Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme—Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Forestry: I move, That the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme—Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill is about preserving choice: the choice to farm, the choice to grow, and the choice to sustain rural communities for generations to come. It’s about restoring balance to our land-use system so that we can continue to support our climate goals, without losing some of our most productive land to food production for decades, if not permanently.

This Government’s position is that we can strike a balance to enable both forestry and agriculture to grow sustainably and contribute to doubling our exports and continue building our economy. The bill puts in place sensible limits to place that support, meeting our climate commitments, provide the clarity needed to support ongoing forestry investment, and, importantly, protect our best land for food production.

We appreciate, though, that farms are often a mosaic and that there are areas on some farms that are better suited to forestry than other activities. We also recognise that, and we need to provide flexibility within the bill for farmers to use the emissions trading scheme (ETS) to support forestry on less productive land, and in places where it makes sense to do so.

The bill has four key components. Firstly, restrictions on ETS registrations for exotic forestry on land-use classification classes 1 to 6, our most productive farmland; a 25 percent allowance to provide farmers flexibility to plant and register up to a quarter of their land in exotic forestry if they choose to do so; two annual ballots allocating up to an additional 15,000 hectares of exotic forestry on land use classification class 6 land; and transitional provisions for those who invest in forestry in good faith before December 2024. These changes give our farmers and foresters options, but within a framework that protects our land, our communities, and our climate.

I want to acknowledge the contributions from members across the House during the debate on this bill and the committee of the whole House stage, this evening. The discussions have reflected the importance of getting the balance right between, on one hand, supporting forestry investment and, on the other, our climate commitments and safeguarding our most productive farmland so that our farmers can continue feeding 40 million people a year.

The Amendment Paper introduced at the committee of the whole House stage responds directly to concerns raised by the forestry sector. It simplifies the ballot allocation system and, importantly, provides greater clarity and flexibility for foresters to plan both afforestation with confidence. These updates strengthen the bills design, to deliver certainty for both foresters and farmers, not just today but into the long term.

This bill is much more than being just about land use; it’s about people. Whole-farm conversions affect more than just landowners; they affect schools, local businesses, local communities, and the services that lie within those communities—rural heartland, rural communities. They have a significant implication and this Government has heard that feedback loud and clear and we are taking action in order to get that balance right.

This bill is about balance; it is also about choice. We are delivering certainty, as a result of this bill. We are backing our farmers, we are supporting our foresters, and we are protecting the future of rural New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

In the first reading of this bill, I said that the Labour Party, on balance, supported this bill, but it was very much an “on balance”. It was really driven by, I guess, our concern for rural communities, which is a concern shared across the House by the sense that we do need to do something about forestry and that perhaps this could offer some solutions. But there were some real negatives as well.

Let me talk about, first of all, our concern for rural communities, and let me start with a story from many years ago when my parents travelled to Scotland. They were right up the top, Land’s End, and preparing to go over to Orkney the next day, staying in a bed and breakfast, and talking to the woman who ran it. She was deeply involved with the local school, and they’d just gotten news of a family moving into the area, and she said, “Oh good, three more children for the school.”

It’s a common story in rural communities—I’ve heard it in New Zealand too—where members of the community anxiously count the families in a district. Will there be enough children to keep a school, because a school is often a hub of a community. What we’ve heard—anecdotally, and perhaps with some evidence as well; rather more than anecdotal—is that families are moving out of rural areas because of the growth of forestry, and in particular because of the conversion of whole farms into forestry. That has meant a depopulation. With depopulation the school goes, the services go, the rural community itself is under threat, so there’s good reason to support this bill. As someone who was born in a small rural community myself and visited that small rural community frequently as I was growing up, I’ve seen what it means when the local school closes, so we did want to do something about this.

On the other hand, in many ways this is a band-aid. It’s not a real solution, as it were; it’s a temporary fix and a pretty, sort of, immediate and swift fix. The real fix that is needed is a thoroughgoing review of the role of carbon forestry in the emissions trading scheme (ETS). The emissions trading scheme has worked in such a way that people are incentivised to put land into carbon farming. At the time when the emissions trading scheme was first set up, it seemed like a sensible thing to have forestry in the ETS, and, of course, it would be wrong to take existing carbon forestry out of the ETS, but we do need to have a think about what happens with carbon forestry in the emissions trading scheme in the future.

The Labour Party put a differing view into the select committee report here, because we were concerned by the analysis that came from the Climate Change Commission that showed that if the use of forestry carbon credits in the ETS remains unchecked, then by the late 2030s, the sectors covered by it will reach net zero and then negative emissions. That leads to a very low carbon price, which leads to a new wave of deforestation. That kind of leads to large booms and busts in carbon forestry, and, ultimately, it’s going to put our 2050 Paris goal at risk.

We do need to review the role of carbon forestry because of that, but we also need to get people to understand that we cannot plant our way out of the climate crisis. We actually need to reduce gross emissions, not just grow more trees to result in a reduction in net emissions. We actually need to bite the bullet on this one.

This particular restriction on carbon forestry is not really about the ETS; it’s actually much more about the effect on rural communities. I do want to see that thoroughgoing review of the role of carbon forestry in the ETS. The current Government stopped the review that was under way. There has to be a way to do that review without freaking out the market but actually signalling that we need to review the settings of the ETS.

