Climate Change Response (2050 Target and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Climate Change Response (2050 Target and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

This bill amends the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to upgrade the biogenic methane component of New Zealand’s 2050 climate target, and makes several other changes to ensure our climate legislation remains fit for purpose. The bill supports the Government’s commitment to ensure that our targets are informed by science, contribute to our international commitments, and, of course, are achievable.

Farmers have been clear that they need a methane target that is realistic and provides certainty about what’s expected of them. The current target requires biogenic methane emissions to be reduced by 24 to 47 percent below 2017 levels by 2050. The agricultural sector has consistently told us that this target is unworkable and creates economic uncertainty across rural New Zealand. This bill delivers the clarity that our farmers have asked for.

This Government is focused on driving economic growth, and we recognise that growth begins on the land. Our primary sector is not only our biggest sector; it is central to our national identity. New Zealand’s food and fibre producers are world leaders, and they are playing a vital role in our economic recovery. We should celebrate their contribution, and we do celebrate their contribution. This bill reflects our belief that a thriving climate and a thriving economy go hand in hand. By setting methane targets that are grounded in science and practicality, we are ensuring that our climate policy supports the productivity and resilience of rural New Zealand.

In mid-2024, we commissioned a panel of international and local experts to carry out an independent scientific review of New Zealand’s biogenic methane targets. That panel provided clear, evidence-based guidance on what levels of biogenic methane emission reductions are consistent with no additional warming from a 2017 base year. We have considered the panel’s report alongside advice from the Climate Change Commission, and have also considered possible impacts on our economy, the contribution of the target to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and what we want to achieve as a Government.

Based on all of this, we have determined that the biogenic methane target should be reset to 14 to 24 percent below the 2017 emissions by 2050. The methane review found that a 14 to 24 percent reduction in biogenic methane emissions is consistent with stabilising the warming contribution of New Zealand’s biogenic methane emissions at 2017 levels in 2050. This range maintains an appropriate contribution to our international climate change commitments.

Setting targets is ultimately about combining the best available science with judgments that reflect our national context. We don’t want to reduce emissions here at home only to have less efficient farmers from other countries to increase production. The new target reflects the latest science and research and provides a credible foundation for our policy direction, while ensuring the continued strength and viability of our agricultural sector. Agriculture—as you know very well, Madam Deputy Speaker—is the backbone of our economy. It contributes 81 percent of our export goods and feeds over 40 million people worldwide. We must protect that strength while reducing emissions.

It’s important to note that our international targets will not be changing as a result of resetting the domestic 2050 biogenic methane targets. New Zealand is committed to achieving emissions reductions in the country’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, and takes its obligations under international agreements extremely seriously. This bill provides clarity and, of course, confidence, while maintaining our credibility on the global stage.

This bill also provides for a formal review of the biogenic methane component of the 2050 target, and this will be completed and tabled in the House no later than 31 December 2040. The review will assess whether the targets remain relevant, with a view to recommending whether the target for the reduction in biogenic methane emissions should be a single percentage target. It will also consider the latest science on methane’s impact on warming, New Zealand’s progress in reducing emissions, and international efforts under the climate agreements that we are part of. This ensures our long-term targets remain evidence based, credible, and aligned with global best practice.

Cabinet has also agreed to defer setting the fourth emissions budget. This decision was originally due before the end of this year, but, of course, the Climate Change Commission’s advice was based on the current legislated methane target. As a result, once that target is updated through this bill, the commission’s advice will no longer reflect the policy settings in place. Deferring this decision is a practical result of that and allows us time for the commission to update its advice, which, in turn, will ensure our emissions budgets are set in a way that is credible, consistent, and achievable. The Commission’s advice on revisions to existing budgets will also be updated.

The Government has also agreed to require the Climate Change Commission and the Minister to consider any implications for domestic food production when advising on and setting emissions budgets. This will ensure that these issues are given greater prominence in advice and decision making. We are also producing changes in the bill to remove the requirement for the New Zealand emissions trading scheme (ETS) settings to accord with New Zealand’s nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Requiring alignment with the NDCs introduces uncertainty, particularly around the timing and availability of offshore mitigation, and risks undermining the scheme’s effectiveness. The ETS is a domestic policy instrument that cannot directly influence offshore mitigation. This change will appropriately focus the ETS on delivering domestic emissions budgets and targets. This change is included in this bill to ensure that there is no disruption to the 2026 ETS settings process.

