s clear that if we wish to do climate change policy and it’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing right, and I think it’s a mistake for the House to shorten the time taken making quality policy so that, as the member says, it can be ready in time for the trading scheme to be implemented one year earlier than it otherwise might have been. So, in conclusion, we could have the opportunity to follow due process and make better law. I think that if the House supports this motion, then it is making a mistake for the quality of law and the procedure of the House, and it would be much better if we stayed with those procedures, if we gave the full six months normally due for consultation by select committees on bills before they report back, and, if we were prepared to accept that perhaps—and sometimes things can be done faster than expected—there will be a one-year delay in implementing good legislation rather than legislating too fast and risking getting it wrong. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to speak against this motion of the select committee timings that have been outlined. The issue from our perspective is the similarity in the approach that is being proposed in this select committee timing regime to what we had in the previous select committee process around the zero carbon bill, which, from our perspective, and as we have spoken and mentioned today, was, we felt, unnecessarily truncated.

We think the risk is that we will not provide the opportunity for appropriate considered deliberation of what is, as the Minister said himself, a particularly technical and challenging piece of legislation. And the tendency to be able to meet the time frames will be to, I suspect, separate into a number of subcommittees to enable it to happen. The experience that we saw unfold through the select committee process on the zero carbon bill is you end up with too few MPs trying to grapple with particularly technical details of law and not giving the appropriate due consideration of the technical submissions that are before them. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 2 April 2020 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c), and that the committee have authority to consider and, if it thinks fit, adopt amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 relating to agriculture emissions pricing, despite Standing Order 292.

Ayes 63

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.

Noes 57

New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill

Instruction to Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill be reported to the House by 3 December 2019 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve been looking forward to this instruction being given to the House for almost, I think, a week—a week and a bit. I rise in a sort of an awkward position of having two hats on: one as an Opposition MP but also as chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. So I want to put on record immediately why I oppose this. I want to give the House a surety, of course, if this passes—if it is the will of the Parliament—the select committee will do its duty and acknowledge that the Minister of Justice has provided, through this instruction, the time, potentially, or the ability to do so.

Look, I oppose this simply as I believe this is too short—too short a period of time. This instruction, I believe, was meant to be moved a week or so ago. I think it was a lack of competence by the Government to actually have moved the instruction at the right time. As I say, it’s normally done immediately after a bill is read. The bill was read in the House. It was passed, a motion was put, and that was it. This was to go to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, as I say, which I chair, but because the Government was not managing its House duties correctly, they ran out of time to put this instruction, and why that’s particularly important is that the committee has now lost a whole week, in effect, to be able to begin the submission process and to hear from the public.

So, fundamentally, it’s too short. We only have, well, effectively, less than three weeks now on this incredibly important piece of legislation to not only go out to the public, to ask them to submit, and to find the time to listen to their views but then, of course, to sit down with our advisers to make any necessary changes. It would be marvellous to think that we get bills right first time, but all of us in this House, it doesn’t matter if we’re new or old, know that it can take—well, there are always problems, and I have reservations that the way that this bill has already been handled does not look good, to put it very, very simply.

As I say, we’ve already had it bungled, if you will—the fact we have been doing an instruction in its own right. I believe, it is unprecedented to actually have a bill presented to the House and accepted, but the instruction to the committee—

SPEAKER: No, no, I assure the member he’s not correct.

SIMON O’CONNOR: It hasn’t. Oh well, I don’t want to have a privileges complaint put against me then. But we are in this unusual situation where it has been unfortunately handled to date. We already know, as I said, the instruction—this is messed up. We know that there have been disputes around the negotiation of the bill, and why that’s particularly relevant is that we’ve already got a messy bill in its process. I am reluctant that we are only going to be able to deal with this for three weeks.

When the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has previously dealt with issues, in this case around foreign fighters, we had a substantial number of people submit and I expect similar here. We’re obviously going to have the groups that are very interested in human rights that will want to submit. We’re going to have our various officials from the Ministry of Justice and so forth. It’s even possible, unusual as it is—and the committee is going to have to try and find some time—that we might actually want our intelligence services to come in as well. We know there are a number of members of the public and I know there are members on the committee who have actually expressed their interest, again, particularly around the human rights components, and want to be heard.

The concern I have, slightly putting the chair’s hat on, is: how exactly are we going to progress even with all the time available? I know we have a recess week there; that provides us a good opportunity of time. But if we end up as a committee with a substantial number of submissions, how exactly are we’re going to handle that? First and foremost, it is infinitely handleable; committees are very able and willing to be able to do sampling, to deny people being heard, and so forth but also, actually, to do the process rightly and properly and, I suppose, to give confidence to the people of New Zealand that we’ve done this right. Fundamentally, we’re not talking here about a tax bill; we’re talking about the security of the Realm, and that sort of, I suppose, ups the ante, if you will—ups the tension around this piece of legislation.

I will signal, because I’m attempting to be balanced, which might be a change, and that might be misleading the House again, too—I don’t know. But we do have the balance that as it’s something which has to do with the national security of New Zealand, there’s obviously a need to get this done speedily, and I don’t think anyone in this House, myself included, would want to see a situation develop where we had not progressed the law. But the corollary or the flip side to that is we have to get this right, and my concern is that we are going to be enormously under the pump.

Again, I can’t speak for what the committee will formally endorse or decide, but I can see we’re going to be dealing, probably, with less than a week to allow New Zealanders to submit. The committee itself, competent as all the members are, is going to have to process quite a large amount of information from our advisers. Then, as I say, we’re going to have to—and it’s certainly my hope—engage with the public in a way that’s constructive, first and foremost; secondly, enables us to see if there any changes required; and, thirdly—and I think importantly—provides the confidence needed. Then, of course, as you’ll understand, once that’s all been done, we have to make sure we process the changes accordingly.

What’s also complicating things slightly, and, again, it’s quite right and proper what the Minister’s done, and, actually, I thank him for it, is he’s tabled a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—I think it is SOP 397—early, which is great. But that’s now a further piece of consideration that the committee has to be involved with.

So I suppose the long and the short of what we’re saying here is that this is an incredibly important piece of legislation. It is dealing with elements of our national security. There are areas we already know from the first reading, which are highly, highly contentious between different sides of the House. I don’t intend to litigate them here. It’s not appropriate. But one of them’s around the age limit, as in is it high or too low? The other is around fining, as in if someone—a terrorist—coming back to New Zealand breaches the rules, is a fine sufficient? These are substantial issues. They are controversial issues. They’ve been highly emotional. The committee will need to progress through those, and it’s also been well signalled in the debates in the House and some of the initial correspondence that I’ve had as chair that people are following this with a very keen eye on the human rights side. Those are always, very substantive issues.

But suppose I do want to indicate not a lack of faith, for want of a better word, in the ability of the committee to try and do its duty. But this is incredibly, incredibly tight. As a way of wrapping up my contribution, as I say, we’ll do what we can, but because the instruction was not moved on the last sitting day, on the Thursday, we’ve lost a further week. The Minister has not changed the date. It remains 3 December, so we are under the pump. We’ll do our duty, though. I look forward to those members of the public who do submit if, of course, it is the will of the House that this instruction or motion be agreed to.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’m going to pick up where the chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has just left off. I’m not going to be as measured as he is in opposing this measure, because I acknowledge the role that he has where he has to balance his position as an Opposition member of Parliament with his role as chair of the committee. So I commend him for that.

But here we go again with this most open and transparent Government ever, apparently, as they were determined to be, showing that they are anything but. In fact, what we have here is a Government that is determined to ride roughshod over parliamentary process and scrutiny on one of the most significant measures that could come before this Parliament. That is a constitutional outrage because, as the chairman of the committee has just pointed out, this is not a minor matter. This is a very serious issue that goes to the heart of New Zealand’s domestic and international security. So there is no doubt at all that the National Party—and, I think, probably our colleague in the ACT Party—are hotly opposed to this ministerially proposed instruction to the committee. While I respect the fact that the chair of the committee has given an undertaking, assuming the Government is able to force its will upon the nation through this instruction, that they will do their level best to meet their obligations and to report back in good faith—and, of course, I do commend that, because we would all want to ensure that the committee does its very best work possible—nevertheless, it needs to be put on record that this is a shambles, it’s incompetent, and it’s utterly unacceptable.

