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 third time.

This bill marks an important step in ensuring New Zealand’s climate framework is fit for purpose. It delivers clarity for our farmers, it delivers clarity for our rural communities, and it does so by setting a methane target that is both scientific and practically achievable. The previous target created uncertainty and risk for our primary sector. This legislation addresses that by updating the biogenic methane component of the 2050 target to a range of 14 to 24 percent below 2017 levels. This new target is informed by science and continues to contribute to our international commitment and is feasible to achieve.

The bill delivers five key changes: it resets the biogenic methane target to 14 to 24 percent below 2017 levels by 2050; it defers the fourth emissions budget; it removes the requirement for the emissions trading scheme settings to accord with their nationally determined contributions; it legislates a review of the methane target in 2040; and lastly—and importantly—it requires consideration of food production when setting emissions budgets. These changes are not just technical; they are practical, and they will give our farmers confidence about what is expected of them, support investment decisions, and ensure that New Zealand, importantly, continues to contribute to the global efforts to reduce emissions but also, importantly, to increase productivity and food production to the world.

Our commitments under the Paris Agreement remain unchanged, and this bill reinforces our reputation as a country that takes climate obligations seriously while also enabling economic growth. This legislation is about balance. It supports our climate goals without undermining jobs or our rural communities’ prosperity. It positions New Zealand to lead, and continue to lead, around the world in sustainable food production and ensures that innovation, as it has always been a major contributing factor to our primary sector, continues to drive progress for our economy.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge my officials, who have been significant in their contribution to this work; the independent Climate Change Commission; and also, importantly, the independent methane scientific group, who have all contributed to this process. I commend this bill to the House.

Let me traverse this Government’s record on climate change since shortly after they were elected. On 3 December 2023, they cancelled the Lake Onslow project. On 11 December 2023, they discontinued the GIDI Fund—the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund. On 14 December 2023, they repealed the Clean Car Discount. On 14 December as well, they also announced they would repeal the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, which had a big impact on our nitrous. On 1 January 2024, that was the date that the Clean Car Discount formally ended. On 14 January 2024, they cancelled Auckland light rail. On 16 January 2024, they announced they’d remove the exemption for owners of light electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids from planned road-user charges.

On 4 March 2024, they announced a draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, which deprioritised decarbonisation. On 6 March 2024, they cancelled the Auckland regional fuel tax, which was used in part to fund public and active transport in Auckland. On 21 March 2024, they announced plans for higher road speeds, which increase fuel consumption and carbon emissions. On 21 March, that same day, they announced they would actually increase road speed limits. On 28 March 2024, they passed that legislation requiring light vehicles and plug-in hybrids to pay road-user charges. On 6 April 2024, they announced that they would appoint an independent panel to review the methane target. On 16 April 2024, they announced they would reduce barriers to consenting for coal mining.

On 30 May 2024, the Budget came out, and it showed that it would increase the country’s emissions by about 2.8 megatonnes of carbon. Included in that were cuts to the Climate Emergency Response Fund—the $900 million there was returned to the general fund. They cancelled the Environmental Legal Assistance Fund, and they started to use the waste levy for purposes beyond reducing waste.

On 31 May 2024, they stopped funding for free public transport for children and half-price fares for young people. On 9 June 2024, they announced they would amend the Crown Minerals Act to reverse the ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. On 11 June 2024, they announced that they would put in legislation so that agricultural emissions would not go into the emissions trading scheme. On 27 June 2024, the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport was published, and it shifted away from direct transport decarbonisation initiatives. On 9 July 2024, the Government announced it would reduce the clean car importer standard. On 17 July, they reduced their draft emissions plan, which showed that the buffer to meet the first and second emissions budgets would be decreased markedly.

Carrying on, on 15 July 2024, we first learned that the Minister of Climate Change had stated, in reference to our nationally determined contribution 1, that while the Government was committed to them, you can’t infer that means that we’re going to be writing a cheque for the gap—you can’t and should not infer that. In other words: we’re not going to pay. On 26 August 2024, the Minister for energy and resources announced that the Government had committed to acting with urgency to reverse the ban on offshore oil and gas. On 12 September 2024, there was an article in Carbon News in which the Minister of Climate Change stated that it was unrealistic for New Zealand to purchase overseas carbon credits to meet the nationally determined contribution 1.

On 25 September 2024, legislation reinstating offshore petroleum exploration was introduced to Parliament. On 23 October 2024, the first amendment bill to the Resource Management Act was amended, and it included making consenting for coal mines easier. On 6 November 2024, the Government announced it was going to remove regulations for low-emissions building and replace them with a voluntary approach. On 12 December 2024, the Government produced its second emissions reduction plan, and then it showed only a 3.2 megatonne reduction over five years to 2030. In January 2025, this Government announced its second nationally determined contribution. It was supposed to be the contribution which we could manage with the most possible ambition, and what was it? A mere 1 percent increase in our targets.

