Ministerial Statements — Climate Change Response Act 2002—Statutory Emissions Reduction Plan

I wish to make a ministerial statement relating to the emissions reduction plan. Yesterday the Government released Te hau mārohi ki anamata: Towards a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy. This is Aotearoa New Zealand’s first statutory emissions reduction plan under the Climate Change Response Act 2002 as amended by the zero carbon bill in 2019. As a result of the amendment, the Climate Change Response Act has as its purpose to provide a framework by which New Zealand can develop and implement clear and stable change policies that (1) 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 (2) allow New Zealand to prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change.

The zero carbon amendment bill passed unanimously, which is a great credit to parliamentarians across the House. That bipartisan accord means that New Zealanders do now enjoy a sense of certainty and predictability about the overall framework that guides climate policy over the coming decades. That includes the commitment to the 1.5 degree temperature threshold and the long-term emissions reductions targets to 2050. Following the House’s strong bipartisan endorsement last week, this also now includes the first three emissions budgets that act as stepping stones towards those 2050 targets. In total, there will be six emissions budgets and emissions reductions plans to take us out to 2050. Each budget will act as a stepping stone to lower emissions and each plan will include the necessary policies and strategies to meet that budget.

Our first emissions budget requires us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by a further 11.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the course of the next four years. Our strategy to achieve this and to lay the groundwork for the second and third emissions budgets is based on five principles. It starts with what we need to do to play our part in a worldwide effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius so that current and future generations are protected from the floods, fires, droughts, and storms of a changing climate. That flows into our Tiriti o Waitangi commitments and empowering Māori to respond to the particular risks and opportunities for Māori and the Māori economy alongside an equitable transition that brings everyone with us and leaves no one behind, and working with nature to solve the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis together. Those considerations then drive the ultimate outcome, which is a productive, sustainable, and inclusive economy that works for everyone.

The challenge that we have in front of us is as urgent and as important as it has ever been. The science tells us that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels gives us the best chance of avoiding the worst effects. As temperatures have already risen more than 1 degree, we must act now to prevent further atmospheric warming and the catastrophes that accompany it.

I acknowledge that all parties in this Parliament have different policy prescriptions for reaching our shared goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But now that we have a plan, the task for our Government is to make that happen and the task for all of us in this House is to make the next plan even better. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In reply to the statement from the Minister, I want to reiterate, on behalf of the National Party, that we are proud as a party of our record on climate change. It was National that signed us up to the Paris Agreement, and it was National in Government that ratified that decision on behalf of all New Zealanders. And National proudly supported the zero carbon legislation, that, as the Minister said, was passed without dissent in this Parliament. That’s important because that unanimity provides New Zealanders with the certainty they need in the years that will come, in the decades that will follow, as we traverse our way towards net zero 2050, that no matter which Government is in Government, what political strife or colour that Government, the direction is set.

As is right and proper in a functioning democracy, parties can, should, and will debate the detail of how to achieve those objectives and that goal. That’s right and proper, and, so, yesterday’s plan was really, in many respects, just a plan about a plan, because so many of the initiatives—the nearly 300 initiatives that were announced yesterday—were either working groups initiatives that had already been announced or were in train or were just bullet-point statements saying, “We’re going to think about a plan on this sort of thing.” And, so, all that mush really was an underwhelming plan that a Government has had two years—two years—to bring to this Parliament and to the people of New Zealand. So while we think that there were parts of the emission reduction plan that were worthy and credible, there are some very poor examples of taxpayers’ money being spent for little or no result.

And at a time when we are in a cost of living crisis, every single dollar of taxpayer money should be spent carefully, wisely, and with a clear focus on outcomes and results from that dollar spent, on behalf of New Zealanders. Because the plain reality is that at the moment New Zealanders are paying somewhere between 17c and 19c per litre in their petrol price on the contribution to the emissions trading scheme (ETS), and in this plan nearly $750 million of the nearly $4 billion spending that was announced yesterday is going to corporate welfare. So those people in the squeezed middle—those New Zealanders, those hard-working New Zealanders, who are contributing to the ETS funding that funds this plan, through their petrol pump price—they will be subsidising large corporates to take actions that those corporates should actually already be taking, to do things that businesses, as responsible corporate citizens, should be doing in their role as responsible corporate citizens. And it’s not right that taxpayer dollars should be subsidising the removal of old-fashioned fossil-fuel boilers from businesses like Fonterra or, indeed, Heineken and DB Breweries. That’s wrong, and we oppose that part of the plan.

