General Debate

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want start by acknowledging the regional economic figures that have come out today, and what a wonderful picture they show of this country, which reflects the prosperity of New Zealand that we see all around the country and that New Zealanders are aware of. The engine of the jobs boom that we’ve seen in this country, that has enabled nearly 200,000 new New Zealanders into work in the past two years, has created opportunities for young people and people of all ages to get a job and to contribute and to be part of the New Zealand dream.

So if we look through the various regions, we see every region of the country growing in the past year and some real progress. Northland, for example, has grown 30 percent in their GDP since 2013. Many other districts—Marlborough, for example—have grown nearly 35 percent in the five years since 2002. So it’s a wonderful set of statistics—the result of the hard work of New Zealanders up and down the country, and in a country that’s going ahead, upbeat, and successful.

It’s also an economic record that has been helped along and underlined by the strong, consistent, stable, predictable, and disciplined Government that this country enjoyed for nine years under the previous Government, and I suppose the question that we have to ask ourselves is will this continue under the new regime. It certainly needs to, for the sake of all New Zealanders enjoying the opportunities that we’ve had over the past nine years, and what worries me is we’ve seen an incoherent, unpredictable, and undisciplined Government emerging over the past few weeks—incoherent in the sense that they talk about caring about the young, unemployed people but, at the same time, they axe 90-day trials, which give young, unemployed people an opportunity to get into work. We have “Pablo Jones”—sorry, I mean Shane Jones—out and about the countryside, handing out cash—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

—for regional development. But, at the same time, the proposed changes to overseas investment rules will actually reduce the amount of foreign investment going into the regions and, at the same time, private sector investment going into the regions will be undermined by uncertainty in the Government’s handling of industrial relations, uncertainty around tax, and uncertainty around a host of things which affect business confidence. So it’s by no means clear, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Jones, a bunch of bureaucrats, and New Zealand First politicians will be making investments around the countryside to the tune of a billion dollars a year. We could easily lose more than that from private sector investment, both foreign and domestic, as a result of the Government decisions that are being made—so inconsistent and incoherent.

Then we’ve seen the Prime Minister really putting at threat the oil and gas sector, which is such a significant part of the Taranaki economy, by her ill-disciplined and ill-thought-through statements made in front of the House yesterday, where she just blindly said, “Well, you know, it’s all up for grabs in the future.” Well, this is an industry that employs a lot of New Zealanders and helps generate the wealth upon which we are able to afford the social backstop that we have in this country, so that we can afford the quality medicines that enable us to lead healthier lives and so that we can afford to do all those sorts of things. If you keep chipping away at the foundations of our economy, we’ll all suffer.

Then, of course, we’ve seen that a lot of people have been giving this new Government the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the sincerity and seriousness about which they take economic development and the strength of the New Zealand economy. That’s been blown away in the last few days by Shane Jones, who has shown that nasty side that we see where, for political purposes, they are willing to attack personally companies in this country and their leaders in a style of politics that is wholly unhelpful in this country and that will undermine, over time, the business confidence that we have enjoyed, which, ultimately, leads to less investment in this country.

So it’s a quite perfectly legitimate thing to raise questions around the performance of Air New Zealand in the regions—a lot of people have questions there, and that’s quite legitimate—but to go to the next step that we’ve seen from Mr Jones and call for sackings, and to go about it in a personally vindictive manner, is wholly inappropriate. The Prime Minister was slow to reprimand him, but she has. But the signal that it sends is that this Government has no respect for New Zealand corporations and New Zealand businesses—

Order! Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s a privilege to do my very first speech in a general debate—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh, really?

—and I thought—it’s been a long time coming. I’ve been neglected and overlooked, but in saying that, here we are this afternoon, on a pleasant afternoon in Wellington City once again.

Look, I just want to reflect on a few things. I mean, we’ve heard lots of numbers this afternoon. We’ve heard lots of words like “legacies”. I love that word because it suddenly brings up all these thoughts, the dark clouds, and lots of memories—bad ones at that. But what it does do is it reminds me of my wonderful wee electorate here. Most of you land in it every Monday or Tuesday morning—Monday night or Tuesday morning—and there you go home Thursday night, Friday morning, hopefully, back to your home electorates or wherever.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: We laud you as tangata whenua.

Absolutely. And I guess that’s the starting point, that we get there and the first legacy is right there, and that’s in the airport extension. What we have there is an example of what’s happened over the last nine years with the lack of decision making from the previous Government and the lack of foresight to say, “Look, what about an airport extension?” You’ll see the beautiful retail expansion, the new hotel, and the parking building, but there is no airport extension. No one made that decision in the last nine years—“We don’t have to make that decision.”—but it’s a real symbol of the bigger picture.