On 8 April 2025, the Government announced it would discontinue and wind down New Zealand Green Investment Finance. On 21 April 2025, the Government decided not to put a price on international maritime climate pollution. On 22 May, in the Budget that year, the Government announced a fossil fuel subsidy and a $200 million co-investment in oil and gas—in climate gas—and it halved New Zealand’s overseas climate financing from $250 million to $100 million.

On 25 June 2025, the Government withdrew from the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. On 31 July 2025, the Parliament passed a Crown Minerals Amendment Act to repeal the 2018 ban on offshore oil and gas exploration. On 1 October 2025, the Government announced decisions it had made for the energy sector, which included doubling down on fossil fuel energy, including building a natural gas import facility, subsidising gentailers for new coal and gas - fired generation, and reannouncing a fuel subsidy.

On 12 October 2025, the Government announced that it was going to reduce—in fact, halve—New Zealand’s legislated 2050 climate target. On 17 October 2025, New Zealand abstained from voting on putting a price on shipping emissions. On 22 October 2025, the Government announced widespread amendments to the climate-related disclosures regime. On 4 November 2025, the Government announced that it was delaying the 2025 deadline for a carbon-neutral Public Service from 2025 to 2050. On 17 November 2025, the Government announced changes to the Clean Car Standard, including reducing the Clean Car Standard charges by nearly 80 percent. On 4 December 2025, the Government announced that it would not follow any of the Climate Commission’s recommendations on target amendments under the Climate Change Response Act.

On 12 December 2025—the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement to the day, and although it’s 9 December in this place, out there it’s 12 December—this Government has walked back on methane. This is a record of climate failure by that Government. That is why we do not support this bill.

The second reason why we do not support this bill is that that Government has abandoned bipartisanship on climate. This House worked hard to build a consensus. This House worked extraordinarily hard to make sure we could agree on climate goals, to set some targets to give some certainty out there. In fact, when we were talking with Federated Farmers, with Beef + Lamb, and with Dairy New Zealand earlier this year, the message we got from them loud and clear was that they needed certainty. That Government has totally abandoned the prospect of certainty because it would not be bipartisan about climate. I say to the chair and the CEO of Federated Farmers, to the chair and the CEO of Beef + Lamb, and to the chair and the CEO of Dairy New Zealand, you’re good people, but you lined up behind the Minister when he announced these changes, and you lined up by a Minister who had abandoned bipartisanship. You cannot be certain anymore, because that Government has abandoned certainty around climate because it has abandoned bipartisanship. That is another reason. We cannot support this bill. We were not given any say in it. That Government walked away from the strong history of bipartisanship on climate, just like that.

Then they have introduced this particular change, which was done without any consultation with the public. In the Minister’s own regulatory impact statement from his own officials, they talked about doing consultation through a standard select committee process. But what have we had? We have had this bill go through the Parliament in a matter of hours with no select committee process. This has been an outrageous approach to climate legislation. Doing it in a rush, doing it without consultation, doing it without a proper select committee process—not even a fast select committee process. There was no select committee process whatsoever. It is an appalling process. We do not and cannot support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There are many critiques of this bill, but one of the myths that is frequently repeated by this Government and in fact by the agricultural sector and the dairy sector over time is that New Zealand feeds the world. We do not feed the world; we produce a surplus of predominantly meat and dairy products that we export to make money. If New Zealand’s primary concern was with providing calorific value and nutrition to human bodies, we would not have the lowlands covered in dairy cows; we would be growing grains and nuts and legumes, because in terms of our climate intensity, our water efficiency, and nutritional value, it would be a far, far more efficient way of producing food for human bodies. What is more, 95 percent of the dairy production we do is for export, and a vast volume of it is simply milk powder that goes as micro-ingredients in a multitude of non-nutritious foods—confectionaries and the like. Let me say here and put it clearly on the record: New Zealand is not concerned with actually feeding the world. I wish that we were more concerned with feeding the world, as well as feeding ourselves in a more effective manner.

If we were concerned with food security, we would not have the Canterbury Plains covered in dairy cows, because we could be producing more of even the food that we consume domestically. I actually think one of the good things about the addition to this piece of legislation is the consideration of food production—so long as the scope is sufficiently large enough that it takes into account what is the most efficient way to produce food for human bodies with minimal impact on the climate and on our waterways, for example.

The other thing that this bill does is it obsesses with biogenic methane. Why does it do that? It does that because of the heavy influence of that most influential sector—on the National Government, certainly; and probably on the ACT Party and the New Zealand First Party—the dairy industry. They are fixated on methane because it’s their biggest emission problem. This bill denies the fundamental fact that the easiest way to deal with reducing our methane emissions is land-use change. They don’t want land-use change, because they don’t want a reduction. You would think that the only food type in the National Party is dairy.

