It is a pleasure to take ACT’s first call in the Committee stage debate. I suspect that this debate will continue for many, many hours. This is a very sad day for New Zealand. The Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill has implications for all New Zealanders, and it imposes a tax on all New Zealanders. The previous Labour Government passed its own emissions trading scheme last year, just before the general election, and that imposed massive new taxes on everyone in New Zealand. The National Government has an opportunity to amend that, to reverse the damage that it did. Although it has moved partially in that direction, it has lost a huge opportunity. The ACT Party strongly opposes this bill and will be voting against it.
I said that I expect this to be a long debate, and I hope to take many calls, subject to the Chair’s indulgence. I hope to talk about the fishing industry and the impact on that industry. I wish to talk about agriculture and farmers, and the impact on that industry. I want to talk about the impact on small and medium sized enterprises, which are the backbone of employers in this country. They get absolutely zilch, zero, nothing. There is no free allocation whatsoever for them. I wish to talk about the impact on heavy industry. I want to talk about the impact on families.
The ACT Party spoke widely earlier this year on New Zealand being a place of no second-class citizens—the haves and the have-nots. This bill will impose a cost of 10 percent extra on the electricity bill of every New Zealander. [Interruption] That is right. We are hearing 5 percent, absolutely. Labour was 10 percent. On 1 January 2013 the price of electricity will rise by 10 percent. Under this bill, National is putting up electricity by 10 percent. People have the audacity to come into this Chamber and talk about subsidies. Who are we subsidising? We are subsidising the owner of Genesis, we are subsidising the owner of Meridian Energy, we are subsidising the shareholders in TrustPower, and we are subsidising the shareholders in Contact Energy. From 1 January 2013 every single New Zealander will be paying 10 percent more for his or her electricity. If we want to talk about subsidies, we should talk about the cost to ordinary New Zealanders. We should talk about the people who are underprivileged; we should talk about the have-nots.
It is interesting that there has been discussion about Hone Harawira and whether he will rejoin the Māori Party. If Hone Harawira did not have an excuse to part company from the Māori Party previously, he has it with this bill. What do the people of Tai Tokerau get out of the Māori Party’s support? They get absolutely nothing. Ngāi Tahu walk away with 30,000 hectares of conservation land to plant trees on, and good on them. They are obviously very smart negotiators. But the people of Tai Tokerau, with the deepest respect, get absolutely nothing.
In subsequent speeches I want to talk about industry-based allocation. I want to talk about New Zealand’s potential emissions reduction target of 50 percent by 2050, and how flawed that is with our unique emissions profile. We have heard a lot from Mr Cunliffe this evening about the submission of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and I want to talk about her submission. I want to talk about the science on which this bill is supposedly based. I want to talk about the level of inept regulatory investigation—the fact that there was no proper study. There are many issues that the ACT Party wishes to talk about, and I hope we are still talking about those issues this time tomorrow.
But before I proceed further I feel I need to remark on two comments made by the Minister. Mr Smith asked a rhetorical question of the Greens 15 minutes ago. He asked when was a subsidy not a subsidy—when Mr Parker can stand up and say what the Labour Government was doing was not a subsidy, but the Labour Party has the audacity to say it is a subsidy now. I say to Mr Smith that there is actually a difference. There is a difference between the Labour scheme and the National scheme, and he knows it well. Under the Labour scheme the free allocation reduced to 2030, and from 2030 the emissions trading scheme became a massive tax grab. There was no free allocation beyond 2030. National talks about its scheme being fiscally neutral and it talks about the value given to big emitters. We will talk about emitting, pollution, and carbon dioxide—and how I am polluting right now, it would seem, with carbon dioxide. Under the National scheme the big emitters essentially, we have been told, are fiscally neutral. So it is good enough for the fishers to go out with allocations from 2030, it is good enough for every single New Zealander to pay more for electricity, and the scheme is fiscally neutral. If we are taking from ordinary working families and we are fiscally neutral, I ask Mr Smith who we are we giving it to.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Forestry.
JOHN BOSCAWEN: Mr Smith says that we are giving it to forestry. Is that not interesting, because the Federation of Māori Authorities came to the select committee and said that the emissions trading scheme represents the biggest confiscation of Māori wealth since the 1800s. [Interruption] Shame—exactly.
Let us talk about the fishing industry; Mr Smith took a query on the fishing industry. He talked about the fact that Labour members were johnny-come-latelys to the fishing industry and that the industry was not going to have any subsidy whatsoever, and that is absolutely true. I understand that at the select committee for the last bill the decision to put in a 50 percent allocation was a last-minute decision, and the fishing industry was to get a 50 percent allocation for the 3 years up to 1 January 2013. National has trumped that with a 90 percent allocation. What happens on 1 January 2013? It goes to zero.
Let us have a look at what the National minority report said on Labour’s emissions trading scheme last year—and I am told it was written by the current Minister. If that is so, the Minister wrote, on page 6: “New Zealand’s fishing industry exports 92 percent of its output, earning $1.3 billion per annum.” It is an energy-intensive sector, I say to Mr Smith, with fuel making around 40 percent of the operating costs of vehicles. The bill provides an allocation of units to sectors such as meat, dairy, cement, steel, forest, and aluminium but excludes the fishing industry. This arbitrary exclusion does not seem well justified.
I wonder what Mr Smith says to his constituents in Nelson. I was in Nelson last Friday, as he very well knows, and I saw the Sealord factory. I saw that it employs 400 people. I was told that the processing that the factory does could just as easily be shipped off to China, as has happened at so many other processing factories that have been closed down, and he has the audacity to stand up here and say that this is an issue of property values. It is actually an issue of keeping the people employed at that Sealord factory.
But I move on, because I have allowed myself to be distracted in responding to Mr Smith’s comments. I would like to pay a special tribute to two people on the select committee, and I hope they hear my comments. The first person is the committee chair, Mr Craig Foss, because Mr Foss was given a hospital pass. He was given the job of doing the Minister’s bidding and I feel very sorry for Mr Foss because I suspect I caused him a few problems. But Mr Foss was given his riding instructions and he was told to have this bill back in the House on 16 November, come what may, and that it did not matter if the committee report was not ready, or if the revision-tracked bill had turned up. I know that Mr Foss will hear my comments, so I pay tribute to him because he was given a hospital pass.
The other person I pay tribute to is Rahui Katene, because I would suggest that, probably, the overwhelming amount of what I know about this emissions trading scheme I have learnt in the last 6 weeks. It was interesting that the Hon David Cunliffe and Amy Adams both acknowledged that they had not previously sat on select committees. The reason I acknowledge Rahui Katene is that she had the courage and the wisdom to vote with the Labour Party, the Green Party, and me to allow submissions to be heard. Jeanette Fitzsimons is nodding her head. Jeanette Fitzsimons stood in on that select committee.