Within the next decade, we expect effective, safe, and easy-to-use methane reduction tools to be widely adopted across the farming systems in our country and beyond. This will support us to meet the updated target, while continuing to grow the value of exports. Technology is key to unlocking the full potential of our agricultural sector while meeting our emission reduction goal. That is why this Government has invested over $400 million over four years to accelerate the development and uptake of tools and technologies that reduce on-farm emissions.

Our approach is clear: we want to support innovation, avoid blunt instruments, and work constructively with the sector to deliver practical, lasting solutions. New Zealand farmers are amongst the most carbon-efficient food producers in the world. With the right support, they will continue to lead globally in sustainable food production. This bill is about fairness, it is about credibility, and, importantly, it is about progress. It ensures our climate targets are grounded in science, achievable in practice, and, of course, aligned with the realities of our economy and our environment. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a very curious day to have this particular bill in the House going through all stages under urgency. I have in my hand a copy of the Paris Agreement. The agreement that the overwhelming, vast majority of countries in the world signed up to. An agreement that the world would make its best efforts to have only 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming and at the very least would achieve only 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. It was an astonishing agreement across the world, and it reflects the absolute existential crisis that we have with climate change.

That agreement was signed on 12 December 2015. Inside these walls, today is 9 December. Out there in the real world where climate change is occurring, it is 10 years to the day since John Key’s National Government signed up to the Paris Agreement, and here we are today in this House, downgrading our methane target, valorising dubious science, and walking away from our commitments to reducing climate change, walking away from our responsibilities to future generations. Sure, this might be cheaper in the short term, but the costs will be worn by our children and our children’s children. That side of the House is walking away from intergenerational responsibility.

The Labour Party does not support this bill. It does not support this bill, because despite the repeated claims of “science, science, science”, the analysis that this bill is based on is dubious science at best, and it is deeply politicised science. It is science that has been rejected worldwide and by credible climate scientists. That’s the first reason as to why we are rejecting this bill.

We also reject this bill because sneaking in there in clause 5, I think, is a reliance on the concept of carbon intensity. It’s a concept that seems right in the first place—it seems right initially, or it seems plausible—but it actually leads to increased emissions from New Zealand. That is the second reason as to why we are rejecting this bill.

The third reason we are rejecting this bill is because it has been carried out with a lack of consultation, a lack of consultation with Opposition parties, a lack of consultation with New Zealanders—consultation that, sitting in the Minister’s regulatory impact statement, suggests could be done through the select committee process. But there is to be no select committee process on this bill.

If you go back to 2018 and 2019, Todd Muller, for whom I have an enormous amount of respect, James Shaw, for whom I also have an enormous amount of respect, and David Parker, for whom I have an enormous amount of respect, worked hard together to achieve a bipartisan consensus on what New Zealand should be doing around climate change. It was a consensus that every single member of Parliament voted for, bar one, and even that person didn’t get around to voting against it.

There was genuine agreement as to what we could do—all of us together—to ensure a fit world for our children, and that party has walked away from it. There was one meeting with the Opposition spokesperson and only because we pushed for it, and then we were informed at the last minute about what was about to happen.

For those reasons, the Labour Party rejects this bill. We will vote against it, and we will fight against it all the way through this urgent process.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill represents a deep betrayal of New Zealand. It represents a betrayal of the voters, a betrayal of the planet and our future, and a betrayal of the farming community that they purportedly represent.

The first betrayal is to the voters who put us all here. The National Party came into the election promising to meet New Zealand’s climate targets—not to water them down but to meet them. It is a betrayal to the values of good faith and democratic norms, and the code of honour that everyday New Zealanders live by. When the zero carbon bill set targets—

Simon Court: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’m just raising a point of order about the House. I do appreciate the member’s passion, but I’d just really appreciate it, because it is a Friday morning and we were here until very late last night, if we could maybe just keep it to a normal conversational volume.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: That’s just how I speak, Madam Speaker. It’s my normal voice.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, OK—and I appreciate the point of order. I was sitting here thinking to myself that, though I love the passion, the member does have a microphone. So maybe—

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: They need to turn it down.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: —passion with a little bit less decibels in it would be really good. Thank you.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: May I continue, Madam Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Carry on, yes.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: When the zero carbon bill set targets in Parliament, that was a compromise—a cross-party consensus that everyone in this House was, in parts, unhappy and happy about. Every single party represented in this House voted for it. The targets in that legislation were a product of years’ long and deep negotiations, because we understood that everyone in New Zealand needs stability in the climate change targets. Today, we can be under no illusion that it is the National Party that is shattering that consensus, under urgency, without a select committee process, without any public input, and without a full picture of what it could cost us.