But an area that we do support relates to issues around agriculture, because there is a good lump of money invested in this plan to support further research and development and science around how to crack the biogenic methane conundrum that confronts us as a nation. And why that’s important is because if we can, as a small nation at the bottom of the South Pacific, crack the biogenic methane conundrum, we will be doing not only New Zealand a huge favour but we will be doing the world a favour—the planet, the globe—because every country that has agricultural production is grappling with exactly the same issue.

So we will wait with interest to see how this Government actually starts to implement these plans that they have in place. We’re not sure that there is any appetite amongst hard-working New Zealanders, who are paying a huge increase in the cost of living at the moment—we’re not sure that they have confidence this Government can deliver, because this Government has an appalling record on delivery. Making grand statements—the bold emotional statements—they are good at that. They are addicted to spending—$3 billion in this plan will be spent—but New Zealanders do not have faith in this Government to deliver the results that they have committed to, and the Minister said in his closing lines in his statement, “The task is for our Government to make it happen.” Well, New Zealanders doubt that this Government will happen. He said the task is for all of us to make the next plan better.

Order! Order! The member’s time has expired. [Interruption] No, there were no questions there.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s true that New Zealand has to do its bit on climate change. That’s why ACT says we’re already on our way. The emissions trading scheme (ETS) is sufficient. It puts a price on carbon: $76 a tonne is the latest price. What that means is that if you operate a truck or if you drive a car, or say you drive a really, really big truck—a truck and trailer—and you haul logs or you haul rock and you’ve put 500 litres of diesel in the truck, you’ve paid $100 towards reducing your emissions. You’ve offset your emissions under the emissions trading scheme. There’s never been a better incentive to reduce emissions, save fuel, and save energy than the cost of paying for carbon under the emissions trading scheme.

That’s why the ACT Party says that none of the policies adopted by this Government or proposed by Minister Shaw are necessary. They’re completely unnecessary. The emissions trading scheme is enough.

The other problem with the policies proposed by the Minister is that not only is it unnecessary but what he’s proposing to do with his emissions reduction plan is interfere with productive sectors of the economy like transport, like freight. There’s a proposal in there to get involved in buying trucks for the trucking industry. Well—

💬 Hon Michael Wood: They love it.

Minister Wood over there, he suggests that the industry loves it. But the problem is that every time a Government stands up and says, “I’ve put my hand into a taxpayer’s pocket to give to another taxpayer.”, they’re undermining the very reasons that New Zealanders get out of bed in the morning to go to work, and that’s the difference between the ACT Party and every other party in this Parliament which supported the zero carbon Act. ACT would not support the zero carbon Act because it’s completely unnecessary policy.

Chlöe Swarbrick: That’s because you didn’t turn up.

We do not support initiatives—Ms Swarbrick—to get involved in people’s businesses by subsidising boilers, by buying trucks for people, or, recently, as the energy Minister, Megan Woods, announced, to buy electric ferries for Auckland Council to compete with another fantastic, longstanding ferry operator, Fullers, who have just bought their own electric hybrid ferry.

Not only is none of this necessary—not only is none of this necessary—but they haven’t even bothered to ask themselves whether this is the least-cost way to achieve emissions reduction. All they’re interested in is “Is there a photo op?”—is there a photo op? That’s why ACT says that it’s not necessary.

The ACT Party says that New Zealanders deserve better. We looked at the “cash for clunkers scheme”. It is 32 million bucks for a trial. The Minister admitted today that he doesn’t know how it’s going to work or how much people are going to get paid, but we’ve worked it out: 2,500 vehicles, $32 million—that’s $12,800 per vehicle. Well, I tried to work out today how much does it cost to scrap a car, so I picked up the phone and I rang a few cash for scrap guys. They said, “Well, mister, if we have to travel a long way, maybe we’ll only give you 100 bucks, but we wouldn’t give you any more than $400.”, and yet the Minister proposes to shell out $12,800 of taxpayer money buying used cars so that he can get a photo op next to a crusher or a shredder, and he won’t be the first Minister in this House to do that.