I want to call on the Green Party to remember that they have a proud history while they’ve been in Opposition of opposing measures of this type, and I’m sure that tonight they’re going to want to maintain their integrity by saying—

Andrew Bayly: Are they?

SPEAKER: Order! The member can’t reflect on parties’ integrity.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: I wasn’t sure if you were referring to the colleague beside me, sir.

SPEAKER: I missed his; if he was naughty, he’s lucky—right?

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well, I stand corrected on that. I’m sure that the Green Party will wish to maintain their record in such matters. So I want to reflect and remind them that there is a very well-known maxim that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and so far, typically, this Government seems hell-bent on doing the important jobs as badly as possible.

What could cause greater fear in our communities than the threat of terrorism? I know I can’t get into the substance of the bill—I would like to—but, nevertheless, I can focus on the work, or the task, that this committee is going to be given. Let’s reflect on the fact that, effectively, they have just three sitting weeks, under this particular motion, to complete all their business. As the chair of the committee has pointed out, it is, presumably, going to be tomorrow that the issue will be opened up to the public for submissions. So that is a remarkably short period of time for the committee to receive those submissions, to provide the opportunity for people to be heard—and I have no doubt at all that many will wish to be heard, given the severity of this measure—to receive official advice, to hear from the security agencies, who of course are going to need to be heard, and then to process all of that information and do what select committees can do well, and that is to suggest improvements to the bill. We on this side of the House believe that improvements to this bill are not only desirable, but, frankly, essential. So all of that, and then, as the chair of the committee has pointed out, to have the bill reported back to the House by 3 December? Well, the Government should never have allowed this to happen.

We all know why the bill is being introduced. We all recognise—in particular, in the wake of 15 March in Christchurch—that it is an important issue for the House to address, and, in fact, as has been well articulated, the National Party would like to be able to be supportive of this measure. I can’t go into the reasons why we’re not at the stage, suffice to say that we will work in the select committee, if we’re given the chance to do so, to improve the bill.

I think it is going to be a matter of grave concern to the public that, effectively, it is the Green Party who have influenced the way in which this bill is now being handled, because I am yet to meet a single constituent in Hamilton West or any New Zealander in other parts of the country who wants the Greens to be the dominant players in shaping our terrorism legislation. It’s outside of the scope, I realise, to discuss what they are putting on the table, but it is absolutely—

SPEAKER: Yes, the member has drifted.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Yes, but sir, the point I’m making is that it is absolutely in scope to indicate concern on behalf of the public about the way in which their contribution will influence the work of the committee.

Our security agencies must be heard in this matter. They need to have the time to prepare the advice that the committee needs to hear. This proposal demonstrates extraordinary arrogance and incompetence, as I’ve said, in equal measure, and especially from this Minister, Minister Little, who should be much better than this. The committee will need to be able to reflect on the changes that he proposed between the initial concept of the bill that he sold to the public and those that ultimately made it into the House for the debate in its first reading, just the Thursday before last. I can strongly argue for the public to have their chance to consider what happened to cause those changes and to submit on those proposed changes as well. This truncated process, of course, will constrain their opportunities to do that, it will compromise the committee’s ability to hear evidence on their merit, and it will severely curtail their opportunity to consider making changes or recommending changes that could make for a much better bill.

Select committees are a vital part of our democratic process, and any member who has been here will know that at their best, select committees can make significant recommendations and improvements to bills. Governments have often commented on the fact that a better measure has come back as a result of the detailed scrutiny that a select committee can bring. They are often impressive in the way they operate, they’re often collegial, and they’re often willing to consider things that might not, occasionally, in the cut and thrust of debate in this House, seem to be able to be considered. But in the calmer, more measured atmosphere of a select committee, we can see changes being made, and that’s the appeal that we, in the National Party, are asking for in this process. That is the sort of atmosphere that I know that the chair of the committee will want to preside over, and that I know, having been formerly the deputy chair of that particular select committee, they often succeed in achieving. But the truncated nature of this process will put them under unreasonable pressure. Select committees are not a Government’s rubber stamp, yet, in this case, that’s exactly how they’re being asked to perform. They’re not a “nice-to-have” feature of Parliament; select committees are a vital feature of lawmaking. They are an important part of an Opposition’s ability to hold a Government to account—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will now come back to the motion, please.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well, sir, we are opposing this motion because it’s vital to get this legislation right, and what we are saying is that a truncated process of this type will compromise the select committee’s ability to do that. We’re not talking about a minor measure; we are talking about an imminent threat to New Zealand’s national security. I can’t go into the actual circumstances that have led to it, but the very fact that the committee will be dealing with something of that severity indicates why we must get it wrong, or get it right, sorry—absolutely get it right.

So I do hope we’re going to hear not only from the Green Party—who, as I say, have a strong record of opposing such measures—but also the New Zealand First Party, because I would be very interested to know how they feel about the fact that a bill that is now going to a select committee is different from the one that they were asked to consider and support at the outset, and what their contribution to the work of the select committee will be. Are they going to feel constrained or compromised in their ability to influence changes to this bill? I see Mr Ball has been shaking his head. I hope he’s going to take a call to stand up and explain his body language, because they’re the party who hold the balance of power in this Government, and this is an issue where the party that holds the balance of power needs to stand up and be accountable to the public.

Simon O’Connor: Put New Zealand first.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Put New Zealanders first, as the chair of the committee has said. So I appeal to all members to oppose this motion. I appeal to them to consider just how significant it is, how much of a constitutional outrage it is, how important it is for the public to be able to be heard and for the security agencies to be able to do their job, and I do hope that they will think again and not put this committee in such an impossible position.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The motion that the Minister has put forward—the Minister in charge of the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill, that is—would have the select committee considering the bill report back on 3 December. That is in exactly four weeks’ time, and it is not practical for New Zealanders to make meaningful submissions and have them considered in a meaningful way.

Let me just spell out what four weeks actually means. If the select committee is to deliberate, then often it needs to meet several times over a number of weeks, go back to officials, get advice, reconsider it, discuss it, deliberate, and then decide how to report back to the House. That in itself can easily take four weeks, but before that happens, members of the public, and I suspect, in this case, those with considerable expertise in the topic, need the time to consider and draft and finalise and send in their submissions. Now, these people don’t have a full-time job waiting for Parliament to ask for submissions so that they can make one. Oftentimes, for people who have other jobs and busy lives, simply going through the process of preparing the submission could take, easily, imaginably, four weeks.

But then there’s the process of actually submitting, and that involves the committee receiving the submissions and arranging to decide which submitters are to be heard in person, and then making arrangements. Often, people will have to make arrangements in order to travel to Wellington, although I am pleased to see that this committee might be able to travel to places other than Wellington. But even so, the scheduling of appearances is something that can easily and conceivably take four weeks. So in order to do this properly, the select committee would need at least three times as much time as it’s been given in order to properly do the job of scrutinising the bill, with well-prepared public input, with the appearances by people in front of a select committee, scheduled with all the logistical requirements that go with people having busy lives. It’s a shame to lose that, in part because of the lack of quality that we may end up with in the bill due to not having a proper submission process, particularly when we’re dealing with an issue such as this that balances the individual freedoms of New Zealanders with the need to sometimes use quite severe coercion in order to keep us safe from thugs and bullies offshore.

It also is a great shame for this institution of Parliament, because one of the things it means to be a New Zealander in a parliamentary democracy is that if you are a voting-age citizen, or permanent resident, for that matter, you have the right to send representatives to Parliament to scrutinise bills, to hold the Crown or the executive to account, and to be heard on specific matters when you are concerned about the actions of the Government and want to give your feedback. All of that is lost with this motion. I know there are parties in this House that will argue over whose fault that is and what it would’ve taken to have had more time. I just simply wish to put on record that there are practicalities in the select committee process, and those practicalities are essential to the functioning of our democracy as New Zealanders currently conceive it.