This is a betrayal of our planet and the livable future that we require. It weakens our methane targets and allows the equivalent of 500 years of operation from the Huntly power plant. It decouples our emissions trading scheme from New Zealand’s global pledges to the world, undermining confidence in the scheme and raising doubt about New Zealand’s fidelity as an international partner. It puts at risk billions of dollars of trade and tries constantly to hide the evidence by redacting how much it would actually cost in the regulatory impact statement. It asks once again that the public bear the additional household costs of up to nearly $300 a year to subsidise corporate polluters. Under this Government’s cost of greed crisis, it is everyday New Zealanders who have to pay for the cost of climate inaction.

Last, but definitely not least, it betrays farmers and the agricultural community that members opposite claim to represent. It represents the biggest betrayal of the agricultural sector that this country has seen. Farmers are at the front line of our climate crisis. Few other sectors in our economy are as exposed to the impacts of climate-exacerbated weather events as they are.

It betrays farmers by sedating them under a warm blanket of complacency and half-truths, rather than enabling them to step up and be the world leaders that I know that they are and want to continue to be. It betrays farmers by exposing them to trade risks worth billions of dollars in trade agreements and wider reputational risk for the green premium of the “clean, green” New Zealand brand, and it betrays farmers by destroying the consensus that they and the wider society were shielded and protected under. Thanks to the irresponsible betrayal of the parties that claim to stand up for them, every three years, the agricultural community will now have to face the roller-coaster experience of the chopping and changing of targets.

Make no mistake, this weakening of the Climate Change Response Act, the betrayal of the planet, the betrayal of the farming community, and the betrayal of the voters that it represents will not stand under a future Government. This will be a priority for change, and, look, the members opposite can’t have it both ways. They will not be able to complain when we use the same process with which they introduced this bill—under the cover of night, under urgency, without any select committee input—to change the processes. I won’t hear any complaints from the members opposite next year when we swap sides and we change this deeply damaging, deeply irresponsible legislation, which we in this House are proud to stand against.

Perhaps I should go back to how the targets were set in the first place. These original targets that were set in the bill that we are changing, they came from a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the 1.5 degree Celsius report. That report modelled 70 different pathways at which 1.5 degrees could be achieved. It looked at how we can turn the dial on all the gases to achieve 1.5. Now, in some of those modelled pathways, they actually had methane increasing. Where they settled—they did all that work, and they said, “Right. What’s the least cost for the globe? What’s the most efficient way we can achieve this for the globe to come up with some global recommendations around what the reductions should be?”

They viewed that least cost for the globe was 24 to 47 percent in methane reductions, but that was for the globe, not for New Zealand. No work was ever done into was that least cost for New Zealand. Now, in that report, they also said, “Do not use these targets as national targets.” It was for the globe, not individual countries, because every country is different. Don’t believe me? Go and have a look at various articles written by the lead author of that report, Myles Allen, professor at Oxford University, who says exactly that. He’s said many times New Zealand should not have adopted those targets in that report as national targets. In fact, the dodgy science that someone has mentioned is actually science done by Myles Allen, lead author at the IPCC.

Where do we get to there? I mean, least cost for methane—how do they come up with those numbers? They looked at methane globally—where does it come from? The most common area was leaky oil and gas wells. Least cost for the globe: plug them up, stop them leaking.

Steve Abel: You’re going to drill more of them.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: We’ll make sure they don’t leak—not leaky ones.

Second: landfills—make sure that they’re not leaky. We do a good job of that, as I’m sure my compatriot Simon Court can attest to—making sure we’re using that gas. Third was agriculture. What were the things in agriculture that were least cost to reduce? Better management of rice paddies—we don’t have a lot of those in New Zealand—and, secondly, manure management. Manure management refers to the big barns where you pile up all the manure outside and dispose of it. Again, not something we do in New Zealand. We’re out in the pasture—it’s all been taken care of. Really, those numbers did not apply to New Zealand. That’s how we got these old numbers. We plucked out numbers from a report that wasn’t meant for New Zealand and wasn’t focused on New Zealand.