Miles Anderson: What are you talking about?

STEVE ABEL: I’m talking about—

Mark Patterson: Cheese, cheese!

STEVE ABEL: That’s right. He’s got it—cheese, cheese.

This bill, as my colleague has said, breaks the consensus on climate change. Now, I was a consensus sceptic, to be fair. I was a consensus sceptic because I predicted that this is exactly what would happen when you had a change of Government—that you would have this reactionary rightwing crew who’d come in and lean in to the climate denialism of the likes of the Trump administration, which we have in spades, to be fair, at either end of that right side of the House. The ACT Party and the New Zealand First Party love saying “Drill, baby, drill.” and casting scepticism on climate, and they have, here, backed out of that consensus.

As my colleague Francisco Hernandez points out, that rightly means that we are in a new space—when there’s a change of Government, we’re not going to seek consensus. We’re going to do what needs to be done to make this planet livable, because the existential challenge of climate change—the existential challenge of climate change—is coming at us like a freight train.

Simon Court: It’s not, Steve. It’s not.

STEVE ABEL: There’s the denialism right there—I love it. Thank you for affirming the perception.

The other thing that this does, apart from obviously lowering our ambition, is it separates, it decouples, the emissions trading scheme (ETS) from our nationally determined contribution. In layperson’s terms, that means that the target that we have as a nation, that we commit to and let the rest of the world know about—out nationally determined contribution—is now separated from what is supposedly the primary mechanism by which we achieve that contribution, the emissions trading scheme. Why would we separate those things? It is nonsensical—noting, of course, that our biggest emissions-contributing sector, the agricultural sector, mainly the dairy industry, is not even in the emission trading scheme. There is no actual bringing of that polluting sector into that scheme to create the market incentives for that sector to become more efficient. This Government purports to be concerned with the market, and they say their primary mechanism for achieving our ambitions and our goals is the emissions trading scheme, yet they don’t bring our most polluting sector into that emissions trading scheme. Here, in this legislation, they separate the ETS from the nationally determined contribution. It’s nonsensical. It’s another way to undermine the actual structure set out by which we achieve the challenge of doing our bit in addressing this global challenge of climate change.

To that point, the story we hear all the time that justifies us not doing our bit is that we are small and that because we contribute relatively little to global pollution, we should do the bare minimum—maybe we should do nothing at all. But, in fact, if you look at the emissions intensity of New Zealand on a per capita basis, we are in the top five biggest polluting nations in the world in terms of climate change emissions. I appreciate the silence from the other side of the House, because that is something we should be embarrassed about and ashamed of. We should be thinking about what we are doing to deal with how we are producing so many emissions per capita and actually being the worst example in the world of how to deal with this challenge. Where is the Anzac spirt? Where is the Anzac spirit which says that though we are small, we will do our bit?

I can imagine Minister Watts at the time of the rise of fascism in Europe. When it came to the call for the world to come and take action, Minister Watts might have said, “Well, we’re only a little country. We can’t really do much. It’s kind of out of our hands, and so we’re not going to bother to participate.” That is the attitude of the right wing to climate change, which, for context, is a far, far bigger challenge to planetary survival and thriving than a war.

Another point is that in terms of the question of food production, the front line of the worst impacts of climate change are food producers, are farmers, are rural people. Simon Court can make light of those massive horrendous slash-laden floods that hit the Esk Valley and the extreme weather events that hit West Auckland and the increasing frequency of droughts, the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, the risk of sea-level rise, and tidal inundation. He can make light of that, but the fact is that is the biggest single threat to the ability of us as humanity to produce food.

As the decades go by, it will become harder and harder to do that because of climate change, and if we lower our ambition and we send a message to the world that everyone can lower their ambition, then we lock ourselves into higher and higher levels of global heating that mean a much worse impact on our children and our grandchildren at the end of this century. To deny that methane, that superheating gas, is the quick means for us to rapidly cut global heating impacts is to deny the obvious science of climate change, because this legislation locks in the debunked science of no additional warming. It actually puts it in law—this thing cooked up by the beef and the dairy industry to justify them doing nothing. It is a shameful day for New Zealand today, and we disdain this legislation.

The member’s time has expired. Before we move on, I need to put the question, and the question is that the motion be agreed to. Members, it is now time for us to leave for the dinner break. The House is suspended until 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.03 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

[Interruption] The House is resumed. It’s a shame that members did not recognise Andy Foster in the gallery. Before the dinner break, we were on the Climate Change Response (2050 Target and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and we’re up to call number four, which is an ACT Party call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party will support this bill. We believe it’s a practical, science-based, common-sense reform, setting the 2050 target for methane in a much more sensible direction. My colleague Andrew Hoggard already made the case at first reading for the policy, but I do just want to point out that during the course of the debate, we’ve heard some absolutely farcical arguments from the Opposition that I must address.