That is why the Labour Party has a differing view on this, and it’s why we end up in this very considered position. Perhaps it’s not the right one; it’s going to be hard to know. We’re going to have to wait and see how this all works out. I think all of us are a little bit in that position, thinking “Is this really going to create the fix we wanted?” We don’t quite know yet; we hope that it will. We’ll give it a go. On this side of the House, and in particular in the Labour policy, I think it’s pretty clear that we’ll give it a go, but, actually, much more work needs to be done, and really thoroughgoing work needs to be done on our emissions trading scheme. I hope this Government will consider doing that, but, if not, I hope that a future Labour-led Government will kick off that thoroughgoing review of the ETS that we so very much need.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Climate change is the existential challenge of our time. On the front line of the worst impacts of climate change are our farmers, our food producers, and our fibre producers. We have a distorted system, through the emissions trading scheme (ETS), whereby only those emitters of fossil fuels are required to offset their emissions, and their primary means of offsetting their emissions is through pine forestry in this country. The biggest-emitting sector in this country does not have to offset its emissions—the farming sector, and, more specifically, the dairy sector.

The consequence of the distortion that is created by the current emissions trading scheme is that that land that is pastoral land—predominantly sheep and beef farm land—is being sacrificed for the emissions of the fossil fuel sector. In terms of that mosaic landscape that the Minister referred to: the ideal setting in our regulatory systems and our legislative systems sees appropriate land use across the country so that we minimise the harm we do to the environment, we minimise the pollution of fresh water—noting the recent declaration of a nitrate emergency in Canterbury—we minimise the climate emissions that come from land use, and we protect our most valuable biodiversity. That is a vision that we all should be able to agree with.

What this legislation is attempting to do is to fix the distortion that is taking out that pastoral—predominantly Land Use Capability (LUC) class 6—land from the high country. But does it fix the problem? It is our view that it doesn’t fix the problem, because what really creates that distortion is an incomplete emissions trading scheme that only deals with fossil fuels and doesn’t deal with the other emissions that we’re dealing with and puts the burden of the offsetting mechanism—which is a false mechanism for dealing with gross emissions—on to farmland.

The obvious solution is to take forestry out of the emissions trading scheme. I made the analogy that offsetting to pine trees is sort of like an alcoholic paying someone else to drink water and thinking that they’ve solved their drinking problem when they haven’t. This legislation doesn’t fix the actual problem; it tinkers, and, in so doing, it creates greater complexity—the actual thing that farmers tell us constantly they don’t want. They don’t want greater regulatory complexity and compliance costs with that complexity. This legislation, unfortunately, does this.

The most challenging part of this is the ballot system—the 15,000 hectares—which has been widely criticised by the pastoral sector. Beef + Lamb are at pains to point out that the engine room of their production, that LUC class 6 land, will be impacted by 15,000 hectares of land converted to forestry just through the ballot system alone. As my colleague Lan Pham said, it’s a “poly-crastination.” It’s not actually dealing with the real problem; it’s creating a kind of superficial fix that doesn’t really deal with it, and actually adds a whole lot of complexity.

There’s a broader challenge that we face, which is that we have got a country that, over the course of the last 30 years, has become heavily dairied at the cost of other forms of agricultural production. The challenge with that intensification of dairy is that it has taken out arable production in Canterbury, it’s taken out sheep and beef farming in parts of the country, and it’s taken out forestry as well. The challenge with that is it’s overwhelmingly our most polluting sector. It wins the prize for the biggest causer of water pollution, the biggest causer of climate pollution, and the biggest causer of land compaction and marine coastal environment pollution.

We don’t want a situation, which has been highlighted by modelling done by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, where, on the current settings, we end up with a country that is dominated by pine trees and dairy cows. That takes us away from this vision of a mosaic landscape, which is the one that we should all be aspiring to. How does this legislation impact that? I would argue that the problem wasn’t primarily with that really high-value LUC land—that is not the main place where the large-scale farm conversions are happening; it’s mainly happening in the higher land-use categories. This legislation doesn’t really deal with that problem at all.

Further, there is concern from the forestry sector, who, rightly, point out that the idea that there’s this dramatic loss of land to forestry—when you look at the actual hectarage going into forestry, it’s still a tiny fraction of our total land use. Of New Zealand’s land area, 40 percent is pasture; less than 5 percent is forestry. They legitimately pointed out to us at the Environment Committee that the sort of moral panic around us planting too many trees doesn’t really stack up in terms of the numbers. That’s a point that needs to be taken into account as well.

One thing that I will give credit to this legislation for doing is recognising that, in terms of Māori land and Māori forestry, there should be no restriction on what is able to be put into the emissions trading scheme—so long as there is forestry in the emissions trading scheme. Why is that? Because much of the land that Māori have had returned—a tiny fraction of what was lost—is marginal land, or the land that they were able to retain through the process of the raupatu, the confiscations and other means of colonisation and acquisition of land by settlers or the State, is marginal land. About all you can do with it is plant trees on it. It would be a particularly cruel blow if Māori had a further imposition placed on them in terms of legislation that restricted their use of forestry in the emissions trading scheme. I do commend that the Government has recognised that and created that exemption for Māori land.

What we would like to see, on this existential challenge of climate change that we are grappling with as a planet, is that we are able to work across party lines to come up with lasting legislative systems that actually deal with it. We embarked on this legislation in good faith as Te Pāti Kākāriki. We voted for it to go to select committee, and we engaged thoroughly at select committee; we put up a number of amendments to try and improve it. But, when push comes to shove—and it was very much a line call, I would say—we have determined that we will be voting against it because we do not think, on balance, that it makes things better.

