Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill

Te Ururoa Flavell, MP for Waiariki

Thursday 24 September 2009

I rise to take a call on the first reading of the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill. While we debate the bill in the Chamber today we know that a high-level summit on climate change is meeting in New York, bringing together over 100 heads of State and Government in the biggest ever gathering of political leadership.

In addressing the summit, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, prepared the ground for the United Nations climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen in December in just 74 days’ time. His words are worth repeating for the record. He said: “Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise.” Those words tell us that we need to get our act together—and fast. Climate change affects us all, and we all have a part to play in encouraging environmentally responsible choices.

The Māori Party has consistently raised our call for an emissions trading scheme to be effective, fair, and transparent. It must be effective in the way in which it reduces emissions to enable Kyoto targets to be met. It must be fair, in that all sectors will be included, units will be allocated fairly between and within sectors, and no sectors will receive more free units than necessary or will face disproportionate costs. It must be transparent, in that all allocations, including free unit allocations to industry and sectors, should be incorporated in the legislation.

Our explicit support for the first reading of the bill is predicated on the basis of the preservation of our environment and the need to invest in ensuring that the finite resources of Papatūānuku are safeguarded. We do not support subsidisation of the nation’s largest polluters at the cost of householders and small to medium businesses.

The over-representation of Māori and lower socioeconomic areas, when coupled with the concentration of iwi interests in the primary sector—forestry, agriculture, and fisheries—has always meant that the emissions trading scheme is very high on our agenda. The bill states that the key purpose of an emissions trading scheme is to enable New Zealand to comply with obligations at the least cost to the economy while providing certainty for economic growth

To be meaningful in its application, we suggest that its purpose must be to transform the economy in a way that also takes account of our social and environmental wellbeing. How should this transformation take place? As a starting point the bill must include some form of statutory provision for the Treaty relationship. We have spoken passionately about the need to protect the property rights of iwi and citizen interests of Māori. We have taken as our lead the recommendation to Government from the Climate Change Iwi Leadership Group. That recommendation was that “the obligations of the Crown to Māori, including those under the Treaty of Waitangi, not be compromised by the New Zealand emissions trading scheme.”

We acknowledge the support of the Government for an amendment to come forward to the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill to specific reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and we will be working with officials and Crown Law to draft an appropriate amendment. As recognition of the Treaty relationship, we will ensure that Māori do not bear a disproportionate share of the burden.

We are committed to ensuring that a full array of assistance measures will be considered and targeted at rural communities, lower-income households, and other members of our community who are likely to be more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Those same individuals are likely to be less likely to meet the costs involved.

The Māori Party has been concerned throughout this process that households and small businesses will face disproportionate costs under an *emissions trading scheme. On reading the bill, it will be noted that the household is disestablished. What is not in the bill but which is a key priority for the Māori Party is specific detail around the mitigation of the impacts of the emissions trading scheme at a household level.

The Māori Party seeks an extension of the Government’s energy efficiency assistance scheme, specifically targeted at low-income households. This is not currently provided for in the bill, but we are working with the Government to ensure that there will be particular measures to support households that will simply not be able to sustain increased costs.

The bill enables the increased cost of petrol and electricity to be halved as a result of the scheme, from 7c per litre to 3.5c per litre for petrol, and from a 10-percent increase to a 5-percent increase for electricity over the first 2 and a half years of the emission trading scheme. It is estimated that increases in the household electricity and petrol costs will be $165 per year, rather than $330 per year in the transition phase. We are pleased this specific provision is being provided for, but we emphasise the two-for-one deal is not sufficient along with the household insulation fund, as sufficient mitigation of the impacts of the emissions trading scheme for lower-income families.

Another set of issues that we promoted in the revision of the scheme was around afforestation and engagement in offsetting. We have come to the Government with some very specific proposals which have been outlined publicly. For the record, we expected there to be some compensation for iwi with forest returned and Treaty settlements prior to the emissions trading scheme, and a commitment from Government to work with those iwi and the Māori Party to find solutions. We expect that the Climate Change Iwi Leadership Group will play an ongoing role in international negotiations to allow for offsetting.

We expect that the possibility of a Crown and iwi partnership will be scoped, including exploration of the viability of accessing the Department of Conservation estate. Our commitment to iwi has been that we will do all that we can to create a robust afforestation policy, which would include a commitment to iwi-Crown joint afforestation programmes. We have also identified the need for a biodiversity standard to prevent planting over regenerating indigenous forest. Another element of the ongoing work will be to review the rules of permanent forest sync initiative to remove any unfair bias against landowners who, under the current covenants, have to take all of the risk.

 Finally, we are arguing for the inclusion of post-1989 indigenous forests and the publishing of accurate tables of the carbon sequestered in them. Although we are pleased that more unit allocation plans are included in the bill than are in the existing legislation, the rule for unit allocation for the forest and fisheries sectors are not in the bill, because they are to be set by regulation. There are other matters outlined in the bill that warrant much fuller discussion, including the proposed intensity-based allocation of units and the proposed price cap.

Finally, the urgency of the climate change crisis demands the development and implementation of an effective scheme that is not reliant on “if” or “when” the price of carbon increases to a sufficient level to incentivise change. The nation urgently needs to grapple with the notion of sustainability and the increasing challenge made by a changing climate system and pending peak oil to think and live differently.

It was along these lines that we argue that the Māori Party be actively engaged in ongoing dialogue on a broader environmental policy programme. We will also continue to urge that iwi be directly engaged in policy design and implementation as the emissions trading scheme develops. We have open discussions with National; it is no secret. We intend to work hard to balance those economic imperatives with the environmental issues. It is the first reading; there is a lot of talk about to nail down as we advance. We want to move positively forward and intend to make our requirements very clear as we go, to ensure that we can indeed live with the final product. In the expectation of our agreements being honoured, the Māori Party supports the bill at the first reading of the modified emissions trading scheme.

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