Source: New Zealand Parliament – Hansard
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you, Madam Chair. As you say, last night when the House concluded, we were having a very broad-ranging debate in terms of the purpose of the Bill. There are still many questions that we have from material that the Minister has introduced into this debate around energy security.
But to start off, this morning, I just do want to move on to another couple of pieces of Part 1 of this Act, one of which is the clauses in this bill that pertain to the Tier 3 permits that are covered off in Part 1. Now, in terms of the size of the Tier 3 permits, one of the things that we heard at select committee—we had many people asking why it was that the size of the area that was eligible for a Tier 3 permit was decided on, that this seemed quite large in terms of what would be seen as a hobbyist permit and some of the submitters were questioning that. So I’d like to ask the Minister about the policy context, the advice he received—what was the policy context for settling on the size of the permit area that is before us in this legislation?
But the other important piece that we will have many questions on in this part of the bill, in Part 1, is the provisions that are in here in clause 12, and that is around the Minister having the power to issue a Government policy statement. Now, this is a new mechanism that will come into play through this legislation; we haven’t previously had this. Obviously, we have Government policy statements in a range of areas, but I think there are some questions, given that this is a new mechanism that could be brought into play, for the Minister to inform the House on. First of all, what is the time frame that the Minister is thinking of? Has he begun work on the Government policy statement and when would he be thinking of introducing this? If the work hasn’t begun, where in his work programme does this work figure?
The other important question, I think, we have is that a Government policy statement is a place where a Government rightly sets out its strategic priorities and the work programme and the way in which it’s going to get to its outcomes. I’m assuming that the Government policy statement would be aligned with the purposes of this bill. But we also have another piece of legislation in this jurisdiction, and that is our climate response legislation that sets out very closely our emissions reduction plans. So I’d like to hear from the Minister how it is that he intends to ensure that we have synergy between these two strategic documents that any Government will need to work from. How will the Government policy statement interact with the emissions reduction plans that the Government does adopt? We know, of course, that the Government is due to adopt new emissions reduction plans by the end of this year for emissions budget 3. So what work has the Minister done to ensure that we are aligning what is happening under this legislation with that other strategic intent of Government?
What we know, from advice from the Minister’s officials, is that this legislation is going to increase our greenhouse gas emissions. There have been several pieces of advice that have been provided to the committee in terms of what the impacts on emissions budgets 1 and emissions budgets 2 will be. But of course, we have emissions budget 3 coming—and the extent in which the Minister has been working with his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that there can be those interactions and those alignments. The advice that we received from officials is that there will be a million megatonnes of carbon dioxide in emissions, as compared to the baseline for the second emissions budget for 2025 to 2030, and another 0.6 to 1.4 megatonnes for the third emissions budget. So what mechanisms will be in place in that Government policy statement to ensure there is alignment with different pieces of Government policy?
As I said, there are a range of other questions that are still outstanding in regard to changing the purpose statement. Certainly, the Minister opened up a range of areas which just sparked the inquisitive nature of the Opposition and a range of questions that we’ve had time to percolate overnight that we’ll come back to on that material.
But those are two very specific questions around clause 12 and the Tier 3 permits, which are covered off in new section 2BA, inserted by clause 7. Thank you, Madam Chair.