With that, I’d like to put on record ACT’s opposition to this motion and ask sincerely that the Government reconsider its options. Can it do this law in a way that allows proper consultation? The danger is that through a number of other legislative initiatives over the last two years, which I won’t name, they have slowly eroded the public’s trust in this Parliament and their own belief in the functioning of the democracy that they were born into or chose to come and be a part of, and that is a great shame. That is something the Government, and, in particular Mr Little—who generally has a very good grasp of the constitutional and civil liberty issues that arise—should be sincerely considering and asking themselves: is there a better way to solve this problem that preserves New Zealanders’ right to democracy and enhances the quality of legislation that comes out the other end? Thank you, Mr Speaker.

KIERAN McANULTY (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

SPEAKER: No one else went for the call, but—[Interruption] Is anyone else going for the call? Then we’ll just proceed straight to the motion, if that’s all right with members.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill be reported to the House by 3 December 2019 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Ayes 63

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.

Noes 57

New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 22 October.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. So I last spoke on 22 October, and at the time that I was speaking, I was just making a mention of Wairangi Te Rupe, my daughter by another mother, I guess you could say, who had had an organ donor replacement. I wanted to just bring the attention to the House again to that. This is a bill that has importance to me and our family. It’s important that we look at this legislation and the wide programme that we’re implementing in health. This is one of those parts of the legislative programme that sat for a long time with the Opposition—sat for a really long time with the Opposition—as a member’s bill and wasn’t picked up. There wasn’t the opportunity to progress it at that time, so it has now come before the House as a Government bill, and I’m very pleased about that.

While we are talking about organ donation, I want to urge each and every one of the people listening tonight and everyone here in this House to consider organ donation. As a person, if you come to this decision, I urge you to talk and speak with your family really clearly to explain and articulate your desire to share your organs. The important aspect of that—and this was clearly outlined to us in part of the hearings that we listened to—is that while we all think that we can donate our organs and we record it on our driver’s licence, unfortunately, upon our death, we are actually no longer able to do so, and it is the wishes of the family. So I just want to acknowledge that it is a conversation that may be difficult, but it’s one that needs to be had.

Now to the bill: this bill changes and amends two parts of the principal Act, the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016. People who are live organ donors—so those are the ones that are donating an organ; for example, a kidney—have not in the past been able to access compensation if they return to part-time work or they go back to work and then realise that, having donated, they’re not well enough to be at work and they go back off that work. They were unable to gain that compensation, and, as a consequence, that really did put a barrier in the way, or an additional barrier, to donating organs.

I’d just like to pause here and take a quick moment to acknowledge David and Anna. Now, David is the mayor of the Taupō community. He was very fortunate in that his wife was able to donate an organ to him last year, a kidney. I wonder, in terms of the legislation as it sat then, whether, as a family, they would have had both people off work at the time, and I wonder now whether this legislation would really have supported them to be able to afford to do this. I don’t know their circumstances financially, but it was a tremendous gift that Anna gave David and it is important that financially there are no barriers to do so.

The second change to the bill is the changes to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. Now, this bill is setting up the New Zealand Blood Service to be able to take on the new role within the organ donation and organ transplantation system. Essentially—most people have previously spoken about this—it sets up a system or an organisation that will, in fact, enable a better, more coordinated approach to organ donation. So it does a couple of things. It sets it up to raise the profile of organ donation, support clinical governance, coordinate donation and transplantation processes, and provide advice and information.

This is a small bill. It’s a bill that across the House has been pretty successfully discussed, and I think it’s really important. I think that it is a good piece of legislation and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on this, the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill, a bill that, as the previous speaker has just said, is going to be supported across the House.

Fundamentally, this bill does two things. It sets up a national organ donation agency. Fundamentally, what that does is it transfers the care, responsibility, policies, and procedures and indeed some funds from Auckland District Health Board (ADHB), who have been managing the organ donation service to date. I want to extend our thanks to them for the work they’ve done in maintaining the service.

But the desire was to form a national organ donor agency. It was thought to be best sited inside an existing Crown entity, and the Blood Service was deemed to be the most suitable. I agree. In fact, if I recall, the headquarters of the Blood Service is about a hundred metres off Park Road, so within vision of ADHB. So it will be an easy transfer of policies and procedures to this organisation. The first part of the bill does that.

The second part really just seeks to make it easier to donate. The previous legislation said that the donor and recipient needed to be located in New Zealand, but in fact we want to be able to facilitate and support approved overseas donation programmes, so this legislation looks to change that. We found that there was some rigidity in how we’d set it up—I was fortunate to sit on the Health Committee when Chris Bishop’s excellent 2016 bill came through—and the 12-week period, which the compensation applies to, there’s some rigidity in that if you were to return to partial work and then that didn’t work, and you had to go back to full work. You’re sort of locked in. So what this bill does is allow for some variability of the compensation, depending on your ability to return to work or do reduced hours over that 12-week period. There’s no doubt that that Act’s been successful. In the first year, 100 people received full compensation for organ donation.

I just want to support the voices of others across the House and say, look, our donors are heroes. On one level, they’re kind enough to donate literally a part of them and give someone a different life and, we believe, a better life. So we’re very supportive of this bill, of this legislation, and again we congratulate those who bring this bill to the House and who actually initiated the organ donation member’s bill in 2016—I think that’s when it came through—and we’re going to support this bill further. Thank you.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. As the Minister with purview over this particular organisation and this bill, I am really delighted to see this bill progress in the House with support from members right across this entire House.

If I can touch on a couple of mentions that the member Dr Shane Reti made in his contribution and endorse him in thanking those who do consider organ donation to be a part of their journey, whether live organ donation or deceased organ donation, but also the contributors who contribute to blood plasma and the bone marrow register—all important opportunities for people to give to others, to give to a cause greater than themselves.

Very recently, in fact, last week, we celebrated Paul—I’ll only call him Paul; I won’t refer to him by his full name. We honoured Paul for donating blood 600 times to the New Zealand Blood Service—something phenomenal, something that’s never been done before. I think that both parts of this bill will encourage more donation right across that entire spectrum, that we’ll see, in particular, Māori and Pacific peoples look towards donating blood, plasma, and consider themselves being on the bone marrow register, and also organs into the future.

Rightly, in order for us to do that, one part of the bill is actually to establish the organisation that all members have referred to in their contributions. I met with that organisation very recently, and there will be some opportunities and some challenges as the transition into the new organisation takes place, which is why I’m excited that this legislation will give them the platform to do that. Dr Reti is right in saying that it is a natural fit to merge both the organ donation side and the New Zealand Blood Service. For those familiar with the New Zealand Blood Service headquarters in Tāmaki-makau-rau on Great South Road, it is literally up the road. It will provide an opportunity for a far more seamless service, but, more importantly, the opportunity to strategise collectively into the future for what is an important part of our society, which is often unrecognised, often goes unnoticed, but is something that needs to be considered in its entirety as we look forward to our country being healthy, wealthy, and wise. That’s one part of the bill.

The other part, as members have already alluded to, is the opportunity to recognise those who do contribute to make sure that the compensation that’s due to them is far more fitting for the work life of the modern Kiwi, if you like. The full-time job aspect is, of course, part of that, but, also, Dr Reti quite rightly points out the ability for those on casual work, on different employment contracts, to be considered for compensation in this bill.

Just in my short contribution, I do want to acknowledge that the 16 submissions that came through and the work that was done by the select committee on this actually do lead to a far stronger bill as it proceeds through the House, and I look forward to no doubt more discussion being had as the bill progresses.

Finally, to both organisations as they go through this transition—the organ donation and the New Zealand Blood Service—we offer, I’m sure, on behalf of the entire House our support for the work that they’re doing and, of course, for the pathway that may lie ahead of them with respect to the New Zealand public and their ability to donate to these causes.

