From Hansard

It is rich to be lectured by that Minister on issues like making progress on climate change. The Committee might like to remember some of the salient history, in this regard. The Hon Dr Nick Smith, the Minister in the chair, is the one who, earlier in the last term when Labour was in Government, vigorously opposed the idea of putting any sort of economic instrument in place to price carbon. He was totally against the carbon tax. Finally, when we got to a position where we were going to introduce an emissions trading scheme as the economic instrument to price carbon, what did that person do?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: We voted for the first reading.

CHARLES CHAUVEL: That is right; he voted for the first reading. Then he came along to the select committee and behaved about as obstructively as anybody in his position possibly could, and complained about the process ad infinitum. He was responsible, as part of his wonderful blue-green agenda, for producing a waffly six-point document that gave National the intellectual respectability—or so National members thought—to vote against the emissions trading scheme at its second and third readings, and then what happened? We lost a year while the Minister wasted time on the select committee process and on consultation that was hardly conducted in good faith. Negotiations were also clearly conducted in bad faith, because that Minister is just not capable of any other action. That is his record on trying to progress climate change in a bipartisan fashion. No one on this side of the Chamber will ever accept a lecture from Dr Smith on the best way in which to achieve enduring public policy in this area.

If Labour were in Government, we would be implementing an emissions trading scheme that actually reduced emissions, rather than this Mickey Mouse fig leaf we have in place at the moment, which all the experts say will simply lead to a rise in emissions. Our international negotiators cannot say how New Zealand will get domestic emissions down when they are put on the spot at international conferences, because there is no plan. It is just a question of hoping that people will say: “Oh, New Zealand’s got an emissions trading scheme.”, and that that will do the trick. But we know, because the experts tell us, that that simply is not the case.

Not only would Labour put in place an emissions trading scheme—an economic instrument that would price carbon use at the margin—but we would make sure that those households that were affected by the implementation of the scheme received some decent transitional assistance. Those ordinary Kiwis who are affected by price changes because of the implementation of the scheme would get a bit of a hand, because there would be the auctioning of permits under our scheme. Through the auctioning of permits revenue would be available, not only for transitional assistance but also to make the change to a lower-pollution economy. We all know we need to do it. By delaying the evil day on which we start to put in place proper, complementary measures to assist the economy to make that measure, all that the Minister is doing is to load future prices on future generations. That is just what the National Party does across multiple areas of public policy, superannuation—you name it. It is putting it on the never-never so that the next generation will have to pay the bill, and we get tax cuts now in an attempt to buy an election in a year’s time. People will see through that.

There is a need to invest heavily in energy efficiency now. Schemes like Enviroschools should be restored. We should be developing our public transport rather than just building more and more roads. It is a real shame that this Government has not only implemented bad policy but has gone backwards on making the progress that Labour made, like the emissions trading scheme, and like the meaningful strategy that was in place to get 90 percent of our energy generation in the electricity sector coming from renewable sources. There was a real plan of action behind that strategy.

The Minister gestures from the chair, but he knows—and he should be ashamed of himself—that he has put out misleading advertising to the public. He knows that fossil fuel plants were built between 2000 and 2008 because of the effect of the Bradford reforms. Decisions to build those sorts of assets are long-term ones. The Minister laughs, but he has not sat on an energy company board. He does not know the sort of planning that goes into them; I do. The fact is that we saw the hangover from those ill-advised reforms all through that period of time. We are now seeing, and the Minister is reaping the benefits of, the careful moves that Labour made to ensure that we did have more sustainable generation.