Firstly, I’d just ask the Opposition, when it comes to climate change, to cool it, and, actually, to find a copy of Bjorn Lomborg’s book Cool It!: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming and take a chill pill, all you climate apocalyptics. Actually, we have the right policy settings, and we have a great climate Minister. Some might describe him as the Rudolf Nureyev of climate—by the way that he pivots and turns and makes sure that New Zealand’s always facing in the right direction. Essentially, ACT supports this bill. It’s going in the right direction. This Government is doing exactly what it was elected to do—fixing what matters. Thank you very much.

Tonight, the coalition Government keeps its promise to farmers. We are unshackling our agricultural sector from nonscientific methane targets—unscientific and punitive.

In this country, we do many great things in our economy. We have a large travel industry and a great tourism portfolio. We marvel at the likes of Zespri and Rocket Lab and the things that they are doing. But the undisputable truth about this country is that the one internationally competitive industry we have, or the one competitive advantage we have, at scale, is turning grass into protein. I’ve heard some arguments over here that we should turn the whole place into macadamia nuts or whatever. The truth is that other countries can do those things better than us. No one in the world can turn grass into protein—dairy products, meat, and the best strong wool in the world—as well as we can.

We have been doing it since 1882, when the Dunedin sailed out of Port Chalmers in Dunedin with that first frozen shipment of meat. In underpins every New Zealander’s standard of living—$40 billion from that pastoral sector. Every school and every hospital is funded in part by the returns that come from that sector. Our ability as a country to have a First World standard of living, essentially, relies on these industries. We will not punish those industries; we will not condemn them when they are the most carbon-efficient in the world.

With this bill, we’ve made the decision to go to no additional warming, and we have had the science to do it. We’ve had incredible international experts. We know that 14 to 24 degrees is what we have to achieve. Our farmers will do it; they are the best in the world—you only have to look at the way they’re looking to the collar technology at the moment. We will have that figured out and have got it figured before the rest of the farmers in the world get out of bed. This is a sensible measure, it’s a promise kept, and we absolutely support this bill. Thank you.

The next call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on the third reading of this bill. Look, I just wanted to begin by apologising to any Green members who might be tuning in; this speech will not be my best work. The truth is that I’ve worn myself up and expended my energy drafting the 150 tabled amendments that we ended up drafting for this bill. I wanted to thank, particularly, my assistant Georgie for her assistance in drafting that and also my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan for making sure that we’re helping hold this Government to account as they try and kill the climate consensus that was long and hard worked for around this country—without any select committee process, without any public input, and without any ability for the public to meaningfully submit or influence the policy direction.

Look, I also wanted to apologise to my colleague Steve Abel. We were actually on the opposite sides of the debate in 2019, and he was on the sceptic side of the debate. He correctly identified a fact that I didn’t, and he correctly predicted that, actually, the climate consensus in this country was never going to last; that the parties of the right would never resist the short-term temptation to smash the targets that were agreed by a cross-party consensus; that they would bend to short-term expediency and actually not live up to what a conservative party is supposed to do, which is to resist the direction of travel in either extreme, but, unfortunately, we don’t really have a conservative party in this country, and that is a shame.

I wanted to appeal to the people who did vote for the National Party in good faith. I wanted to appeal to the people who were taken in by the promises of the National Party not to change legislation, by the promises of the National Party to stick by the climate change targets that they themselves voted and pledged for. Unfortunately, the party of John Key that signed the original Paris Agreement, and that signed up to our first nationally determined contribution and that was originally linked to the emissions trading scheme—the party of Todd Muller—is no more. This is a party that’s willing to compromise everything for power. This is a party that’s not willing to actually be a conservative party, and this is a party that will do whatever it takes.

Now, I just wanted to close, with the last two minutes, by giving some home truths. I think members really need to reflect on the reality of what the international situation is—that nobody internationally really cares about New Zealand’s excuses. Nobody overseas really cares about why we have a split gas target. All they’re going to see is that this is a Government that is walking back on their international climate change commitments by walking them down. Look, I really respect how hard the members opposite fight for their interpretation of what’s right for their core constituency, the farming constituency, but unfortunately for them and unfortunately for the farmers in New Zealand, the farmers overseas will also have strong advocates and strong champions in their Parliaments as well. They’re going to notice that in the meantime, while New Zealand is walking down their climate change commitments and watering down their targets for methane emission reductions, their Parliaments are actually increasing their ambition.

This is the real reason why none of the Ministers really wanted to fully engage with a trade argument. It’s not that they’re not cognisant of the risks; it’s just that they’re hoping that if they can close their eyes and shut their ears, they can pretend that nothing bad is going to happen. That’s the reason why they refuse to release the documents that they’ve redacted quite deeply under the Official Information Act. That’s why they’ve refused to actually meaningfully engage with their reality—because they know that what they’re doing actually risks New Zealand’s economy and that what they’re doing is risking our reputation. They’ve torched our safe climate future, and they’ll torch our economy with it as well.