Just finally, a big thank you, of course, to all members on the way in which all parties have approached this bill. I look forward to it progressing through the House and to working with the New Zealand Blood Service and the organ donation service as they work through their integration over the next wee while. Kia ora, sir.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development) on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I move, That the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Our Government is committed to protecting consumers from predatory and unreasonable behaviour. We’re strengthening consumer protections across a range of different areas and issues, one of which is private parking enforcement. The Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs engages and listens to a range of people, including people who have been unfairly clamped and intimidated, as well as business owners who are frustrated with people parking where they shouldn’t. It’s therefore important that this bill strikes the right balance between those two interests. It does this by amending the Land Transport Act to set a maximum wheel-clamping fee of $100 that can be charged for a parking breach. It may seem unusual that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs is responsible for this bill which amends transport legislation. However, problems related to wheel clamping are a consumer issue, and I’m certainly pleased that something is being done about it.

The bill does the following. It seeks a maximum cap that wheel-clamp operators can charge. This can be amended through regulations, if necessary, in the future. It requires a wheel-clamp operator to respond to a motorist and remove a clamp in a reasonable period, and it makes it an offence to charge more than a maximum fee or to fail to remove a wheel clamp. We also plan to allow for infringement notices to be issued on the spot to enable efficient, timely enforcement action. These will be enforced by police, and the bill provides additional powers for police to carry out enforcement. The provisions of this bill are intended to apply to private operators who enforce parking on private property. It doesn’t apply to any agencies that have the authority to enforce parking under transport legislation, like councils or police.

I’d like to thank members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and particularly the chair, for their consideration and improvement to this bill. There was a thorough debate at the select committee. The committee received 25 written submissions from interested stakeholders and parties on the bill, and I’d like to thank all of those who took the time to submit.

The vast majority of submitters supported the bill, but in saying that, there were also suggestions for amendments. The key points from submitters were on the level of the fee cap and whether the bill should introduce some additional requirements, such as that around signage. I note that some submitters really wanted to see some mandatory standards requiring signs to be displayed in car-parks, and what these signs have to warn consumers about. These submitters may be disappointed that the bill doesn’t include this. There are already regulation-making powers in our legislation which will allow this to happen without needing to amend the legislation, so this could certainly be something that we look at in the future, if required. In the meantime, passing this bill will be a positive step forward towards ensuring that consumers are protected when they are confronted with wheel clamping.

Of course, the key thing which this bill does is to set a fee cap of $100, which can be amended in the regulations. I know that there was a lot of debate about this at the select committee, both among committee members and submitters. Some submitters said that a fee cap should be lower—as low as $50—while the wheel-clamping companies that submitted said that it should be higher, or that there shouldn’t be a cap at all. So where could we go to from there? Some said it should be higher; others said that it should be lower.

It seems like the $100 cap that was in the bill as introduced is probably the most balanced approach. It will provide enough of a deterrent to people who might otherwise park where they shouldn’t, while also ensuring that people don’t get charged ridiculously high amounts when they’ve only been parking for a short time. It’s worth noting that clamping often happens not where someone has left their car parked for four hours, but, in some cases, where they have parked for only minutes before they’ve been clamped. A higher fee cap would be disproportionate and unreasonable in these cases.

A potential consequence of having this fee cap is that it might force some operators to have to rethink their business models. This is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, some of them may choose to use breach notices more often because this can be a cheaper method which doesn’t have to involve any confronting situations. It may mean that operators and business owners will focus more on deterring people from parking by putting up clear and visible signage to avoid having to take enforcement action later. If the fee cap does drive some of the rogue operators currently charging extortionate rates out of the market, well, I’m sure we’d all agree that’s not a terrible thing either.

The committee has recommended some useful improvements which will ensure the workability of the bill. Some submitters said that the bill should specify a time frame for a wheel-clamp operator to respond to a motorist. As introduced, the bill provided that an operator has to be reasonably available to respond to a request to remove a wheel clamp. An operator also has to remove the wheel clamp as soon as reasonably practicable after a fee is paid. I understand members of the committee were interested in how more clarity could be provided around what time frame might be considered reasonable here. It was something that the Minister was also interested in.

The committee has recommended the inclusion of a new regulation-making power to set out criteria to take into account when considering whether a wheel-clamp operator has responded to a clamped motorist within a reasonable time frame. This power will enable the creation of regulations, if necessary, to provide guidance if there do happen to be disputes about what is reasonable. This is a great addition, and it has the potential to provide more certainty to motorists, wheel-clamp operators, and the police, who will be enforcing these requirements. The bill also clarifies that consumers can go to the disputes tribunal to seek remedies.

Can I once again thank the committee for its careful consideration of the bill and for making these improvements. Strengthening protections where there are obvious problems for consumers is an important matter to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, hence the progression of this bill. There has been a clear problem when it comes to overzealous wheel-clamping and extortionate fees being charged to consumers to have their cars released. I trust that the changes in this bill will provide a fairer system of private parking enforcement.

Ultimately, parking enforcement needs to be carried out in a reasonable and responsible manner. The bill will strike the right balance, I believe, between protecting motorists while ensuring that businesses have the tools to prevent people from parking where they shouldn’t. I commend the bill to the House.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As Minister Nanaia Mahuta has said, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee has made some useful amendments to this bill. While committees often do that, the point for this committee and this bill is that the committee had to make these changes because the Government hadn’t done the work prior to the introduction of the bill. We know that, and we know that for a fact, because the officials threw the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs under a bus by putting in their regulatory impact statement that they didn’t have sufficient time to get any robust sort of evidence base for this bill in the first place—an admission that it’s all based on anecdote. While we might all share and have experienced stories of people being preyed upon by some rogue clampers, that does not forgive nor excuse a Government for not doing what it should have done in the first place.

So it fell upon the committee to do the Government’s work for it, and the committee did a very good job, but there were some things, naturally—those holes that come from poor preparation. So there were holes to be filled. For instance, the bill is only intended to apply to private parking arrangements, but it required, therefore, to have a definitional aspect to exclude road-controlling authorities such as territorial authorities, which was supposed to have been done by the definition of “road”. But the committee felt it was important that that was clarified, and recommended some amendments to clause 4 to do just that.

Similarly, it also had to make it clear that the provisions also wouldn’t apply for instances of wheel clamping authorised by other enactments such as, for instance, freedom camping. The committee heard and understood that there was a need to ensure that the cap didn’t override parties’ rights to argue and seek potential remedies through the disputes tribunal. So it makes it very clear that while the cap of $100 for the parking infringement itself stands even in a disputes tribunal process, there are potential areas where parties may seek remedies for wrongdoing or inappropriate behaviours, such as, for instance, where a party that has been clamped and having not, obviously, paid for the unclamping wilfully damages the clamp, damages it more than needed for removal, or damages it without having paid the infringement. So the amendment is required to ensure that the cap wouldn’t override fair and reasonable processes for people to seek remedies.

There was also the discussion about the requirement for the clamper to be “reasonably available”. This was something of a vexed discussion, because while, ultimately, the language can be used that the committee recommended a regulation-making power, I can assure you that not all committee members wanted to do that. Some of us have a view that there are already more than enough regulations in this country and that simply adding more of them as a legislative convenience is not what this Parliament or any Parliament should be looking to do. However, after a protracted discussion with officials, we had to accept that there was not a workable way of sufficiently limiting what “reasonably available” would mean. For instance, it is quite reasonable to expect that if the clamping took place within moments of the vehicle being left and the occupants then came and paid their fee moments later, the clamper would still be somewhere nearby, but, equally, you cannot predict that anything like that will be the case often, if at all. So the committee did accept that while, as I say, not all members wanted the regulation-making power, a regulation-making power was going to be the only feasible option for this particular circumstance.

So at the end of that process, we have agreement on the committee report and the deliberation. We will have agreement still at the second reading to support this bill, but I reiterate that the select committee was forced to do the work of Government because the Government was, quite frankly, too lazy to have done it itself. That was written in the regulatory impact statement by officials—that they hadn’t been given sufficient time to do the work. Therefore, they hadn’t been able to find any evidence, and the entire bill and its premise was based on anecdote. But that’s the feel-good way of this Government in wanting to do something for the sake of doing something—wanting to do something to make it look like they were actually providing some new legislation, instead of simply passing the previous Government’s legislation. So the committee had to beat it into a bit of shape because, as a Government, they couldn’t do it themselves.