What we’ve done, as the Minister spoke to earlier, is we got science-based. What does New Zealand need to do to not add any additional warming? That’s where we’ve landed at. That’s what the Paris accord is about—limiting additional warming. That’s what we’ve achieved.

Now, someone before mentioned about food prices and all the rest of it and cost of living. It’s been mentioned a lot: “Why are we doing all these bills? Are they going to reduce the cost of living?” Well, you talk a big game over there, but ask yourselves, if you were to oppose this bill—we already have a supply constraint around the globe for milk and meat, right? To achieve these targets—

Hon Damien O’Connor: That’s rubbish!

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: Oh, so why have the prices gone up then? Because there’s a lack of supply. I won’t waste my time trying to explain supply and demand again. If we reduce supply in New Zealand, which was what the previous Government was intending—it’s in the reports that the Minister commissioned and probably never read—we would have had less beef, and that would have pushed up prices. Well, if you’re voting against this, you are voting for higher food prices. That’s what you’re voting for. Make no clear mistake about that. In that, I commend this bill to the House.

This is a long-awaited day for our agricultural sector and our farmers—the monkey is finally coming off our back. Farmers were bemused as to how we could possibly reduce biomethane emissions by 47 percent by 2050 and why they should have to pay a tax for simply farming their livestock. Biogenic methane is a short-lived gas. It’s part of a biological cycle—it is almost a closed cycle. These are not emissions released from fossil fuels that sit in the atmosphere for centuries and warm the planet—

Steve Abel: But you’re going to emit those as well.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: It was economic suicide for us to punish the world’s most carbonefficient farmers and shift that production offshore, and, worse, it was actually against the provisions in the Paris Agreement that specifically protect food production.

Our rural communities have paid a heavy price for climate policy, especially our sheep and beef sector and communities that are reliant on those industries. Widespread afforestation has heavily impacted and hollowed out many of those communities. It’s easy for rural communities to plant and walk away. Those communities are paying twice—well, they were going to be paying twice under the former regime: once with their community being shut down by widespread afforestation and then, for those that are left, attacks on methane emissions.

This Government committed to a methane review. It was a credible review, with an internationally acclaimed panel. The no additional warming lens showed a 14 percent to 24 percent reduction was required to keep within that no additional warming ban, depending on if it was 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees. I’ll make no apologies here: New Zealand First think it should be a flat 14 percent. We see absolutely no benefit in punishing the world’s most efficient farmers

We are investing in mitigation technologies significantly. There are promising developments. We are aware, at a commercial level, that there is both commercial and trade-deal incentives to reduce our limits, reduce our emissions, and play our part. We are not shying away from that; we just need the targets to be credible and achievable.

What is not often admitted, on that side of the House anyway, is agriculture is already meeting its current emissions targets for 2030. We are on track to get very, very close. Unfortunately, that’s been done by widespread culling, and the impact on our rural communities has been significant. We have paid a burden disproportionate to what our urban colleagues have had to do.

We will not punish our farmers. We will not shut down our rural communities. We absolutely commend this bill to the House.

E te Pīka, tēnā koe. Ka tū au hei māngai mō Te Pāti Māori, ā, ka tū anō hoki ahau me te riri.

[Madam Speaker, thank you. I stand as spokesperson for the Māori Party, and I also stand in anger.]

I rise for the first reading of this climate change legislation with riri, mamae, and with absolute determination. What this coalition Government has done over the past two years is not merely neglect and it is not merely incompetence, but it is an assault—a deliberate, calculated assault—on our taiao, on our mokopuna, on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and on the very future of Aotearoa.

Let us lay bare the truth. This Government repealed the Clean Car Discount, the single biggest driver of electric vehicle uptake. Overnight, registration slumped. They killed the main incentive, and now high-emitting utes pour in while the rest of the world accelerates towards zero emissions. By gutting Labour’s modern resource management system, they also pulled us back to 1991, removing climate obligations, removing cumulative effects assessments, and ripping out Te Tiriti hooks. The Ministry for the Environment warned us that this is a return to outdated law at the very moment we need future-focused planning.

Then the Fast-track Approvals Act, a law that allows Ministers to tick off mines, coal projects, iron sands extraction, even projects previously rejected behind closed doors—that is what this Government calls progress. I call it State-sponsored environmental vandalism. Others have called it a war on nature. Despite outcries from our whanaunga from across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific, who are literally sinking—they now look at us, a nation once priding ourselves as a leader in climate action, now one of the others who put profit before people and planet.