Look, this is a great day for New Zealand agriculture, where we respect our hard-working farmers and where we’re going to say, “We’re working alongside you, we’re working with you, and we’re reducing our methane targets so we can all get ahead our economy.” I commend this bill to the House.

Ten years ago today, in real time, the National Government of the day signed New Zealand up to the Paris Agreement. It signed New Zealand up with a series of targets. The work that happened then actually meant that New Zealand could stand proud and say that we had reached political consensus around what we were doing about climate action. Today, with this legislation, is the day that that bipartisanship dies. This is a day when the Government—the National-led Government—is pulling that apart, taking away the certainty that we know the country has been wanting. From civil society to the business sector to the farming sector, people wanted certainty—to know that whoever was in Government, when we were tackling something as big as climate change, there was going to be consistency. Tonight, the National Government is pulling the threads of that fabric apart and ripping that up, and that is to New Zealand’s detriment.

To members of this House who have stood up, like the speaker who just sat down, and said, “Today is a great day for New Zealand agriculture.”, no, it isn’t. Today is the day that the Government puts at risk our market access to some of our most lucrative markets for our agricultural products. It puts at risk our access to the EU. It puts at risk our access to the UK. When the Minister was asked whether he would release the advice he got in terms of trade advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT): crickets. The Minister wasn’t willing to inform the House or the New Zealand public about the advice he received on the possible implications for our trade as an agricultural nation. What the Minister has had to release is that, actually, he had advice from his officials that the option that is chosen in this legislation is going to contract our economy. This is going to make it more expensive for people to heat their homes. This is going to make it more expensive for industry to run. This is going to make transport more expensive in New Zealand. The Minister has not fronted up to this House and has not had an adequate debate about that—about what that economic advice was and what this means more broadly in terms of our economy.

This legislation does two things. It not only resets our methane target and waters it down—and the Minister either wouldn’t or couldn’t explain the science behind why the shift is happening. When questioned, the Minister seemed not to understand. I hope he was deliberately obfuscating, because it scares me a lot if we have a Minister of Climate Change who simply doesn’t understand the science of what he is doing and the implications of that science and could not explain to this House what the interface between political decision-making and those scientific targets was. It is a truly frightening day for New Zealand if that is the level of understanding that our Minister of Climate Change has when it comes to those things. Not only does it shift and weaken the methane target; what it also does is it decouples the emissions trading scheme (ETS) from our nationally determined contribution. It says that we’re not going to link together the price that is set on carbon with what we need to achieve in terms of our international commitments.

Now, this is a Government that has said that they’re putting all their eggs in the ETS basket. It is their political belief that they don’t believe in other measures. They cancelled those other measures in their first mini-Budget—the things that were funded through the Climate Emergency Response Fund—and said, “No, we’re going to lean heavily on the emissions trading scheme.” The mere release and press statement that the Minister put out that this legislation was going to be tabled in the House crashed the price of carbon. The day he made the announcement that this was the intention, we saw the price of carbon absolutely tumble to a point where it is not going to shift anything. The Government seems to make the ETS, which is a tool, a strategy—but it’s not even a tool with what the Government has done to it and the way they’ve stripped it apart, and it certainly isn’t a strategy. What we’re left with is either a Government that is going to pay other countries—

Grant McCallum: No, we’re not.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: —to decarbonise—“No, we’re not.”; we’ve heard this from them. The other option is they’re going to walk away from our Paris commitments.

What they won’t release is the MFAT advice around what that will do to our trading arrangements and what that will do to our market access into some of our most lucrative markets—the kinds of markets that the Hon Damien O’Connor went and negotiated free-trade agreements with and made sure that we could have access to for our agricultural products. The naive posturing and rhetoric that we have heard from Government members who get up and say this is a great day for agriculture shows that they need to actually do some reading beyond the speech notes they get from the leader’s office. There are some serious implications for what is going to happen to the New Zealand economy. Not only will it contract, but we are putting at risk the very thing that they are touting as the backbone of our economy. We don’t disagree—agricultural products having market access is incredibly important for New Zealand—but what we are seeing with this piece of legislation is that it puts that at risk.

The Minister, as well as not being willing to go through a full select committee process with this—despite the fact that his officials came to scrutiny week, only the week before, and said they’d given him advice about how he could bring these elements, take them for public consultation, and have them pass. The Minister chose not to do that. Instead, the Minister chose to bring this to the House in urgency when there was no reason. There are some very technical amendments that you could argue need to be passed by 31 December, but, certainly, changing our methane targets and decoupling the ETS from our nationally determined contributions are not changes that have to be made by 31 December. There is no earthly reason why they couldn’t have gone through and had a select committee process. The Minister said it’s because they’re a hard-working Government; I think it’s because they’re a disorganised Government that can’t handle their legislative programme, so they’re having to throw all this legislation into the last week before Christmas, and because of their disorganisation, we’re putting some big things at risk.

Not only is the public shut out of having their say on really important legislation, but there isn’t time for adequate examination. The advice that the Minister got from his officials around what he was doing with decoupling the ETS was that there wouldn’t be a cost. Instead, what happened was when he made the announcement, the price crashed. The reality of the price crashing means hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue for the Government. The fact that he wasn’t getting advice from his officials around that probably suggests that having some wider public input into that would have been a sensible thing. This is economically reckless. It certainly is reckless in terms of what we need to do on climate action. Rather than the things it purports to do, it puts far too much at risk. It puts jobs at risk, it puts our climate goals at risk, and it puts our future at risk if the Government is going to walk away from our international commitments—which Nicola Willis confirmed when she came to select committee last week—which puts our market access at risk.

This Government needs to come clean. They have no strategy, they have no plan, they are taking us backwards, and they are creating economic risk, which New Zealanders simply cannot afford.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, this has been a great week for the farming community of this country as we dial back the war on farmers from the last Government. As part of those promises, we’re delivering methane targets that are realistic, and I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to take a call on what is a reprehensible bill that is taking New Zealand backwards, as other colleagues have talked about.

If you go into any school and talk to them about what is the major issue that they are concerned about, I guarantee you the vast majority of them will say something about climate change. That’s not because it’s they—

Hon Member: Education standards.

CAMILLA BELICH: No, that’s not the reason. The reason is because they are aware that the future that they will inherit will be affected—as is the present we are in at the moment—by climate change. [Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: There’s far too much noise to my right.

CAMILLA BELICH: In my role as the Labour spokesperson for emergency management, I have, regretfully, had to go around to a number of places in the country that have been affected by severe weather events. The evidence that we’ve seen at select committee, when we’ve scrutinised the National Emergency Management Agency, is that these events are getting more common. We can’t ignore the fact that climate change is here. It’s affecting our communities, it’s affecting the communities that we’re a part of, it’s affecting other New Zealanders, and it’s only going to get worse.

That should be enough to take action and not roll back standards. In addition to that, we have also committed, in a bipartisan way, to international agreements that uphold our commitment towards reducing our climate emissions. The Government has said, in some of the questions—I’ve been here for a lot of the committee stage, as well, for this bill, noting that we haven’t had a select committee process on this. If you look at the regulatory impact statement, you’ll see “Does this bill give effect to New Zealand’s action in relation to an international treaty?”. It says no. That is a shame, because when you look at the New Zealand - European Union Free Trade Agreement, when you look at the New Zealand - United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement, and when you look at the Paris Agreement, you’ll see that New Zealand has commitments to these international agreements that require us to take action around climate change. The fact that this bill is rolling some of those commitments back is extremely concerning.

Now, we’ve heard a lot of rhetoric trying to paint this side of the House as being against farmers. I know, Madam Speaker, that you will know that that’s absolutely incorrect, because there are many people in New Zealand, no matter what their politics, who are involved with farming and have histories of farming, and we know very much from the engagement that we have with farmers that there are so many farmers who are very concerned about the effects of climate change, want to do their bit, and want to live up to the reputation that we should have of being the most efficient farmers in the world and being cutting-edge in relation to reducing carbon emissions as well, so I wholeheartedly reject any type of culture war that the other side of the House has tried to initiate.

We know that we have amazing farmers in New Zealand, but this bill is not supporting them to do their job. It is actually taking us backwards. When you look at the regulatory impact statement, you’ll see one of the few things that it says here is that the Minister of Climate Change proposes to progress an amendment to remove the requirement for New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme settings to accord with nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement, so this is affecting the Paris Agreement. Anything to the contrary is just not reading what is directly in front of us.

Another thing I think is really important to focus on—I don’t have as long as the other speakers to make a contribution today—is the consultation. Again and again, when you look through the documents that we are meant to refer to in order to make decisions and scrutinise the worth of this bill, you will see that there is no consultation. Look at the “Limitations and Constraints on Analysis”: “The main limitation on the analysis in this paper is there’s been no public consultation on this proposal.” Now, not only has there been no public consultation; there has been no select committee process. After this third reading, it is very likely that this bill will become a law without one of the major parts of our country and our democracy being able to participate in this.

Here, again, if I can just quickly point you to section 2, there’s also concern that the potential scale of the impacts has not been able to be considered under the regulatory impact statement, because of the time scale given.

This is a rushed bill. It takes New Zealand backwards. There hasn’t been consultation, and it is not going to achieve what we know that we need to achieve in New Zealand, which is to take our climate commitment seriously, to take our international agreements that we’ve signed up to seriously, and to actually look to be leading in reducing emissions. We don’t need to be playing culture wars and saying that one side is for farmers and one side isn’t. We all are for farmers, and we’re all for bringing down emissions—or we should be. That’s certainly what we stand for on this side of the House: bipartisan work together towards reducing emissions for the future of New Zealand and the future of our planet. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I rise to just take a short call on this bill and to remind everybody why we are having this conversation. It is about our farmers; it is about clarity and making sure that they can understand where we’re heading, and I commend the bill the House.

That was an interesting start to that very short speech, where she was reminding us why we’re here. I’d like to do the same, but I might have a slightly different view. I might go for a little bit longer, as well. Why are we here? Let’s look at that. We know that in a Parliament that you were part of, Madam Speaker—I was not—there was a lot of work to agree on what it is that we can do to reduce our climate pollution. That was because everybody agreed climate change is a real thing; we’re not having arguments about that.

We just heard from Labour’s emergency spokesperson, Camilla Belich. We know very much the problems of climate change. Everybody in the Parliament, apart from the ACT Party, wanted to do something about it, and they worked really hard to do that. I’ve listened to a number of valedictories in this House, which I note most of the people on the other side of the House won’t have listened to, and they came from members from around Parliament who were so proud of the work that they did together because they want a better world, a safer world, for their children and grandchildren. That is why we have what we call the zero carbon Act.

After the signing of the Paris Agreement—which was earlier than the Act—we know, in New Zealand, that New Zealand has taken an unusual approach, which one other country does as well, to have a split gas approach. This is because New Zealand is unusual in terms of our emissions profile. Whilst we haven’t had the heavy industry that other countries have had, we have had a lot of agriculture. It’s not that that has been the issue to get us to our position where we’re at; it’s because we deforested. We cut down all our trees, and then we replaced them with pasture. We’ve heard a lot about this pasture tonight and how it gets turned into protein, and that is very true, but there was an agreement that we’d have this split gas approach. That is carbon in all other gases except for biogenic methane—not all methane, just biogenic methane.

That is because on the graph of where New Zealand’s emissions come from, a huge proportion comes from biogenic methane, and that is an unusual mix compared with other countries, so we have the zero carbon target for the other gases but not for biogenic methane, because biogenic methane—made from ruminants ruminating—is a difficult thing to decrease, because that is how ruminants work. There’s lots of science going into how you can do bits and pieces that decrease a percent here and there, and it is great that that work is happening. If you change the pasture and the feed and if you change the ecoponds, there’s lots of different things that can happen, but, fundamentally, biogenic methane is always going to be a difficult thing if you want to get your protein through ruminants.

We had this agreement, and the target was set for the reduction of biogenic methane from the 2017 levels. We know that 24 percent is in that number. That’s at the lower end of it. Now, what this Government wants to do, in all stages under urgency and without any bipartisan support, is they want to make it so that the 24 percent goes from being at the bottom of the scale to the top of the scale for that reduction. They are telling us that that is because of the science, but that is not why we are here tonight. We are here tonight for the other reason that members across the House have said multiple times: we’re here because farmers asked them to change it. They’ve made a political calculation that those farmers are important, more important than the general voters who did not know that this was coming and have not had an opportunity to be consulted on it and who did not know that they will change it. That is the reason we are here. We are here for very basic politics. It has nothing to do with science.

Todd Stephenson: We campaigned on it.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Now, we—oh, someone is saying, “campaigned for it.” ACT may well have campaigned for this; National did not. Now, if you were taking a science-based approach, and you said, “Well, it’s not feasible”—or whatever word they’re using; something that means not feasible—“for farmers to reduce the biogenic methane. It’s not practical. We’re going to change it.”—if you still say, “We want to meet those zero-carbon commitments.”, you can still do it, but you have to look at the whole budget. That means that if you’re not going to put so much effort into reducing biogenic methane, you have to put a whole lot more effort into reducing carbon and nitrous oxide and fluorides and other gases. This has come up in a number of speeches, but I want to make the point again that this Government is doing no such thing.

Simon Court: Plants need carbon to grow.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: There are no reductions in carbon—oh, now I hear, there, Simon Court saying, “Plants need carbon to grow.” I take from that that ACT’s position is against any reductions in carbon. That is a consistent position with everything that this National-led Government and this National climate change Minister has done, which is that they have removed all the policies to reduce carbon emissions—all the policies. We heard from the Hon Dr Deborah Russell. It sounded like it could be A Christmas Carol. She went through the dates of all the announcements that this Government has made to change the policies that are there to reduce carbon, and what this means is that we will just have more climate pollution.

That is what this Government wants to do for our grandchildren, for our children, for ourselves, and for those people in New Zealand who live in areas that are already affected by climate change. I very much hope that voters are watching this and listening to it. Rather than engaging in debate, there’s just all these little slogans about farmers and how anybody who disagrees with them is just anti-farmers and it’s a war on farmers. Well, what we have is a war on sensible conversations and grown-up policy making. That is what is happening. That is where the war is.

The Minister was asked, time and time again, what is this going to do for our economy, what is this going to do for our trade agreements? We know that there’s been advice on those trade agreements, but have we seen that advice? No, no, we have not seen that advice. We are left to presume that this change is a change that is going to mean that we are not going to meet our climate emission pollution targets, that we are going to be in breach of our international commitments. How embarrassing is that for a little country totally reliant on international agreements and the international rules being followed? We’re just going, “Oh, well, we’re just a little player, and those big boys, some of them might not be playing by the rules either, so we’re not going to.” Well, that line of argument does not work for New Zealand, because we are here at the bottom of the world and we are not a major world power.

Ryan Hamilton: That’s right. That’s why we’re making a more sensible bill.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I’m pleased that there is some agreement on the other side, that at least we can agree that New Zealand is not a major world power. That means that we are reliant on working with other countries in good faith and that when we just go about breaching those agreements—

Miles Anderson: No, we haven’t.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —then they will notice. Oh, and someone says, “No, we haven’t.” The result of these changes, combined with everything else that this Government has done to allow more climate pollution, means that we will not meet those agreements. That is what this Government is doing. They want more climate pollution. It’s going to cost everybody in this country and the world, and shame on them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I feel inspired to quote Willie Jackson tonight and say, “What a terrible speech that was! That was depressing.” This is about a pragmatic bill that’s positive. The economy is growing. The future is bright. We’re fixing the basics and building the future.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I hear a lot about farmers, and some of the most successful farms in this country are run by Māori. Māori also have a very unique view on the taiao and the environment that we live in, the environment that we do business in. They want to make sure that, yes, we can still be successful farmers while looking after our environment, while looking after the things that are precious to our businesses, our economy, but, more importantly, to our future generations.

In setting targets, we make sure that we can work hard to achieve those targets. I know the National Party, in particular, go all-out in speaking about how they set targets, that they’re “target focused”, “target oriented”, and yet here we are, clearly laughing in the face of an agreement that was set in stone by this House, something that we all agreed would be good for our future. That was the bipartisan nature of the work that was done. What I want to say to Government members is that when they talk about being climate responsible and making sure that we can look after the future—I agree with my colleague: when you go and talk to our young people, they care about the climate. They care about the climate. They respect that we have an economy that’s predominantly driven by primary products; they accept that, too, but they care about our environment.

When I talk about Māori farmers—in fact, we spoke to a couple today who are pretty unaware about what’s going on here, but they share concerns about why it’s important that this House and, in particular, the Government members need to have a look at how Māori do farming. Have a look at their long-term strategic plans of 50, 80, and 100 years, and you will see at the heart of it is actually the environment, because looking after the environment means you have good farming—means you have good farming. What this Government has done is remove a long-term view from this country and, indeed, like they have done on so many other policy issues, we are now the laughing stock of the world—we are. They look at New Zealand and they say, “Look at what they’re doing. They’re winding back all of these good things that the world took on as a challenge. They’re winding back indigenous rights.”—just recently, we heard it from the United Nations. Winding back all of these things—and now this Government’s continuing to do it when we look towards the climate and the environment.

It is a sad day that this is happening. It is sad when strong, robust policy discussions are simply taken off the table. I agree with my colleagues: some of the sloganeering that we heard throughout this entire debate were the ones that we saw during some of the campaign. In fact, we’ve seen it for some time from parties on that side of the House, and, ultimately, there’s no substance. Ultimately, when they come in here—they’ll say one thing out there, then come in here and do something different.

That’s the problem with this bill. That’s why we can’t support this bill. My colleagues did a fantastic job of prosecuting through the committee of the whole House this bill with the Minister, who continued to just brush it off. In fact, I take umbrage to a number of his comments during that session, where he said, “Well, I think it’s out of scope.” Well, that’s not his job; it’s the Chair’s job to determine that, and the Minister continued to not answer simple questions.

We’ve got some big challenges, now, ahead of us. We want to say to all of our public, our whānau, everyone around the country: this side of the House takes the environment seriously. This side of the House takes our international obligations seriously. This side of the House will make sure that we can continue to protect our environment for our people, for our tamariki, and for our future. We can still have a strong economy—we can still have a strong economy.

It is a sad day, and, once again, here we are, in urgency, on what is a very important bill just being rammed through. The reason we spoke with those Māori farmers today was just to highlight to them what’s going on. They said this Government hasn’t spoken to them. They’re saying, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like the right thing to do. We can still have good strong farmers, a good strong economy, but we can also look after our environment.”

We don’t support this bill, and we will continue to stand up for the rights of our future generations to make sure that they have the world they deserve.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.