However, in saying that, we have all witnessed or heard stories of predatory behaviour by some rogue clampers. We do accept and agree that it is appropriate to take some action to limit that, so we will support this bill in second reading.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a good, important, and sensible bill. On the face of it, this bill does not appear to be that heavy, but this bill touches upon a very important area which has been ignored and neglected so far. The purpose of this bill—nine years of neglect—is to protect motor vehicle users from the unreasonable fees charged by some operators of immobilising devices such as wheel clamps. But the use of those devices, including wheel clamps, is unregulated. Many submitters such as New Zealand Automobile Association (AA) and Consumer New Zealand have long called for regulatory controls on this activity. So this bill is a positive development and will help to provide certainty for both vehicle users and car-park operators.

I congratulate the Ministers: the Hon Kris Faafoi, who introduced this bill, and also the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who contributed a second reading speech just now. The Government is committed to protecting consumers from predatory and unreasonable behaviour, and we are strengthening consumer protections across a range of different issues and areas.

Parking has never been a trivial matter. Rather, it is a core element of motoring and mobility. In its submission, the New Zealand AA put it in a very vivid and scholarly fashion—and I quote—“All vehicle journeys begin and end with a stationary car-park. Parking is critical to a functioning economy, facilitating the distribution of goods and services and facilitating access to employment, shopping, recreation, and other [fundamental and] essential activities.”

Results from the New Zealand AA’s quarterly rolling surveys show that 7.9 percent of its members have received a parking ticket in the last six months, and how many members do they have? They have 1.7 million members. So this is not an insignificant number, which means a large number of its members would have had some issues with a parking ticket. Wheel clamping is particularly unpopular with AA members and, I reckon, with the general public as well, who often find themselves in a situation that they cannot control—helpless and vulnerable—and this area is unregulated.

The Transport and Infrastructure Committee received and considered 25 submissions from interested groups and individuals. I acknowledge the committee. I have only recently joined the committee, and it gives me great pleasure to join my fellow committee members from the Justice Committee, Matt King and Chris Bishop. We all survived from that select committee. Politicising issues can be a matter for that committee, but certainly not for this committee, and certainly not for this particular bill. Taking a call in this bill’s second reading has given me a sense of exercising the politician’s art of arriving late but claiming all the credit. I acknowledge the committee and chairperson Darroch Ball, and I thank officials, advisers, and submitters.

There were some interesting issues that the committee discussed while considering the bill.

First of all, signage. At the moment there are no standards, and the AA is of the view that this bill could and should go a little bit further by regulating minimum signage standards for the operators of privately owned public car-parks. A common cause of this so-called unauthorised parking is due to inadequate signage. It is not fair to simply penalise those motor vehicle users simply due to inadequate signage.

Secondly, those penalties are harsh and, to a large extent, disproportionate to the offence.

Thirdly, for motor vehicle users—getting frustrated aside—there’s no way for them to challenge the penalty, and that brings us to the next point, which is the legitimacy of wheel clampers. From a number of complaints, we can tell that those wheel clampers are often casually dressed and in unmarked vehicles. This would have some flow-on negative effect on pretty much all law enforcement officers.

Lastly, the grace period. The New Zealand AA, Consumer New Zealand, and Wilson Parking New Zealand submitted that this bill should include a requirement for operators to apply a 10-minute grace period before applying those devices to a vehicle. I agree. Such an approach would help to protect motor vehicle users in that situation from overzealous operators.

Given the practice of this sector is not regulated, there is no meaningful way at all to gather sensible data. It is difficult and unfair to monitor or attend the situation, and nor would it help to develop policy interventions to provide guidance or correct any market failures.

This is a good bill. Thank you.

MATT KING (National—Northland): Madam Speaker, it’s a pleasure. It’s why I came to Parliament, to speak on these sorts of bills: the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill. A big shout-out to the insomniacs out there. It sets a few rules around wheel clamping to get rid of the cowboys. There’s not going to be a Facebook post about me on this one, that’s for sure. One thing—

Michael Wood: No, there never is.

MATT KING: Oh, that hurts—that hurts. I’m on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee with Raymond Huo, and we did some great work. I wouldn’t say it was one of the major bits of legislation that this Government’s brought around, but, hey look, setting up a $100 maximum was an issue. There was only one submitter—one poor wheel-clamper—who came in and made a submission that $100 is not enough, and I acknowledge that in some cases a $100 limit is going to put some wheel clampers out of business.

I’m a former owner of a business that had people illegally parking out the front of my shop. I really wish that I had had the opportunity to clamp some of them myself.

We came to a figure of $100. I didn’t agree with it, but we’re on a select committee and we all had a vote, and I lost the vote. I would have made it a little bit more than that just to keep some of them in business. But the rules around it needed to be put in place. There is some good TV about wheel clampers, with rogue ones causing grief and charging a lot of money and acting illegally and without justification. So this bill does cover that.

I like the fact that we’ve included in there that if a wheel-clamping operator refuses or is not available to remove the clamp, there is a facility in there for the vehicle owner to be able to remove the clamp themselves and not be liable, as long as they minimise damage. I also like the fact that police can be involved. It gives them powers enforceable by police. In the past, police have turned up and not been able to deal with the situation. This gives them the authority to deal with those problem situations.

So everything’s been well traversed. It’s another piece of major legislation by this Government. I commend the bill to the House.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I’m not too sure why Mr King isn’t taking this piece of legislation very seriously, because it is very serious for all of those business owners that it affects, and not only that but all of those victims of the cowboy vigilante clampers that are out there. Not only that, but what he has just told them—I hope they’re watching—is that he didn’t care very much about their submissions when they came forward. They not only came forward and gave oral submissions but there were a number of written submissions describing what they went through, the intimidation that they went through, the tactics that they went through, and the issues that they went through from these cowboy clampers.

So, you know, New Zealand First is taking this very seriously. I want to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and especially all the advisers to the committee too, because even though on the face of it it should have been quite a simple bill and piece of legislation to go through, we actually found—as the committee should do—some issues through it and some unforeseen issues that were opened up through the attempt to curb the cowboy clampers through this piece of legislation.

I’d just like to mention something that Brett Hudson said, actually, which was that the committee was forced to do something. I certainly, as the chair, was not forced to do anything, and I know that all of the other members of the committee on this side of the House didn’t feel forced to do it. It was part of the select committee process called democracy, Mr Hudson. Not only that, but the only entity that was forced to do anything was the Government on this side having to be forced to address the issue of cowboy clampers, because that party over there, when they were in Government, did zero—did nothing. So Mr Hudson might want to stand up and accuse the Government of forcing the committee to do something, but, in reality, the Government has stood up within the first couple of years of being in Government and done something for the victims of these cowboy clampers.

The other thing that I failed to find was any minority view from the National Party. So Mr Hudson stood up and he was leading the charge from the National Party, and he said that they had a number of changes or dislikes in the bill and didn’t agree with a lot that was going on in the changes. Mr King also said that he disagreed with the $100 cap. But there was no minority view. In fact, all of the other members of the committee from this side of the House with me actually can back me up—I hope—and we failed to find any argument that they actually came up with during the select committee stage at all. So I’m quite surprised by the two speeches that I’ve heard so far, and I hope that notes weren’t passed around to repeat them, because they’re just simply not true.

This, like I said, is a very important bill. I’d just like to acknowledge the fact that we heard from a wide variety of submitters, from the consumers themselves to the people who were victims of the cowboy clampers. We heard from the retail outlets as well and the concerns that they had, and also from the clamping organisations themselves. One of the struggles that I had through the select committee stage was that, actually, each one of them had quite compelling arguments from different perspectives and different points of view. It was a challenge for the committee to come up with the piece of legislation that we have, but I think that we’ve come up with a very good and balanced and focused piece of legislation.

I think it’s important for members of this House and the public to understand that all of the people who were the consumers and the organisations like Consumer New Zealand and the Automobile Association, who were representing those who were affected by the wheel clampers, had a common theme—for example, with the cap, they said that it was too high. All of the organisations and individuals and companies, whether they were the wheel clampers or the retailers, were all consistent in saying that the cap was too low. So there was no real, ready, and perfect answer for this. We asked for an extension to it as well because we wanted all of the information and the knowledge and the advice from the advisers—

Hon Member: We looked at overseas jurisdictions as well.

