I do not intend to speak for long on the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. The ACT Party will not be supporting the bill, and I would like to explain why. I think the last two speeches illustrate the point very well. Rahui Katene has just explained that households—ordinary New Zealanders—will pay for the costs put on them by the emissions trading scheme; ordinary households will pay for the cost of this bill.
Before my colleague Rahui Katene spoke, we heard from Mr Choudhary. He described the emissions trading scheme as a “useful tool” to provide sustainable transport. But it is more than a useful tool; it is actually a tax. It is a tax imposed on businesses and, more important, on consumers. It is a tax felt at the lowest end of the income scale, by the people who have no alternative but to buy energy, buy food, and buy things that the emissions trading scheme would impose costs on.
Mr Choudhary cast doubt on the Prime Minister’s comments in regard to climate change. Let us be quite open and honest: the ACT Party does not oppose the concept of climate change; we acknowledge that climate change is happening. The Prime Minister acknowledges that the climate is changing all the time. In fact, the scientific evidence is that the climate has changed over generations and generations, over centuries and centuries, over millennia. The temperature of Earth has warmed and cooled over many, many millennia. The issue is whether it has warmed and cooled because of human inducement or human change; whether human activity has contributed to that change. Although it is very easy to say that the science is settled, the reality is that the science is not settled. I have had the privilege of sitting on the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee as a substitute for Rodney Hide on occasions over the last couple of months. Evidence was produced that the temperature of the Earth has actually cooled since 2002, and that it has not risen since 1998. There was no evidence that I saw or heard that discredited that fact—none whatsoever.
Last Thursday I attended a meeting of the Unite trade union. It was a function that my colleague Melissa Lee also attended, and one of its purposes was to launch the campaign for an increase in the minimum wage from $12.50 to $15. The Green Party co-leader Russel Norman and the Labour candidate were both very anxious to sign the pledge: “Let’s sign up. Let’s increase the minimum wage from $12.50 to $15.” But I said to the people of the Unite union that it is not a question of gross income earned; it is a question of living standards. It is a question of what is actually earned after tax. It is a question of what is earned after living expenses have been met. The emissions trading scheme imposes a cost on the community, and it imposes a cost on households, as Rahui Katene has just said. Yes, it is very easy to sign up to increasing the minimum wage, but what a trick that would be. We need to look at reducing people’s taxes in order to reduce the cost of living and to increase the standard of living.
So the ACT Party will not be supporting this bill; it will be opposing this bill. ACT has championed a review of the emissions trading scheme, and we are very proud to have done that. Countries around the world—not least of which was Australia in the last 2 months—have moved in the last 6 months to defer the introduction of their own emissions trading schemes. I believe that the role the ACT Party has played in forcing a review of that bill will go down as one of the most significant achievements in this parliamentary term. Thank you.