I should hope that—to echo the sentiments of my colleague Deborah Russell—we are able to continue working in an intergenerational sense on how we deal with our land use in this country, how we create an ecosystem of food and fibre production that protects the common interest and the common good, that keeps our rivers clean and swimmable, reduces the emissions to the climate—

Grant McCallum: Well, work with people rather than accuse them of—

STEVE ABEL: We worked very much with you on this. If you’d been at that select committee, Mr McCallum, you would have seen that we spent a lot of time trying to make this legislation stronger. We’re very happy to work with you. In fact, I seriously think that’s the only way we’re going to get lasting legislation in this space. But when you have a Government that seems hell-bent on doing everything against what the climate needs—in fact, we’ve got 15,000 more dairy cows consented on the Canterbury Plains, and that is making the climate challenge worse. When you’ve got a Government that is going to mine and build roads and dig up oil and gas and coal, then you have to question seriously whether they are actually concerned about climate change or whether that is all merely rhetoric. We will work on serious propositions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. The current emissions trading scheme (ETS) incentives encourage planting pine trees over producing food, and that’s simply not right. Productive farmland is being bought out for carbon farming, and that’s undermining rural economies across New Zealand, particularly the sheep and beef sector. Farmers are competing with speculative land use on land bought for carbon forestry. You can’t eat pine trees, people. This Government knows that, and that is why we are fixing the emissions trading scheme so that pines en masse cannot be dumped into the system.

Hon Damien O’Connor: They can do what they like.

SIMON COURT: Now, the gentleman from Motueka, the orchardist Damien O’Connor—he’s got a view on this. But—

Joseph Mooney: No, he’s from Dunedin.

SIMON COURT: Oh, he’s from Blenheim.

Joseph Mooney: I said Dunedin.

SIMON COURT: Oh, Dunedin. Well, look, so many people have had an opinion on this, but here’s the opportunity: you can vote for changing what we need to change, you can vote to fix what matters, or you can sit there on the Opposition benches criticising, like, unfortunately, Mr Steve Abel has. He sat with me on the same Environment Committee and heard the same evidence, and he, no doubt, recognises that we’re shifting the system as far as we can right now in, essentially, a predictable way so that people who are intending to plant some trees at least have a good steer on what’s coming. This bill, Mr Abel, reins in some of the worst distortions of the ETS—and I know that you would agree with that—but it still relies on rigid caps and centralised controls, rather than fixing the underlying problem.

The emissions trading scheme rewards land-use change over producing food for people to eat, food that is affordable, and food that we need our supermarkets and other stores to be supplying to our communities, and that’s why rural communities need policies that support farming, not financial engineering. ACT supports this bill’s direction, but real reform means returning to a system that values food, fibre, and farming.

Make no mistake: the proliferation of pine trees that we are trying to address with this bill, and that the Government will address with this bill, is a consequence of the international climate ideological of previous Governments jet-setting off to places like Glasgow and declaring that New Zealand would reduce its emissions by half by 2030. That’s a goal that either we meet and go bankrupt and cover the country in pine trees, or we don’t meet and, apparently, we’re going to have to get our cheque books out or drain the ATMs to pay some global corporation or the UN for failing to meet our target. This Government doesn’t sign up to that, and that is why we are changing the way that forestry enters the ETS.

If the Paris Agreement is delivering the kind of outcome where good food-growing land is converted to pine trees, then the Paris Agreement has to change or New Zealand has to leave—that’s where we’re going. The emissions trading scheme must reflect practical land use, and not penalise farmers for producing the food that people need to eat. This bill can’t be the end of the conversation, though, especially while forestry offsets are worth are more than food. But ACT is a practical party. We are fixing things that matter, and that is why we will support this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this bill. It was interesting listening to some of the previous discussion during the committee of the whole House stage. Lan Pham asked whether we are actually solving a problem. I think, when I listen to what the Opposition are talking about, they are seeing the problem that they think we are trying to solve as being the climate problem, but that’s not really what this bill is about; this bill is about the afforestation and the impact on our rural communities.

Just in terms of the catastrophisation which we heard, particularly, I guess, from the Green Party: just remember, a few extra emissions from New Zealand, OK, it’s going in the wrong direction, maybe, but we are 0.17 percent—0.17 percent—of global emissions. Unless the big emitters are going to make a significant dent in their emissions, we could absolutely wipe our entire economy out and it’s not going to make a jot of difference to the world as a whole.

Steve Abel: You’re doing a good job of wiping the economy out!

ANDY FOSTER: Yeah, right! Well, I’m glad you guys aren’t in charge of it, because you’d kill it stone dead very, very quickly.

What this is about is about too much land conversion. Steve Abel has said that it’s overblown, but certainly when I travel around parts of the country, particularly places like Southland, they are seeing large amounts of land being bought up to be converted from sheep and beef farming into forestry. That is a real concern for that community. To be poo-pooed, I think that is quite wrong.

This bill is about protecting our farming communities because if forestry doesn’t produce as many jobs as sheep and beef farming and other forms of farming do—and what that does is it means, we heard from the Labour Party there, a few less kids in the schools, the schools start closing down, the dairies start closing down, the other businesses in the villages and towns start closing down, that hollows out our rural communities. That is what this bill is trying to prevent happening. It’s supporting our rural communities so that they are sustainable over the longer term.