DARROCH BALL: —and we were quite thorough about that. I’ve just heard—which is quite true—that we actually sought overseas jurisdictions’ information on how they applied their different regulations and legislation and what worked over there and what lessons were learnt. We came up with a very thorough, focused, and balanced piece of legislation, and the committee and the advisers should be quite proud of that.

I think it’s also important to note that no matter what part of that continuum they are on, whether they be the retailers, the companies, or the consumers, the vast majority, if not everybody, understood the intent of the legislation and the fact that there needed to be some changes. As has been mentioned on this side of the House, and by the National Party as well, there were, up until this point, some very serious issues and unacceptable circumstances that some people found themselves in, and still find themselves in, where they are away from their vehicle for 30 seconds, if that, and come back to find their wheel clamped and have to pay upwards of $500, $600, $700, or $800, and that’s obviously totally unacceptable.

So the Government’s decided to do something about that. We took the legislation through to select committee, we’ve gone through that, and we’ve made it a very balanced and focused piece of legislation. New Zealand First supports it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it’s not the select committee that I sat on, and this piece of legislation, while it might not seem too weighty, does have an impact on many people. I particularly know of the mobility parks around, which are on private property, predominantly, which are often abused. People want to park right out in front of wherever they want to go shopping and that’s where the mobility parks are, and it must be quite galling if you are a person who suffers from a disability and who lacks the mobility to have those parks taken up by people that don’t have the right to be there, and as it’s on private property, this bill applies to it.

Clamping, of course, is the ultimate sanction, I guess, in this regard, and, of course, as we know, some of those clampers have been quite extortionate. It actually is quite ironic that we’ve had two climate change bills tonight and a bill on terrorism, and now we have one on clamping. I guess you could relate car clamping back to climate change in that you’re not burning any fossil fuels while they’re clamped, and if you’re the victim of having the clamp on, you might say it’s terrorism. So it’s quite ironic that these three bills have all come up tonight.

But I think it’s a very serious issue to deal with, and I’m not trying to make light of it at all. I agree with my colleague Matt King that $100 does seem light. I don’t know the economics of the clamping business and I have no intention of ever finding out, but I suspect that if it is not enough, at least there’s power under the regulations to make a change and adjust that through the process. I think that’s the right way to go. I guess that if it isn’t enough, then the businesses would have to foot that cost, or they won’t have any clamping businesses to operate that deterrent. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I’m not going to be as oratorically adventurous as Stuart Smith, the previous speaker, and try and link it to terrorism legislation and climate change legislation, but I will note those positive bills the House has dealt with earlier on tonight.

This is good legislation. Look, I’d describe it as eminently reasonable. Now, I’m going to explain what I mean by that, because while I didn’t have the pleasure of sitting on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—and I acknowledge the chair, Darroch Ball, and the members of the committee—the submitters’ amendments were eminently reasonable. There are four areas I want to quickly touch on. The first is claims to the disputes tribunal, which just clarifies that even though a case can be taken to the disputes tribunal, the maximum penalty, which is what this legislation is trying to achieve—that a maximum of $100 can be charged to remove a clamp—stands. It is clarifying that. Now, why I say “eminently reasonable” is because there is also the situation where you might want to actually remove the wheel clamp yourself, and what the committee has come up with is new section 98D(5)(b) in clause 4, which is that it can be removed as long as there’s “as little damage to the … device as is reasonably possible.”—again, another eminently reasonable amendment that the committee has forward with.

There’s also the requirements for being “reasonably available”. What the committee has done is notice that this is a subjective term and it has noted that the time limit where an operator can remove the immobilising device must be reasonably available. Now, they’ve identified that this needs to be changed in regulations, and to the previous member Stuart Smith, who talked about the maximum fine of $100, I know there’s been debate previously that it should have been $50 or $100. We’ve all heard those nightmare cases where people literally with children still in their vehicle are being clamped and charged what I believe is an extortionate amount of up to $700 more in some cases. Now, people might have a disagreement on what the actual figure should be, but I would point out that much like this requirement for being “reasonably available” to be amended in the regulations, so can that $100 fee. So that can be amended in the future.

Now, the fourth big change was the regulation of signage. I think the committee has erred on the right side of the debate, hearing from the submitters that while many submitters thought signage should be required, that wasn’t entirely necessary. So here you have some very explicitly reasonable amendments to make sure this eminently reasonable bill is more workable.

This is really good legislation. I actually recall that maybe the first letter I wrote in this new Government was to the Minister Kris Faafoi. I’d been contacted after the election by the Sunday Star-Times, who had a litany of horror stories from the experiences of regular Kiwis where—as we’ve heard the quote—cowboy clampers had had a disproportionate impact on their families’ lives and had taken literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars out of them in a way that I think any reasonable Kiwi would find unacceptable. So I’m really glad the Minister has acted on this. They’ve moved with the appropriate amount of haste. This is good, common-sense, reasonable legislation that the Green Party is proud to support.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Now when this bill was going through select committee, it seemed at face value to be a pretty straightforward piece of legislation. Putting a cap on wheel clamping—how complex could that be? Well, was I mistaken—goodness! The complexity that arose as we worked through this was quite impressive, actually, and we’ve heard already some of that touched on by other contributors this evening.

But one for me that stood out was around the cap, and we’ve heard around whether that was an appropriate limit or not—whether $100 was too high or too low, depending on who was submitting. But, actually, what it also raised was then the potential issue from the wheel-clamper’s perspective, which is “If $100 was the cap, then perhaps we can’t operate a successful business at that level.” So, therefore, maybe the owners of those car parks would have to look at other enforcement options, and, of course, the two other options available to them are either breach notices or towing, and, potentially, that could result in a higher cost to the consumer than the $100 cap would be.

So that was raised, but, actually, we’d also talked around potentially having caps on those other enforcement options too. That was deemed to be outside the scope of this particular piece of legislation, so I would suggest that perhaps the Minister might want to consider that in future, around whether it is appropriate to therefore bring in a cap on what the maximum amount charged for towing can be, and also for a breach notice if either of those alternative options for enforcement was being used other than the clamping option. So that’s one aspect that we could see a bit more work on.

Now, we had also seen a lot of commentary from submitters around the signage. Just picking up on what Gareth Hughes, the previous member, said in that regard, again, it was an area that was not necessarily considered not relevant but more so considered to be outside the scope of the bill. So, again, that would be an area that I would suggest get tidied up a bit in the future, because a number of people, rightly or wrongly, would claim in their defence for being parked in an inappropriate place that they didn’t see the signage—there was no sign, it was too small, it was obscured by trees or foliage, or whatever the excuse may be. So having some clear rules or regulations around what the signage should be seemed appropriate, but, unfortunately, that was considered to be outside the scope of this. So that’s one area that I think would be important to get tidied up, as well.

On the face of it, though, we do need to see a cap, and we’ve reached the point where $100 seems appropriate. I suspect that perhaps that might need to be reviewed in time and perhaps it’s too low. We do want to ensure businesses can still operate from a clamping perspective, and at the end of the day, the consumer who is parked there has parked there unlawfully, so there is some liability around that. But at this stage, we are supporting the bill, and I look forward to seeing it progress.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): This is a split call.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m happy to take a call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill in the second reading. I’m no longer a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but I was there to hear some of the initial submissions. But what I did do was I listened to the National lead-off spokesperson tonight, Mr Brett Hudson, and his assertions that the select committee was left to do a lot of work of the Government. I also intently listened to him perhaps drawing us to the areas in which the select committee had to do all that work, but I resorted back to his first reading speech on the bill, again, in trying to look for clues as to the extra work he implied the select committee had to do for this particular bill. Apart from the note that he mentioned around the clamping levy originally being recommended to be $50 and up to $100, there’s actually nothing in his first reading speech that indicates the extra work that the committee had to put in.

So it is a response that when we come to this House and say that in select committee we have had to do the work of the Government, then I expect that a reasonable request is that we come to the House and put those particular areas on the table so that, as a whole House, we can debate that. Needless to say, I didn’t hear that in the speech. I didn’t see that in his first reading speech.