It’s easy then to—as you leave the airport and you come along Cobham Drive, instantly you’ll pass my old former college, and there, the traffic kicks in, because, once again, no one made that decision to build a second tunnel. In 1931, they built that tunnel, and it proudly says it on the front as you leave the wonderful Rongotai electorate, but it’s another symbol of a lack of progress. No decision was made, no investment was put in by that Government. It was too busy building holiday highways and cosy projects in the Hawke’s Bay—dare I say it, looking at the member there for Tukituki. But what I’m saying is that these are more memories and the dark clouds that hang over my electorate.

As you pass there, and as you land at the airport too, you’ll reflect on—just behind the golf course there, there are two schools, and there couldn’t be two better symbols of what went wrong in the last nine years. A merger or, really, a hash job—two schools hacked apart and roughly joined together. Thankfully, it’s a school that provides everything for free—it’s our lowest-decile school—but the journey that it took to get there was harrowing. Now, they need two new buildings. They’ve been asking for two years, “Where’s our building?”, but the symbolism is huge.

As I stand at the gate, you witness Scots College—Scots College, our only private school in the electorate—and there, they were able to purchase social housing on the flat and develop accommodation for their boarders. That part’s OK—the latter—but the former is not. Buying social housing and turning it into boarding facilities for those who have everything versus those who need it most—that is a symbol of the previous Government.

The symbols are everywhere. I can walk through the electorate, as I do because I live there, and I see this, day to day. I see what the legacy looks like.

💬 SPEAKER: Not enough.

Not enough—he’s quite right. He’s quite right. The Speaker’s quite right. I need to do more walking. Look, the members are quite happy to join the “Eagle for Rongotai Walking Club”. It generally only activates in election year, but look, I’ll kick it off.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh, a bit of competition.

The member for Port Hills is reminding me that I need to get out there, as is the Speaker, but the Opposition is always welcome.

But I’m just going to leave it there and say there are some symbols, and when I get the opportunity to come back and give you part two of a 10-part series of “The Dark Clouds of Rongotai”, thanks to the previous Government, you can all listen and learn a lot about what the real people of New Zealand have experienced. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

First, can I say congratulations to the previous speaker, Paul Eagle, on his first general debate speech in the House.

On Monday afternoon, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the rally on Parliament’s forecourt that the Government was “actively considering” an end to oil exploration. Four hours later, the Prime Minister told her weekly press conference that—and I need to quote this—“What I’m pointing out is that every Government around this time of year actively considers how it will manage block offers, and that’s what we are doing.” And I would say that she is doing both things at the same time. She’s using block offers consideration to be the mechanism to stop oil exploration.

And you might say, well, I’m cynical. You might say that I’m taking a biased point of view. Well, today, Greenpeace are giving Jacinda Ardern the benefit of the doubt because they don’t know what she’s doing either. Those first words that I read out in my speech come from Richard Harman of Politik. And Hamish Rutherford from the Dominion Post said, “I was on the steps of Parliament and I’ve listened to the audio again and unless the Prime Minister whispered it or my recording cut out she did not once mention the block offer. She gave a clear impression she was talking about the end to oil exploration.” And this is what I want to talk about.

Let us consider some facts. New Zealand emits 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. That figure is dropping per capita, but it’s not dropping far enough. Of those emissions, 50 percent are from the agricultural sector—they are working hard to bring them down—and around 4 percent are from the oil and gas exploration and production sector through flaring, and they are working hard to bring it down as well.

Flaring used to happen all the time, but now flaring only happens in emergencies. There are different plant designs to enable that. There’s different forms of oxidisation processes to reduce the need for flaring, and international companies like Statoil and Shell intend to remove it completely from all of their operations. That is the reason why there are emissions from the exploration and production of oil and gas.

So what I’m saying is that if the Government succeeds in removing oil and gas exploration and, ultimately, production from New Zealand, we will still be importing crude into the Marsden Point oil refinery for jet fuel, diesel, and petrol. Our liquid fuel emissions will not change one iota, except for the introduction of electric vehicles. So taking out this industry of 4,300 people in Taranaki, who earn over $100,000 each, and another 4,000 people in New Zealand who earn their income through this industry will not change New Zealand’s liquid fuel emission profile.

All it will serve to do is be an example to the world of what we will do to make some effort towards climate change mitigation. But it’s not going to change anything here. And, in fact, every expert I hear in the world is saying there is a place right now for companies who can produce natural gas. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said one year ago in their report to the German Government that “Limiting the rise in global mean temperature to well below 2°C would require an energy transition of exceptional scope, depth, and speed,” Then they said, “As recent IEA estimates show, global energy-related CO2 emissions stalled for a third straight year in 2016.”—so 2014, 2015, and 2016, energy emissions have stalled.

They give three reasons. Number one: growing renewable power generation. That’s a good reason. The second reason is switching from coal to natural gas. So yesterday, here in question time, Todd Muller asked James Shaw: would he support us exporting natural gas to coal-dependent countries? James Shaw said no. And this is where I find it to be intellectually outrageous of this Government that they would throw a sector and a region under the bus when they could be utilising the skill and the work of this region to export gas to coal-dependent nations and reduce emissions around the world, but they won’t do it because they want to make a statement.

Jacinda Ardern went to APEC and said, “Look at me, and follow me.”, and she’s the Joan of Arc of climate change. James Shaw is the only Green climate change Minister in the world, and he’s got a reputation to build. And we are making wrong decisions in this Government. We’re seeing wrong decisions take place—

I apologise to the member. Thank you.

Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora.

I want to start with a personal story. I remember being on the beach at the time of the Rena oil spill, seeing those oil globs wash up, the dead birds in the buckets, and the people in the hazmat suits. Oil spills had been something you’d seen on TV, but here it was in New Zealand—it was something you could see, you could touch, you could smell it. We discovered then we couldn’t even cope with a small oil spill, let alone a larger one. And, at the same time, or a few years later, Anadarko was drilling deep off our coast, and we discovered that it would take 110 days for critical equipment to actually get to New Zealand at the time that oil could be gushing out on to those beaches.

The threat of an oil spill on the beaches we loved was real, but the bigger risk was something you couldn’t see, you couldn’t touch, you couldn’t smell. It was the greenhouse gases that warm the planet. So while the media right now are debating the pros and cons of oil exploration, you can’t debate the physics. Scientists warn we can’t afford to burn 75 percent of the proven fossil fuel reserves if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. A study in Nature Communications published last year found if we burnt the available fossil fuels—not even the stuff that the last member, Jonathan Young, wants to go exploring for—we would see the fastest rise in global temperature in 420 million years. Exploring for more oil is like pouring petrol into an already filled gas tank and lighting a match. This is the nuclear-free moment of our generation. Then, the defining image was nuclear explosions and nuclear ships; today, it is oil rigs and rising seas.

We find ourselves at an important turning point. Will we continue exploring for new oil and gas that we can’t afford to burn? We have the opportunity now to stop looking for the very stuff which is causing so much pain and hardship. After nine years of this country being a climate laggard, of actually subsidising pollution and subsidising the oil companies, we now have the opportunity to do the right thing.

I was recently at a Commonwealth conference, and I felt proud, as a New Zealander, telling members from small Island States such as Kiribati, the Seychelles, and Mauritius that New Zealand now had an ambitious target of being climate carbon zero by 2050. To start the transition to get there, we need to stop looking for fossil fuels like oil.

Given some existing permits don’t expire until 2046, we can’t keep granting more. That’s why I’m calling on the Government to stop offering new exploration permits for fossil fuels. Secondly, I’m asking, while existing production continues, for us to do the urgent safety and environmental recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. And, thirdly, to put in place the infrastructure for a just transition for the workers and regions affected.

Calling for a transition away from oil and never actually starting that transition is a recipe for more pollution. Just yesterday, the oil industry reported that we had to keep exploring for more we couldn’t afford to burn because you couldn’t leave a monetisable resource unmonetisable. What value do these people place on billions of people and literal cultural extinction?

The industry says we have to explore for more or the lights go out. But that ignores the growth of clean energy and the fact that numerous studies have shown 100 percent clean energy is affordable and is achievable. Some are worried about gas supplies if we stopped exploring for more. But if we use the existing gas supplies for the most efficient use, which is direct use in homes, as around 260,000 Kiwis currently do, we have more than 200 years of gas available right now. Others say, “Well, what about the plastics?” Callaghan Innovation recently told the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee that everything we do with plastics that come from oil has a bio-alternative.

Then the industry says we have to keep exploring to increase exports. Again, this is something we can’t afford to burn. We can’t afford the stuff we’ve already found, let alone looking for more. But why on earth would New Zealand look to last century’s economy when we could be looking forward? Internationally, more is invested in clean energy than fossil fuels for electricity. The World Bank’s sister group, the International Finance Corporation, say that clean energy investment opportunity is $23 trillion. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, it is a sunset industry. In New Zealand our royalties have halved, a succession of oil companies have left, and almost twice as many permits have been surrendered than granted since 2012.

So no one here is suggesting shutting down what’s left of the industry, but they are calling for a transition. The good news is the options are there. Clean energy grows four times more jobs. Our future isn’t oil rigs off our coasts; it’s wind turbines on our hills, insulation under our rooves, solar panels on top, modern public transport in our cities—

I apologise to the member, but the time for this debate has expired.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.