So what does the ACT Party say? Well, we’ve actually got some really simple solutions. Actually, we think solving climate change is simple. That’s not what the Minister of Climate Change thinks. Here’s how. Here’s a challenge to the other members of this House—here’s a challenge to you. What the ACT Party says is: would you sit for four days a week and reduce your sitting time by 25 percent and, therefore, reduce your flights? Would you put your money and your bums where your mouths are, because that’s what ACT is asking you to do?

The other thing we’d do is give New Zealanders a tax refund from the revenues under the emissions trading scheme equivalent to $1,000 per household so that Kiwi families, who are facing a cost of living crisis, can decide how they want to spend the money that they’ve paid to already offset emissions every time they fill up. That’s what the ACT Party would do: a carbon tax refund from ETS revenues.

We’d also say, “Look, if you’re a New Zealand business and you want to mitigate your emissions, you don’t necessarily have to do it here in New Zealand, where it might be expensive, where land is expensive, and where people are telling you, ‘You’re not allowed to plant a tree here or there.’ Why can’t you go and plant some trees in the rainforest in a country that’s been deforested, where entire species have been wiped out? Why can’t you go and replant the rainforest”—

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

Yesterday was a landmark day for New Zealand because we released a plan that delivers the greatest opportunity that we have had in decades. Not only will we, finally, tackle climate change but we have the opportunity to build our resilience as an economy and to truly transform ourselves into a productive, sustainable economy with well-paid jobs. Yesterday was also the day the rubber hit the road, where parties were asked to show their true colours in relation to where they stand on climate change. We heard from the National Party’s spokesperson on climate change that it was the National Party that signed up to our nationally determined contribution in Paris in 2015. Yes, they did, but there was zero plan for how we would meet the targets that were signed up to. Instead, there was a plan to buy emissions trading credits on an international market.

But our Government and I are pleased that we did that largely with the support of all the parties in this House. When we got into Government, we set about putting a plan in place that started with setting up an independent Climate Commission that would use the science to tell us what we needed to do in terms of reducing our emissions. From there, we had carbon budgets that were produced. Again, I really appreciate the cross-party support that we have received on those, and we did have just about all of the parties in this House say, “These Budgets are well thought out. The science stands behind them. These are things that we need to do to meet our obligations—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: What, more meetings?

—in terms of reducing our emissions.” So I thank the National Party, Gerry Brownlee, for your support on signing up to those budgets.

But, if you sign up to the budgets, you’ve got to have a plan for how to reduce the emissions. What we produced yesterday is a plan to reduce by 2025 the first of the emissions reduction budgets—11.5 megatons to be taken out of our economy. This is in the plan. So, if the Opposition is going to tell us, “It’s just plans; it’s just plans to have plans.”, that simply is not true. The Opposition spokesperson told us that it is right and proper for us to debate; I couldn’t agree more. I want us to debate what the National Party’s alternative budgets or plans look like. What are they going to do to remove 11.5 megatons of carbon from our economy over the next four years? They need to put the detail on the table and tell us what they would do differently. It is simply lazy rhetoric to call it corporate welfare. It is a party not standing by what it has signed up to when it will not accept the difficult things that we have to do as a country to truly meet our carbon budgets.

We do need to spend carefully and wisely, and we do need to look at the outcomes. So let’s look at some of the initiatives that were not only announced in our emissions reduction plans but were funded through the Climate Emergency Response Fund yesterday. If we look at the Decarbonising Industry Fund, just for example, Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry, then we can have a look at what that fund has already been doing in its first iteration: $68 million of Crown investment that has leveraged $117 million of expenditure from the private sector and is set to remove enough carbon that is the equivalent to 134,000 cars by the time that has rolled out. I want to know the details of what National are going to put in place instead of doing that, because they have said that that is wrong. So let’s have a debate—it is right and proper—but that involves the Opposition coming up with an alternative and us having a real debate, not just lazy political rhetoric.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. First of all, I want to commend the Government for moving towards making some of the steps that they have, and there are some policies that, actually, we do support and are grateful that you adopted them. There are some things, also, as you know, that we have been very vocal on, and that is the fact that you have lacked ambition. In our mind, as tangata whenua, there are some things that we would like to seek clarity on and, in fact, critique.