It is a really sensible piece of legislation. We’ve all seen people clamped around the country. We feel that we need some clarity in this industry, both for consumers but also for the operators. I want to acknowledge the select committee, in their wisdom, for inviting more targeted submissions in the development of this bill. I understand that 17 submissions were received on 30 May, but, obviously, the committee felt that they needed more submissions to ensure that we’ve got a rounded perspective, particularly from groups like the clampers themselves and consumer groups. So I want to acknowledge the work of the select committee in extending and targeting some submitters that came forward, like Local Government New Zealand, like Retail New Zealand, and like Consumer New Zealand, and I understand we also had a number of clampers themselves that appeared before the select committee.

So I’m really clear that the work of the select committee to examine this bill was available to those that perhaps didn’t submit in the earlier part of the submissions, and, as previous speakers have indicated, it is around that clarity. It is around giving some certainty to consumers to avoid the cowboy clampers that we see operating in this space, but it also gives some safeguards around, really, clarifying this is on private property—the issue that the select committee reported back to the House in their report around, really, clarifying the enforcement authority that this bill applies to. So it doesn’t apply to people who have contracts in private parking administering the use of those car-parks. It’s not intended to cover those particular operators.

It also makes clarity around the claims to the disputes tribunal, saying not only that if you have a concern, you can only go up to the $100 fee for removing clamps, but also if there’s damage done by the removal of clamps from vehicles, there is, obviously, an avenue for consumers to seek claims in the disputes tribunal. But also, the report of the select committee around requirements for being reasonably available—again, many contributors in this debate have talked about what is reasonable in terms of making sure that once people return to their car, the clamper is reasonably available, and, of course, the signage was canvassed by the previous speaker.

It is a common-sense bill. We want clarity. I commend the bill to the House.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill in the second reading here tonight. The bill, of course, amends the Land Transport Act 1998 to regulate the maximum fees charged by wheel-clamp operators. As outlined earlier, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee received and considered 25 submissions, and they heard in person from seven submitters. It is a shame that it wasn’t a big number. I am personally a little surprised that those in the industry didn’t show up en masse, considering this could very likely affect, let’s just say, the livelihood that they’ve become accustomed to. But this is addressing the fact that many have considered that what they’re accustomed to is too much, and we have, rightly, gone through a process of hearing from the public on what is an acceptable level of a maximum fee that can be charged before you’re then in breach and it becomes an offence.

I’ve had a quick few discussions with a couple of our caucus members, who may or may not—I can neither confirm nor deny—have fallen victim to the clamping cowboys.

Simeon Brown: Shocking.

DENISE LEE: A very shocking turn of events. Yes, I can neither confirm nor deny.

I too want to pick up on the signage issue. The reason I want to do that is that in my prior life, I was an Auckland City councillor, and I know from alcohol-related regulations and even from fisheries and so on that signage becomes very important for a number of issues. One is that I think you need to communicate very clearly when there are parameters and when there’s a framework that you must adhere to, but also it serves as a deterrent. So if you’re planning on something, or even not planning on something, seeing something visible can often be a very good deterrent.

So it is a shame that the select committee process has unearthed the out-of-scope nature of addressing signage in this bill. They have agreed that future legislation could address this, and I really think that Parliament should look into that and address the signage issue once and do it right.

We support this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker. We look forward to its further passage in the House.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I’m pleased to speak in support of this bill at its second reading. I want to acknowledge the Hon Kris Faafoi, the Minister who has brought this bill through to the House, and I want to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. As we’ve heard from contributions from members, they have given very good consideration to this bill, and certainly the improvements that have been reflected in the amendments make this bill ready to be enacted. We know that a key piece of this legislation will actually be the regulations, which will expand on more of the detail which will be necessary—particularly when clarifying grey areas as to what is a reasonable time for which an operator must respond to actually remove a clamp—and those other more technical areas which the committee considered but, ultimately, thought were left better by putting into regulations which could be modified.

I’m just going to take a brief contribution, but I am interested in the impact that this legislation will have on wheel-clamp operators. Clearly we want to, as a House, curtail the predatory behaviour that they exhibit, but it will be interesting to see the impact that this will have on their business model as operators, and also whether it might be a boon for the tow industry—who knows? That’s why mention has been made about perhaps consistency across parking enforcement to the level of penalties that are applied.

As a whole, this is a very welcome piece of legislation. There is a void in this area. It’s not adequately serviced by either common law or just in practice. There is a need for Parliament to actually put in place some sensible legislation around private parking law enforcement. I think, in particular, the work that the committee has done has put a very good bill in place.

We want to ensure that operators are not preying on people that use private parks, but we also need to balance that, again, with the rights of the private business owners. I think, ultimately, the key to this is to ensure that the vehicles that may be there illegally or clamped are removed because, ultimately, you want parks to be used and for the actual premises which those parks service to be able to get use of those parks. So I’m sure this piece of legislation will achieve that by achieving a good balance between the rights of the operators and also the rights of those who are impacted by clamping activities, to ensure that they have a reasonable fee and can also swiftly have those clamps removed. If not, then the police can intervene and provide appropriate penalties to those operators. Thank you, ma’am.

HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): I rise to take a brief call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill. Firstly, I’d just like to acknowledge Minister Kris Faafoi, who’s putting this through. It’s a very good bill. The previous National Government in 2012 had a code of conduct for this.

I also want to acknowledge previous speakers, especially the hard-working MP for Waikato, Tim van de Molen, who’s part of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. He raised a very good point, a very technical point, around capping the maximum amount they should be allowed to charge. Basically, what this means to anyone out there in New Zealand watching this debate is that you’ve got some interesting individuals and companies that charge huge amounts. There’s a huge power imbalance for clamping vehicles. What they do is they often come in and charge $400 or $500 for a fee that should be only $10 or $20. This bill here makes it a maximum of $100, which I think’s a very good piece of work.

Secondly, the other power imbalance you’ve got if you’re there to pick up your car and someone’s charging you $300, $400, or $500 to collect it is it’s not exactly fair. You basically have to pay them off then and there to get a resolution—to get your car back. Some of these predatory behaviours are worse than, say, some of the convicts that were sent to Australia in the late 1700s or early 1800s. So it’s great to see for the consumers out there that this is finally getting tidied up. I commend the bill.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill in its second reading. As the final speaker this evening, I’ll take a brief call just to sort of sum up what we’ve heard. The arguments have been fairly well traversed. The reason why we needed this bill is because we had nine long years of parking neglect by the previous Government—nine long years of parking neglect. We heard over the past nine years many, many people calling for regulation, but the previous Government didn’t have the courage to do it. But that’s OK, because we are a Government who are taking action. This is just one example of us taking action on this issue here, which is, effectively—as we’ve heard from previous speakers—putting a maximum penalty on wheel clamping of $100.

I’d like to acknowledge our select committee chair, Darroch Ball. I’m a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I only—

Hon Member: Very well chaired.

JAMIE STRANGE: —very well chaired—recently came on to the committee, so I didn’t have the privilege of hearing the submissions orally, but I have read the submissions. The submissions were generally of a mind that we needed this. There was a bit of conjecture around price. Some wanted it dropped to $50; others wanted it a little bit higher. But the aspect of settling on the $100 is an example of balanced and fair legislation, taking all of the submissions into account, taking all of the issues into account, and settling on a point there, which, as we heard from Darroch Ball, is in line with overseas jurisdictions—particularly the UK and Australia—and other aspects.

So look, I’m not going to take much more time, but I do acknowledge that the aspect of wheel clamping is something that people out there in the public are very engaged in. It is an important issue. It’s important that it’s something that is not trivialised, because it can affect any of us at any time. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill

In Committee

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I seek leave for this debate to be taken as one part.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): As one question.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: As one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. At this, the committee stage of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill, I will be making a contribution to commence the National Party’s consideration at the committee stage, which focuses on a handful of amendments that we wish to put forward with a view to improving the bill without straying from the reasonably narrow remit that is the committee stage.

I think it’s possibly worthwhile if I just reiterate that the National Party has not supported the proposal up until this time. I can confirm that we will continue to not support the proposal that’s inherent in the bill as a whole. But notwithstanding that, we think it is worthwhile to make some suggestions about how the bill may be improved. In doing so, we acknowledge the likelihood of its passing in terms of the Government parties supporting the concept in the bill as a whole. They have so far, and there’s every indication they’ll continue to do so.

So that’s the background to the proposal that we’re making in two different Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that are now before the committee. I will speak to them in numerical order, as it turns out: Supplementary Order Paper 399 in my name and then Supplementary Order Paper 400 in my name. I acknowledge that the Minister of Justice has today released Supplementary Order Paper 398, which has a number of other changes that the Government side wishes to put forward, amending the bill that emerged from the select committee, of which I was a part. Those are largely technical and likely to be uncontroversial. Certainly, it’s not something that I envisage us on this side of the House taking up too much of the House’s time debating.

So then, in terms of SOP 399, this is an amendment, as I say, in my name that sets out a protection—or a partial measure of protection—in relation to victims of crime and their status in relation to the Criminal Cases Review Commission doing its work of considering applications to review and refer.

I’d like to structure my remarks under five different headings. The first is to consider the status of a victim to crime as a non-party to proceedings but, nevertheless, one who is involved intimately in their operation. Number two: pointing out that we’re not suggesting that a person who is seeking to overturn a possible miscarriage of justice be precluded from that right, but, rather, introduce an element whereby there’s some balance such that the victim’s needs and impact are considered at the same time. Third: to acknowledge the mechanics, really, of a person being found guilty and then potentially being found innocent again later and the implications of that, again in terms of how a victim’s situation would be affected by that. Fourth: just some slightly technical aspects in terms of how we would relate this SOP back to another piece of legislation in defining what it is to be a victim. And fifth and final then would be just how we propose to do that in technical terms about the way that the referral would be considered by the commission.

So then, the first of those: thinking about the fact that the victim of a crime is not a party to the crime. Criminal cases, by definition, are between the State and the alleged offender, who, if found guilty, we would call the guilty party, as they would be at that moment in time until such point as they make an application that is accepted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. None the less, the victim, despite not being a party in that sense—that technical sense—is of course a person who is involved who is vulnerable. The etymology of “vulnerable” is one who is able to be wounded, but, of course, the person will have already been wounded, whether physically or emotionally or perhaps in some metaphorical way. So the victim is an important player in all of this, and, from the National Party’s perspective, it seems wrong that the legislation would not acknowledge that at least in some way. So that’s the first point.

My second point, as I had foreshadowed earlier, was that we’re not suggesting—for the avoidance of doubt I’m pointing out that we’re not suggesting—that a person should not be able to have the right of appeal through the regular courts, of course, or even under the royal prerogative of mercy, as is partly amended by the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill, but rather that the right be exercised in a way that does take into account a victim having the ability to have their needs considered at the same time.

My third point was acknowledging that a person who has been affected by a miscarriage of justice in the sense that they have been found guilty—[Bell rung] Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Chris Penk.

CHRIS PENK: Madam Chair, thank you—by default, but not fault I hope.

Hon Tim Macindoe: I’m keen.

CHRIS PENK: Oh, you’re keen as well. That’s a great relief to us all.

Acknowledging that for a miscarriage of justice, if it is alleged to have taken place, we’ve moved beyond a point where a person is deemed to be innocent until they’re proven guilty. The person has, by definition, at this stage been proven guilty already, and so in that sense they remove guilty until disproven—or until proven innocent, I suppose you could say, in the way of an appeal, albeit that, of course, the onus of proof is such that it’s not a straightforward mirror image of the original finding of guilt in the first place.

But it’s worth pointing out in all of this that a victim of a crime remains the victim of a crime, even if the perpetrator’s identity has been mistaken. So if person A has been, let’s say, attacked by another person—we’ll call that person B—and person B is successful in having their case reviewed and referred back to the courts and possibly overturned at that point, person A remains a person who is assaulted, albeit that it might have been a third person, person C, who had done that. So the victim does retain the status of a victim, unless, of course, they’d fabricated the whole incident in the first place. So they have an important status in this, notwithstanding that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place.

As to what a “victim” means, that is defined—and I move now to my fourth point, for those following along at home—already in the Victims’ Rights Act 2002, and so it’s a pretty easy matter from a drafting perspective. Luckily enough, because we did do our work out of our own office in this. We refer to a victim as having that meaning already given in that Act. And so it is to my fifth and final point on this, that we are saying that in addition to all the other things that the legislation already says that the commission must have regard to, we are simply adding an extra criterion, a fifth, I suppose we could say. Really it’s the fourth, because the final one’s a catch-all: “any other matter that the Commission considers relevant.”

We are saying that it should always be the case that the victims and the impact on the victims should be considered. Whether or not, as I say, that would have sufficient weight to overturn in the mind of the commission whether they review or refer is another matter. So much for that SOP 399.

Turning now to the next one in the order, in fact, and the other one that’s been put forward from this side of the Chamber, SOP 400—we’re proposing a couple of different things within that. I sense a colleague or two of mine is winding up to speak to those, so as far as I can get in the next couple of minutes, again, I just emphasise the vulnerability of a victim, and that really leads to the point that a victim should be notified if the commission is turning its mind to a case, if an appeal or rather an application to review is being made at various different points of the process. We are saying that the victims should at least get that heads-up that the case might be reopened—that something that does affect them and has affected them and will continue to affect them is going on.

So that’s the important principle that lies behind the proposal that we’re making in SOP 400 in relation to clauses 25, 26 and 27. I’ll read out only the first of them because the others have the same flavour and it would be repetitious unduly to read out all three. But the first of them, as relates to clause 25, states, “(1A) The Commission must, as soon as practicable after making a decision under the section, give … notice of the decision to investigate the conviction or sentence to any victim entitled to be notified under [the relevant section, let’s say] of the Victims’ Rights Act 2002.” And as I say, the equivalent provisions are provided in this SOP for the other parts of the process whereby a person would apply to the commission, the commission would make a decision, and then the person who is the victim of the crime of which another person has been convicted would have the right to know that that’s happening.

And that might be important for quite practical reasons. It might be that the person will need to make arrangements from their work to have time off to give evidence, or it might simply be a matter—and I say “simply” perhaps in error; it might instead be the case that a person needs to prepare emotionally for the fact that a matter that’s affected them very deeply in the past is about to become part of their present and perhaps the future going forward as well.

So for all these reasons, we’re putting forward these suggestions in the hope that Government parties will adopt them as we go forward with this committee stage.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Chair. I was a little hesitant because I was hoping that either the Minister in the chair, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, or a Government member would stand to seek the call. This is an important measure, but perhaps the fact that I don’t think I’m going to get a full call could have influenced their decision at this point.

I want pick up where my very fine colleague the honourable member for Helensville has left off and commend him for the work that he is doing as National’s spokesperson for courts. He has been leading the charge for our side on this particular measure. And as with everything he’s touched in his two years here, he has shown himself to be thoroughly professional and thorough in his treatment of the issues—and occasionally a little bit pedantic in his use of the language, but that’s OK.

As the member for Helensville has noted, National is opposing this bill. But we are a responsible Opposition and we take seriously the onus that rests with us to work to improve the bill. And that is why we have come forward with some amendments. But I just want to pick up on the fact that we are opposing the bill for some key reasons, and I think it is worthwhile just to restate them.

Our main concern is that this is a very expensive measure that we think is set to open the floodgates to anyone who believes that they may have suffered a miscarriage of justice. Now, it is important that miscarriages of justice are dealt with, but we have an appeals procedure through several courts. And it seems to us that this is setting a very low threshold and is an additional measure that is going to be expensive, time consuming, and which, in many respects, will have the effect of, if not re-victimising those who are victims of crimes, certainly adding to the trauma of some.

Now, I would have hoped that the Government by now would have spoken to their own amendments, because the Minister of Justice has tabled Supplementary Order Paper 398, and it’s just, in the minute or so remaining—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m very sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.