This Government has reversed the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration. In 2025, in the hottest year the planet has ever recorded, the coalition has chosen to drill, not decarbonise. It is running full speed toward more fossil fuels. Shame! They cut the $4.5 billion Climate Emergency Response Fund, the tahua dedicated to climate action—around $2.5 billion in climate programmes wiped out in one Budget. The Climate Change Commission—they lost a quarter of their funding, and their independence is being stripped away.

Gone is the Carbon Neutral Government Programme, gone is Māori climate resilience, gone are native forests at scale, gone is Jobs for Nature, gone is freshwater protection funding, and gone are climate evidence systems and climate governance roles. This Government did not just turn off the tap; they ripped out the pipes and they sold them for scrap metal.

Now, let’s get to Māori rights and Te Tiriti. Ngāti Pāoa has voiced deep concerns about this bill. They’ve told me direct that with sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and warming waters already putting pressure on depleted taonga species, they have warned that fast-track processes could compound long-term harm, especially in the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana, which is in a state of ecological crisis. They remind us that true kaitiakitanga means strengthening resilience and restoration, not weakening it. Mike Smith of the Iwi Chairs Forum sums it up pretty well—pretty well, actually. [Interruption] You don’t care to listen and that’s your problem. You don’t listen.

Too loud—too loud.

ORIINI KAIPARA: “I have zero faith in this Government.”, Mike Smith says. “They are running with the oil industry and industrial ag sector. Everyone else can burn.”—that is Mike Smith. This Government is not in partnership with tangata whenua. It is not honouring Te Tiriti. It is actively placing Māori communities in the firing line of climate impacts—floods, droughts, cyclones, heat. Our people face the sharpest edge yet are given the smallest voice. This legislation is not simply about emissions; it’s about restoring integrity, restoring science, restoring Te Tiriti, and restoring the future of all our mokopuna, the one that they deserve. I stand here to give rise to all their voices. We can change things. We can stop this madness.

Ko te mana o te taiao, ko te mana o te tangata, ko te mana o ngā mokopuna [The respect of the environment, the authority of humanity, the dignity of the grandchildren]—that is the responsibility before all of us. Te Pāti Māori utterly and uncategorically opposes this bill.

This is a long-awaited day for our New Zealand farmers—the backbone of our economy, our agriculture sector, where we are resetting the methane targets. We are the most carbon-efficient farmers in the world. We can have a thriving economy and a thriving climate. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this first reading. I’m going to be speaking on a few more readings, as well. But just to start off with where the last speaker ended, it seems that many on that side of the House say our farmers are “the most carbon-efficient farmers in the world”. That member might have said “carbon-efficient”, but I’ve also heard other members say, “most emissions-efficient farmers in the world”. We will be asking the Minister about that and where that evidence that they might be relying on—if they’re relying on evidence, which seems unlikely—comes from. But, also, to go to this problem definition: if those members say, “We’re the best in the world, so no reductions are needed”, then they need to demonstrate how we’re the best in the world—

Dr David Wilson: They did not say that.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —and they need to demonstrate—Oh! I’ve just heard that they did not say that. Patterson said, “Ours are the most climate-efficient farmers”. The chair of the Environment Committee just said—and she used the word “carbon”, I think—“They’re the most carbon-efficient farmers”. So that is the rationale for this legislation: we’re already the best. I think I heard from Hoggard, “The idea of Paris is to move everyone to be better, but we’re already the best, so everybody else needs to move to us.” Well, what if they have already moved to us, or what happens if that side is right, and we are overtaken? We might have been the best, but then we’re the second best. Where is their logic then?

In fact, this bill not only changes the methane target but it also changes the emissions trading scheme (ETS) settings, and we haven’t heard very much about that, either. It is hilarious—I think it’s good to find something amusing on a Friday in urgency—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s only Tuesday in here.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Thank you, Madam Speaker, for reminding me of that. But on page 3, here, we have the explanatory note, and it says that the nationally determined contributions accordance requirements—which this bill will change—“risks undermining the proper functioning of the NZ ETS”. The ETS is already undermined by all the actions that this Government has done, and we just heard a recital of all the terrible things that this Government has done to stop addressing climate change. That’s what we heard from the previous speaker. She set that out very well, so I won’t repeat it all in this speech, but the ETS is already broken, and it is broken because of what this Government has done in undermining all those actions relating to carbon emissions. That’s what they’ve done.