What this bill does is it’s a balance—and you might argue about what the balance is. It allows for forestry, but it is limited on those class 1 to 6 lands. It allows it to continue in class 7 and 8 land.

Of course, I think many of us have also heard the concern—and, in fact, we heard that from Simon Court in his speech just before—about overseas buyers, particularly, coming in, buying some of this land, foresting it, and, essentially, they are not managing. They are managing it from afar and they’re not looking after it. What we’ve heard also is concerns about things like pests getting into those forested areas, not being looked after, and, of course, that causes further problems in those areas.

The irony is this conversion, in a way, has been triggered by low red meat and wool returns over a period of time—and the irony now is that those returns have improved, which is great news. But then, of course, we have questions after questions during today and earlier this week where the Labour Party, in particular, expresses concerns about the high cost of meat. Why do we get the high cost of meat? We get the high cost of meat because farmers are getting good returns on that meat and that is actually good news.

Just to finish off, the one thing in terms of the balance—it’s an interesting question to say that it allows for some forestry but not wholesale forestry on land which is class 1, 2, and 3. I ask you: why would anybody want to put forestry on that valuable land? It just does not make economic sense.

Steve Abel: Well, there’s hardly any going there.

ANDY FOSTER: Well, yeah, that’s exactly right, because it doesn’t make economic sense. “Why do we provide for that in the legislation?” is the point that I’m making.

Just for your information, class 1 is for 0.7 percent of all the land that we have; class 2, 4.5 percent—so that is the really precious land we should be really looking after—and class 3 is 9.2 percent. It is very, very important that we have wise use of that land and that it is used economically rationally to feed our people and be able to export produce from those areas and to create jobs in our rural communities. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill sort of sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s an attempt, and I think we did hear that the Government wanted to take some action. When we heard this at Fieldays, we were really interested in what the bill was going to look like.

We all recognise that we need to maintain productive farmland. Productive farmland is also at risk from wilding pines, which have expanded since the Government ended the Jobs for Nature programme and the funding to stop wilding pine spread, which is now spreading through the Wakatipu Basin, Mackenzie Country, etc. So there are some good reasons that we could have supported this bill. We certainly don’t want to see farmland turned into forestry and just see forests and dairy. That’s not our vision for the future. So we really do share the concerns of our rural community where this is happening, and the bill held some promise.

As my colleagues have mentioned, it is really problematic in that, for a start, it doesn’t know what it’s trying to achieve. We’ve heard that it is going to fix the emissions trading scheme (ETS), so it’s going to work on the climate impacts. Then we’ve heard “No, it’s not going to do that. It’s going to support food and fibre. It’s going to support sheep and beef.” Which is it? Is it going to do both or is it going to do nothing? Actually, what this bill looks like is that it’s what my colleague Lan Pham referred to. It’s what my colleague Steve Abel referred to. This is “poly-crastination”. It’s an attempt to do something, to make something happen while not solving the real problem, while avoiding the real problem. Unfortunately, it’s something that we’ve come to see from this Government—just poorly thought-out legislation.

We need an ETS to focus on reducing actual emissions, and this bill does not deal with the fundamental issues of the use of unlimited forestry offsets. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has done some great work and they’ve said that this policy will not meaningfully alter forestry activity; it will just move it around the landscape. We’ve got a bill here that simply addresses the symptoms. It’s not the cause and it is something that we urgently need to be talking about.

This evening, I attended the Wellbeing Economy Alliance work with some colleagues from across the House called Tomorrow Together. They’re talking about what would it take to move from scattered efforts to a shared long-term vision, one that connects and strengthens Aotearoa’s diverse approaches to intergenerational wellbeing. This bill does not meet that target. This bill is simply a little stopgap. It’s a reaction to what we’ve been hearing, but it’s the wrong approach.

That’s unfortunate because, as we’ve set out in our Green Budget—and I do encourage members opposite—to look here, to remove forestry from the ETS, replace it with a biodiversity credit for native afforestation in, I’ll have the members note, with a Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations. Now, which party did the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment come from? It came from a party that used to have some proud representation of our rural communities. Not anymore. That’s the problem—that’s the problem. Not anymore.

What we need is some real leadership instead of this little ad hoc, stuff-it-up approach. Unfortunately, what we know, and what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s told us, is that this is a complex bureaucratic solution. It will have high administrative costs. It will lead to perverse consequences. It’s based on very poor information and a land-use tool that is not fit for purpose.

The member’s time has expired.

This bill will stop the blanket planting of pine trees across our beautiful food-producing land. In Hawke’s Bay, it’s been absolutely heart-wrenching to see those beautiful Hawke’s Bay stations blanket planted in pine trees in the race for carbon credits. This bill stops that. It’s about food security, it’s about protecting our farmland, and it’s about protecting our rural communities. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā tēnā anō tātou katoa. Tō tātou waimarie ki te noho tahi i tēnei pō ki te whakawhiti whakaaro mō tēnei kaupapa nui, arā, te tiaki i ngā kaipāmu, te tiaki i ngā tāngata e mahi ana i ngā ngahere, me te tiaki i te oranga o te tangata.

Kua rongo mātou i ētahi o ngā whāinga o tēnei pire. Ahakoa kei te tau ētahi, mā tēnei pire ka ora rawa atu te tangata. Ka whai kai mātou, ka heke iho te utu mō te kai, engari, ahakoa koirā te whāinga, kāore mātou e taea te kī ka pērā hoki i raro i tēnei pire. Nā reira, kua rongo koutou i ngā kōrero a tō mātou māngai i ngā mahi taiao, i a Deborah Russell, ahakoa kei te tautoko a Reipa i tēnei pire, ā, he maha ngā whakatūpatotanga nā tēnei taha o te Whare.

Heoi anō rā, kua rongo mātou i ngā āwangawanga mō ngā tāone iti, arā rural communities. Kei te mōhio pai au ki aua āhuatanga. I tipu mai au i roto i tētahi tāone pakupaku, ā, kei reira tonu awau e noho ana, ā, ko Rangitukia te ingoa. Hoi anō, i a au e tipu ana kī ana ngā whare tapahi wūru i ngā pēre. Kāore e pērā i ēnei rā. I rongo au, i marumaru te whenua i ngā kau. Kāre rawa atu e pērā i ēnei rā. I whakakorengia te mahi kerēpe, ara ngā vineyards, kāre rawa atu e pērā i ēnei rā. I katia te poutāpeta, ā, nā reira kei te mōhio pai au ki ngā raruraru ka puta mēnā kāore te tangata e whai mahi— ka hūnuku ki tāone kē. Mēnā kāre he tangata kāre he oranga mō te tāone. Kāre he tamariki hei whakakī i ngā kura, kāre he tāngata ki te hokohoko i ngā toa, ka pōuri rawa atu te tāone. Nā reira, kei te mārama au ki taua āhuatanga.

Heoi anō rā, ko tētahi atu whāinga, ehara ēnei i te tīmatanga me te whakamutunga o tēnei āhuatanga, he whāinga anake i tēnei wā. Ko tētahi atu whāinga, whakaritenga, me kī, kāre e taea te whakatō rākau paina i runga i ngā whenua karaehe 1 to 6. Ā, ko tētahi atu ture i raro i tēnei kaupapa, tēnei pire, ka taea e ngā kaipāmu ki te whakatō rākau i runga 25 paihēneti o tō rātou ake whenua. Ki tua atu, kua kauparehia ētahi whenua Māori i raro i tēnei, nā reira he āhua pai tērā, tēnei te mihi atu ki te Minita, otirā te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Taiao, nā te mea ko te āhua nei kua whakarongo rātou ki ngā hiahia a te hunga Māori.

Engari ko tētahi pātai ko tēnei: ki te kōrero mātou mō ēnei mea te Māori me te iwi, kei te kōrero rātou mō wai? Kei te kōrero rātou mō ngā hapū? Kei te kōrero rātou mō ngā whānau? Kei te kōrero rātou mō te tangata tonu nāna tana whenua e mau, e whakahaere? Ko wai rānei? Kei te kōrero rātou mō ngā ahuwhenua? Kei te mōhio pai mātou i ēnei wā te pai o te haere o ngā ahuwhenua, ā, nā rātou kei te ora rawa atu te ōhanga Māori. Mēnā kei te ora rawa atu te ōhanga Māori, kei te ora rawa atu te ōhanga o Aotearoa.

Heoi anō rā, kua rongo mātou i ētahi kōrero e pā ana ki te, me kī, kia āhua ōrite balance. Kei te mōhio pai mātou i tēnei wā ki tērā kōrero e kīia nei kō te rākau tika i roto i te whenua tika—right tree, right place. Heoi anō rā, ki te kōrero mātou mō te whenua Māori, ko tētahi āhuatanga e pā ana ki a rātou, ko ētahi o ngā whenua, ko te paina anake te hua tika mō taua rā whenua. Kei te mārama au ki ngā kōrero o tēnei pire, otirā ngā kōrero, e te Minita, kua wātea ngā whenua Māori, engari, ki tua atu o tērā kei hea rā he whakaaro hei tautoko i a rātou kia rahi ake ō rātou ake pūtea, kia rahi ake ngā hua ka puta i ō rātou whenua. Nā te mea ko ētahi o ngā pāmu e kōrero nei au i roto i Te Tairāwhiti, i muri i ngā āwhiowhio, hau āwhio rā, kua whakakorengia ngā rori, kāre e taea te tae atu ki ō rātou ngahere kia tapatapahi, kia tukuna ki wāhi kē. Arā kei te tino māharahara rātou, ā, kāre au e kitea he oranga mā rātou i roto i tēnei pire.

Ko tētahi atu kaupapa kōrero ko tēnei mea, mēnā kei te whai mātou kia āhua ōrite, kei hea rā ngā kōrero e pā ana ki te “kia whai āhua ōrite te kaitiakitanga o te whenua ki tā te whai pūtea o te whenua”? Kei te mōhio au, āe, kei te wātea ētahi wāhanga whenua Māori, engari kāre au e tino kite kei hea rā te tautoko kia puāwai tonutia tēnei āhuatanga mō ngā kamupene Māori. Kei te kī hoki ētahi kia kōwhiria, kei a koe, māhau e kōwhiria me pēhea tō mahi i tō whenua. Engari kei te māmā rawa atu te kite atu kāre e pērā ai. Kei te kī mai tēnei pire me pēhea rā, tēhea wāhanga o tō whenua ka taea e koe te huri ki rō paina.

Hei whakakapi i tēnei wāhanga mōku, tuatahi, i roto i tēnei, te Wiki o te Reo Māori, kua ako au i tētahi kōrero hou i tēnei rā, arā, he “kaupapa hokohoko tukunga”—emissions trading scheme (ETS). Nā reira me ako tātou i ngā wā katoa. Ko te tino kōrero o tēnei taha o te Whare mō tēnei āhuatanga e pā ana ki tēnei mea te ETS, ahakoa e tautoko mātou i tēnei pire, kei te mōhio pai, ki a au nei, tātou katoa o tēnei Whare, he maha tonu ngā mahi e toe ana i runga i tēnei kaupapa. Kia tino āta tirohia mātou i tēnei kaupapa. Tuatahi kia mārama te katoa he aha ngā ture o tēnei kaupapa, and me pēhea e whai hua ngā tāngata, ngā kaipāmu, me te mea hoki tō mātou māmā, a Papatūānuku, i tēnei kaupapa. Kia kore tātou e wareware, ehara tēnei i te kaupapa anake kia whai hua ngā pāmu, ko tētahi tino kaupapa kia tiakina a Papatūānuku, kia tiakina te taiao.

Nā reira, koirā āku mō tēnei wā. Ahakoa kei te tautoko a Reipa i tēnei pire, kia tūpato tonu tātou. Kia ora.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker, greetings to all. We are fortunate to be here together tonight to discuss this great matter: protecting farmers, protecting forestry workers, and protecting the wellbeing of people.

We’ve heard some of the objectives of this bill. Some have decided that with this bill, people will thrive. We will have food—the cost of food will decrease. However, although that is the objective, we can't say that is how it will be under this bill. You’ve heard from our representative on environmental issues, Deborah Russell, that although Labour supports this bill, there are a number of cautions from this side of the House.

We’ve heard the concerns about small towns; that is, rural communities. I am well versed in those aspects. I grew up in a small town, where I still live, called Rangitukia. As I was growing up, shearing sheds were full of bales. Not so today. I’ve heard that the land was covered with cows. It’s nothing like that today. Vineyards were closed; that work doesn’t happen today. The post office was closed. Therefore, I know quite well about the issues that arise if people can’t find work—they move out of town. If there are no people, then the town will not thrive. There will be no children to fill the school, no people to buy things in the shops, and the town will be very sad. I know all about those issues.

Another objective—and these aren't the be all and end all in regards to these issues; they are just objectives at this time. Another objective, or regulation, you may say, is that pine trees cannot be planted on class 1 to 6 land. Another rule under this scheme, this bill, is that farmers can plant trees on 25 percent of their own land. Beyond that, some Māori land has been exempted under this, so that is a good thing; I thank you, Minister, and the Environment Committee, as it seems that you have listened to the needs of Māori.

However, one question is this: if we are talking about Māori and tribes, who are they talking about? Are they talking about subtribes? Are they talking about families? Are they talking about the people who own and operate the land? Or who are they talking about? Are they talking about agricultural workers? We know how well the agriculture is going, that is the reason the Māori economy is thriving. If the Māori economy is doing well, so is the economy of New Zealand.

However, we have heard some discussion about balance. We know well now about that phrase, the right tree in the right place. However, if we talk about Māori land, one aspect that relates is that for some of the land, pine trees are the only trees appropriate for that land. I understand what this bill says, Minister, that Māori land will be exempt, but beyond that, where has any thought been given to supporting them to improve profits for their lands? Some of the farms that I’m referring to on the East Coast, after the storms, the roads have been closed, and they aren’t able to access their forests to cut trees for distribution. As such, they are very worried, and I can’t see a solution for them in this bill.

Another topic of discussion is whether we’re working towards achieving balance. Where does it talk about “achieving balance between environmental protection of the land and generating revenue from the land”? I understand that, yes, parts of some Māori land are exempt, but I can’t see any support for this aspect so that Māori companies will continue to thrive. Some are saying that you can choose—it’s up to you, you can choose how your land will be used. However, it is clear to see that that is not the case. This bill says how that will happen, which part of your land can be put into pine.

To conclude this part: firstly, as this week is Māori Language Week, I’ve learnt a new phrase today, “kaupapa hokohoko tukunga”—emissions trading scheme (ETS). We should be learning all the time. The predominant position of this side of the House on this issue in relation to the ETS, is that although we support this bill, everyone in this House understands, in my opinion, that there is much work still to do on this scheme. We really need to have a close look at it. Firstly, so that everyone understands its rules and how people, farmers, and indeed our Earth Mother will benefit from this scheme. We should not forget: this scheme is not just for the benefit of farms but a major aspect is protecting our Earth and protecting the environment.

Therefore, those are my views at this time. Although Labour supports this bill, we must still be cautious. Thank you.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As one of the few farmers in the Parliament, I’m heartened to hear the actual [Interruption]. I said one of the few. They are all on this side, in the Parliament. I’m heartened to hear the support for the rural Nats—oh, did I say that?—support for rural communities in New Zealand; I really am.

Glen Bennett: Oh, the rural Nats.

GRANT McCALLUM: Oh, the support for rural communities from all around the House. You know, I just wish that support had been there before the election, because there’s only one party that campaigned on fixing this problem, and that was the National Party. No other parties campaigned on trying to deal with the excesses of carbon farming in this country. We did; we’re delivering on it. I commend this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I just acknowledge the accurate and true words of the previous speaker, Grant McCallum. He is right. It was only the National Party. The ACT Party wanted the property rights so that people could do anything, anytime. The New Zealand First Party—in fact, Shane Jones—had negotiated to keep the door open for afforestation. A billion trees.

There’s a hell of a lot of bull manure on the floor here tonight when it’s supposed to be a forestry bill. I’ve never heard so many inaccuracies in all my life. In 2003, after the 1990s surge in afforestation, there were 1.8 million hectares of exotic forest. At the end of last year, there was 1.7 million hectares of exotic forests—less now than was in the ground in 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Hon James Meager: What’s happened in between?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Well, that’s the facts, you see. Let’s just stick to that. In 1980, there were 70 million sheep in the country. At the end of last year, there were about 23 million. There are a hell of a lot less sheep in the country. In all that time—and I’ve been in farming and around it for all that time—we’ve had massive land-use change. Governments haven’t wanted to intervene too much, because, for the most part, it’s delivered a whole lot of innovation. We had dairy cattle in 1990 at about 2 million. At the end of last year, there were almost 6 million. I didn’t hear the cries of “outrageous shifting from sheep to dairy”. No, I didn’t, because that was a normal part of land-use change. In beef, we went from about 3.2 million in 1980 to about 3.7 million, so it stayed pretty stable.

I’ve been around the country too, and I’ve seen a lot of farms planted in trees. I get a bit concerned because a lot of them are on easy, rolling farmland. In fact, I flew as Minister over the Wairarapa. The fact that it was a terrible drought and the fact that the farmers couldn’t make any money on that land from sheep or grazing and it had been purchased by someone for I don’t know what sort of amount of money and planted in trees is something I was personally very uneasy with. The Government of the day wasn’t prepared to say to the farmers selling—these are farmers selling, not Government—the land, “No, you take $5 million for your property because that’s all it’s worth as a dry-stock property. Don’t take the $10 million being offered by the forestry company.”

In fact, it was New Zealanders buying farms to go in for carbon credits. The door had been left open—at Minister Jones’ insistence—for production forests if foreigners wanted to come in. These are the realities. Can I just clarify a few facts in this highly emotive debate. The fact is that this coalition Government has no plans to reduce emissions other than to plant more trees. They’re kind of hoisted by their own petard a little bit. On one hand, they’re saying, “We don’t want to.”; then, on the other hand, they’re saying, “We have to.”

I have concerns for rural communities.

Grant McCallum: Really?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Well, yes, I do. At the moment, 22 percent of the workers in Canterbury are migrant workers. Most of those will be single, and some will have families. There’s been a massive shift in the people working in rural New Zealand because farmers are employing migrant workers over New Zealanders. Most of them come without families. That’s why the schools are seeing less people.

The 20,000 to 25,000 workers across New Zealand has meant that we’ve had a change in schools and rural communities. Now, if we stick to the facts, then we can get on and help rural communities and address the issues. If the ACT Party is now saying they’re going to intervene and tell people who they can sell their farms to and who they can’t, then be honest about that. We don’t want to do that. Labour in Opposition want to see innovation across New Zealand. There will be changing land use. We don’t want to see good farms planted in forests, but those are the decisions of farmers, not of Government.

It’s obvious that the Opposition haven’t visited a rural school in the past two decades, because when you visit rural schools, usually they are full of diverse, rich cultural backgrounds from our wonderful migrant communities who make an enormously great and valuable contribution to our dairy sector, to our sheep and beef sector, to our farming sector, and we should acknowledge the contribution that they make to help get food on the table for New Zealanders.

This is a really good bill, and it was really disheartening to hear about the lack of plans from the other side, of course. For the two years that we’ve seen them so far, they’ve planned to do absolutely zip, zilch, nothing apart from wait for Scott Willis to lend them a copy of his budget.

Madam Speaker, it’s lovely to have you, a farmer, in the Chair as we wind up the rest of tonight. We’ve been here for a while—not as long as I expected. Some people ran out of energy—not us. We could be here all night, but we’ll be finishing up very soon. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As many others have traversed in the House or laid out in the House today, this is a bill that the Government has introduced that aims to reduce the amount of farmland that can be converted to forestry. We know that New Zealand is one of only two countries in the world that allows unlimited forestry offsets in its emissions trading scheme (ETS). As has been pointed out, it was something that the Hon Shane Jones in New Zealand First had pushed for as well and made worse.

This Government is bringing in this bill to try and address that, but as we have outlined, submitters from various industries, various sectors actually agree and feel that this bill doesn’t go far enough for different reasons. We’ve heard from Federated Farmers, we’ve heard from Beef + Lamb New Zealand, they don’t feel that this goes far enough because they’ve made the point, they’ve made the case quite clearly that, actually, 89 percent of farm conversions to date have occurred on Land Use Capability class 6 to 8 land. We know that the limitations in this piece of legislation don’t really apply to class 7 and 8 land—that can be converted willy-nilly or open slather, and the 25 percent and the 15,000 apply only to the other classes of land.

So they feel that this doesn’t go far enough because the moratorium should be extended to all land classes. We say that it doesn’t go far enough because this is the Government, as usual, just tinkering around the edges. This is a band-aid solution.

Joseph Mooney: Your Government did nothing—literally nothing.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: The member who resumed his seat claims that we did nothing in this space. We actually initiated a more comprehensive review into the ETS. The Climate Commission has also agreed that that is actually what the direction of travel should be, but, of course, this is not a Government that actually wants to do anything of substance. [Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right, cut the shouting.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: All they want to do is tinker around the edges. It presents to this House a band-aid solution, but we say on this side that perhaps that’s better than them doing nothing and so we will cautiously support this bill, largely because what it does is benefit rural communities, as my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor pointed out as well. We know that that wholesale shift to forestry has led to a loss of employment, a loss of jobs, and that has then had flow-on impacts on rural communities when it comes to the closure of schools and the closure of services. We don’t agree with that, and, for that reason, we are cautiously supporting this bill.

I do want to make two more points before I resume my seat and end my contribution. One of them is the process of the Amendment Paper that was tabled today, a very short while before this House went into committee stage to consider this bill clause by clause. I do take the Minister’s point—the Minister in the chair made the point that the remainder of this bill went through a select committee process, and that is true, but the Amendment Paper that was tabled today was tabled very late. It was significant. It made some changes to the bill that we still don’t quite get—we actually think on this side of the House that it has confused the bill further in terms of the way that it is laid out and the fact that we didn’t really get any answer for the rationale behind two ballots per year rather than the annual ballot that was considered by the Environment Committee. The Minister made the point that that increases choice for those who will be applying through the ballot but didn’t give us much of an explanation as to why that was required, and there’s still some confusion around how that plays out.

The final point that I want to make is back to the point around—

Hon David Seymour: The member should have prepared a speech.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: —from the heckling from the other side, who clearly don’t really care about what is being discussed. [Interruption] The point that I will make is that the reason that I talked about this Government tinkering around the edges is that there’s literally—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry to interrupt the speaker. Interjections are fine, but barrage is not. There’s another speech expected from the other side, and maybe we’ll make the next one a speech and then the other side can have their say.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. It would be good if members opposite would actually take a call and maybe lay out their position rather than just speaking for a couple of seconds to try and hasten the passage of this bill, given that we are sitting in urgency that the Government has brought about.

The point that I wanted to make, and the reason that many of us on the side of the House have basically said that the Government is just tinkering around the edges here, is because we had initiated a review into the ETS. That is the broader issue at play here. We know that the Climate Commission has made the same point. We know that Federated Farmers has agreed with the Labour Party’s differing view at select committee. The view was that we need a more fulsome review into the ETS. This isn’t it. This doesn’t go far enough from that point of view. To that end, we had initiated a review that this Government then put an end to. To the member who then says we did nothing about it—there was a review. All the Government needed to do was to continue that and actually bring it to its conclusion, but, no, the decision was to stop that and to go with a band-aid solution instead.

What they’ve done is to reduce climate financing commitments from their side, delays in adaptation planning. All we are doing as a nation as a result of the decisions made by this Government is to drift off course when it comes to actually reducing emissions, which is what we should be reviewing the ETS for.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has also made the point that we need to look at the role of forestry in ETS entirely as well. Yet this Government persists in removing initiatives that we put in place to decarbonise sectors, particularly sectors that significantly contribute to New Zealand’s emissions profile. As a result, what people are going to cotton on to is that the lack of action by this Government when it comes to addressing climate change is actually a cost of living issue, because at a time when we’re seeing things like power, food prices, and transport costs increase because of this Government’s decisions, their lack of action on addressing climate change will only increase all of those costs for New Zealanders.

For a Government, for three parties that campaigned on reducing the cost of living to then make decisions and lack thereof that contribute directly to the increasing cost of living, I think New Zealanders are going to see through this Government pretty soon.

I rise on behalf of ACT in support of this wonderful bill by our coalition Government. It is the product of getting out and listening and hearing the hopes and the concerns of people in rural New Zealand. They say our communities were founded on a diverse economy, not just on silviculture. They say we see our schools shutting down and that there aren’t enough kids in the schools, and the reason for that is that people don’t come out of trees, with the possible exception of Steve Abel. People say there are not enough kids in the schools, but there’s not enough community and there are not enough jobs in a society that has nothing but trees being grown to absorb carbon dioxide for the benefit of others. People resent seeing their community taken over in that way, and they asked us for action.

We’re also a Government that believes in property rights. We believe that if you own the property, it should be your choice what you do with it. How have we managed these conflicting concerns in the community? We’ve said, “You can convert.”, but we have reduced the artificial incentive in the emissions trading scheme to only 15,000 new hectares per year so that there will not be a rapid and rapacious reduction in the amount of community that comes from traditional agriculture in rural New Zealand. That is the mark of a Government that listens. It’s a tribute to our climate Minister, Simon Watts, and it is the symbol of three parties working together in order to get a better outcome for the people who pay the bills and gave us the ticket to be here.

It makes me very proud to be part of a Government with sophisticated policy-making. For those people in the heartland of rural New Zealand, it is a massive win tonight. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a true privilege to rise and speak on this bill and make the final speech before it passes into law. I had a role in shaping this policy before the election and took this to the election, and I’m very pleased to have a coalition Government that has delivered on a very difficult piece of legislation that respects, honours, and acknowledges the importance of farming in New Zealand; respects and acknowledges the importance of forestry in New Zealand; and acknowledges that carbon forestry had skewed the balance.

We are stopping the full conversion of farms with this bill tonight. We are restoring balance, which is incredibly important for the people of New Zealand, and the people of Southland will be very pleased to see this. I commend this bill to the House.

Scott Willis: Madam Speaker—

You’ve already spoken on this piece of legislation. You can’t speak a second time. That is why, when there was competition for Te Pāti Māori call, there was only one applicant—because you’d already spoken. I’m about to put the vote so we will now have quiet. I know it’s getting late but we will have quiet.

This concludes the business of urgency. The House is adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 11.14 p.m.