You say in enabling equitable transition for Māori led by Māori—which I think we say, “by Māori for Māori”—the plan includes Māori and Government working together. That is Te Tiriti. That is what Te Tiriti articles 2 and 3 already propose; so that’s not new. Develop a Māori climate strategy and action plan: that again is in Te Tiriti, in articles 2 and 3, our rights and interests. Ensure the right funding and resourcing for community action, kaupapa Māori, tangata Māori, actions and solution: it’s really great, but we’ve consistently called to this Government to fund the support to transition to regenerative agriculture, but nowhere in this have we seen this. In fact, what you’ve done is gone far beyond giving a free pass to agriculture, who now they are subsidising their inaction on methane to the tune of $710 million. Crazy.

So let’s get on with this and understand why we need a new research centre. To knowledge, we actually have one. We know that works. Price methane immediately. Phase out nitrogen fertilisers. Cut herd sizes. I know it all sounds very radical, but we could just get on with this.

Under this Government’s plan, farmers won’t pay anything into the emissions trading scheme (ETS), but will take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the ETS, subsidising their continued pollution. This is exactly what an unjust, unequal, and ineffective transition looks like. Absolute shame.

There is so much that you could have done that we haven’t seen. I think one of the other things is that nowhere in the area does the plan have the level of ambition in clearing this in transport, with Government failing to prioritise free and accessible public transport. Where is the detail for grassroots, low-income whānau to be able to support and transition into electric vehicles? Nowhere. In fact, we saw this last week with the same with forestry. There is nothing here that takes into consideration the state of tangata whenua, the cost of living, and the strain that our people are enduring because of this Government’s inaction to address poverty and to address equities in the climate space. Disappointing.

However—and we were really interested to see that Greenpeace were supporting the same call as Te Paati Māori; I guess this is the bonus of being tangata whenua active kaitiaki.

So I really do want to ask that we have something a little bit more ambitious, something that targets, something that’s really into action now and not into action further down the line, and actually impress that this Government be more bold in what it is that it’s saying it’s going to do, and stop placating the medium voters. Kia ora koutou katoa.

Yeah, thank you, Mr Speaker. It is with great pleasure that I rise to exercise right of reply. So I’d just like to start by addressing some of the concerns raised by Scott Simpson in his address before. I’ve always found it slightly confusing that the National Party are against corporate welfare for industry but for it when it comes for agriculture. So I’m looking forward to hearing what their alternatives are there. He criticised the strategies, and the policies, and decisions that have yet to be made, and the actions that are in the emissions reduction plan. There are 300 different actions, policies, and strategies in the emissions reduction plan, which is precisely 300 more than we’ve heard from the National Party over the last several years.

I completely agree that it is within the—in fact, the remit of Parliamentary democracy is to test the quality of the decisions that the Government and its agencies are making, and I welcome that. But, as the Hon Dr Woods said, if you’re going to sign up to the targets, you have to have an alternate plan if you don’t agree with this one. So far, we haven’t seen anything.

The ACT Party is now proposing climate change policies so that they can pretend that they’re not climate deniers whilst also pretending that they are. So one of my favourite policies that they’ve proposed is the idea that you can reduce emissions in line with 1.5 degrees by changing the parliamentary sitting calendar, which is, perhaps, the least credible idea I have ever heard anyone ever propose for how you could cut emissions and reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change. But at least they’re in the game. At least they’re in the game and proposing ideas, which is more than we have actually yet heard from the National Party over the course of this debate.

I do want to thank Te Paati Māori for their stance and being one of the voices for actually going further and faster than we have yet done as a country. And I want to assure the member for Te Paati Māori that, actually, the plan does address the concerns that she’s talking about, and I’m very happy to sit down with her at some length on that. It’s not job done. The plan by itself will not cut emissions; that is the job that we have yet to do, but at least, we are now in the game.