We now have methane being discussed here. New Zealand has this split gas approach, and that is unusual around the world. Sometimes people will say, “Oh, we just need to consider the gases separately”. In fact, we do in New Zealand and have done since these targets were introduced. The target for biogenic methane is quite different from the target for carbon and other gases. We’ve got other gases in there as well that we should not forget to talk about, including nitrous oxide, which is very important. But this bill is about reducing that methane target. We have a large target already in the bill, from 24 to 47 percent. Twenty-four is an interesting number, because this amendment still uses that number, 24, but instead of going up to 47, it goes down to 14.

There’s no need to change this legislation. Twenty-four is in both targets, and I would hope that people were aiming for a whole lot more than 24, but it’s there in both. Including the 14 percent clearly shows where this Government wants to go, and that is just to the 14 percent, and that is why we are here today. There is no willingness to want to reduce biogenic methane emissions. We have heard that from the previous speakers, and I have more to say about this soon.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the methane-induced hot air on the other side of the House is entirely predictable. All this bill does is bring science to the targets and bring certainty to the backbone of New Zealand’s economy and our hard-working farming families. I commend this bill to the House.

Here we are in urgency passing a really important piece of legislation around how New Zealand is going to meet its international obligations in terms of our nationally determined contribution in climate, and some really important stuff about how we as a country are going to do our bit on the global change in how we fight climate change.

My colleague the Hon Deborah Russell talked about it being 10 years ago today that the National Party went to Paris and signed New Zealand up to the Paris Agreement. I was there as part of the New Zealand delegation as an Opposition spokesperson, and at that point we did not think the Government was going far enough—the National Government—but they signed us up and we actually had some accord across this House. Fast-forward, and we had all of the parties in the House agreeing about how we were going to meet those targets through the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act.

What we have today is a Government that is breaking that consensus and a climate Minister that doesn’t seem to be allowed to be a Minister for climate, who cannot get anything through his Cabinet that is actually going to do New Zealand’s bit on climate change and what we need to do as a country. It is an embarrassment for this Government and it is an embarrassment for this Minister that he is having to bring this legislation to this House under urgency.

This bill does two things. It makes the changes to methane targets, which we will talk about at length and have many questions about the science that his colleagues are purporting are behind this. It’s complicated science, and we really want to dig into the detail of that, and we will be doing that in the committee stage.

The second thing that this bill does that is incredibly important is that it delinks the carbon market from New Zealand’s Paris commitments. What we’ve seen is when the Minister announced this, he crashed the carbon market. Let’s bear in mind that this is a Minister that has put all the eggs for New Zealand meeting any of its obligations into the emissions trading scheme and said it is our sole strategy—not just a tool, but our sole strategy—for how we meet our carbon commitments, and this is a Minister that has crashed that market.

What kind of advice did the Minister get when he was doing this? He was told that it was likely to result in volatility and negative impacts on businesses and households. There are reports that the changes that we are reading in this House, under urgency, will push up New Zealanders’ power bills by $270 a year. We do not know what this is going to do to industry who rely on the wholesale market, because when you take the onus off the 50 percent of our emissions in the agriculture sector, you put it into other sectors of the economy. This is going to drive up our energy costs, whether that be in electricity and whether that be in petrol.

This Minister has some explaining to do about the advice he got and how that is going to be mitigated. This is a Minister that received advice that the legislation that we are debating under urgency will result in a contraction of our GDP. This is a Government that at Budget time came with all fanfare that they were bringing in a piece of policy that was going to result in 1 percent growth in GDP over 20 years. Well, this needs to be set against that, because this legislation we are debating here will see our economy contract because of the changes that are being made here.

This Minister was also written to by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—a former National Party Minister, I would point out—and told there was no need to do this under urgency, that this could be split out, that this actually could be thoroughly examined by people who understand this. Clearly, the Government members don’t—they’ve drunken some Kool-Aid and haven’t read any of the detail. These are serious changes that are being made. It will raise cost for New Zealanders. We will be exploring this thoroughly in the committee stage, and Labour will not be supporting this legislation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is like precision surgery. It’s removing the cancerous “greenwashing” tumour with practical economic and environmental logic—the two can co-exist. This is a very practical bill. I commend it to the House.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading