RODNEY HIDE: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill

Below is the contribution by Rodney hide on September 2 2008 to the Emissions Trading Bill debate. He is one of only two individuals in Parliament, the other being Gordon Copeland, to have the balls to go against the tide of make believe that is "climate change".

It is compulsory reading.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) : I think I will be the only person speaking in this debate who has any qualifications in environmental science. It is not that that should count, but I think it is significant for what I am about to say—that is, that the entire climate change and global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phony and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and a swindle.

Enacting this legislation will cost New Zealanders dear—that is the point of it—and it will drive up the cost of basic goods and services for New Zealanders, probably by at least $500 or $600 a year. It will put businesses in New Zealand out of business, and it will put farmers off their farms, and it will do all that for no impact on world weather, for no environmental gain, and for no conceivable advantage to New Zealand or to the world. Yes, it is bad that we are rushing this legislation through in the dying days of a teetering regime, propped up by a Minister of Foreign Affairs who is under investigation for serious and complex fraud. That is bad, but it is the impact that this legislation and this policy will have on New Zealanders that is so truly shocking.

All we have in this is a computer model. That is notoriously difficult, because the answers are written in the assumptions. Let me give members just one example. The problem for the first two reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was what was called the medieval warming period, whereby a thousand years ago the Earth was warmer than it is now. Then, magically, an obscure physicist in the US came up with a new bit of analysis—the “hockey stick” model—that showed world temperature to be flat and then rising dramatically as the world became industrialised. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change grabbed this, put it on the front of its document, and repeated it five times.

Researchers all around the world were puzzled by this, because it did not fit any of their data. Eventually they got hold of that computer model and they discovered that any numbers fed into that model would produce the “hockey stick”. We could take the Wellington telephone directory, feed it into the model that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used in 2001, and we would get the “hockey stick”, which saw the world and policy makers running scared, and which Al Gore based his movie on. The science was rubbish, because a computer model is not science. Science is about theories, hypotheses, and the testing of those against the facts. That is not what has happened in the basic science here.

That is bad enough, but what is worse is the policy rationale underpinning this legislation. The Minister would come before the Finance and Expenditure Committee and talk about a “cap and trade”, but when asked, he would say: “Yes, there is no cap.” We are creating a market in hot air, without any quantified amount.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): It works.

RODNEY HIDE: It works. I will remember that. You are so lovely to me. [Interruption] Doug Woolerton over there knows the Vela cheques went missing; some of them went missing. I say to Doug Woolerton that they did not get all of them. I want to address clause 5—which covers the purpose of the Act. It sets out the purpose, and it is missing a couple of purposes, in my humble view.

One purpose that is missing is Helen Clark’s purpose. She knows that she is not going to be Prime Minister after this election, and she is wondering where one goes after being the Prime Minister of New Zealand. We know where Winston Peters is going after having been the Minister of Foreign Affairs. But Helen Clark does not want to be wearing a pinstriped suit with wide stripes and a number on it; she wants to be a big wheel on the world stage. So the purpose of this bill—clause 5—

I would like to add to clause 5(1) a supplementary subclause (c), and I will speak to that. Clause 5(1)(c) would explain that the purpose of this bill is to allow Helen Clark to look good on the world stage and say that she can become a big wheel in the UN because, when she was the Prime Minister, she led the world in producing the most comprehensive, economically destructive emissions trading scheme ever. That is what my amendment would say in clause 5(1)(c).

Helen Clark now does not care about New Zealand; she cares about what is going to happen to her after the election. She certainly does not care about the economic damage this legislation will do to New Zealand; I covered that in my earlier speech. She does not care about the damage that is done to her Government and to this country’s reputation by clutching Winston Peters, and his Tiberius corporation and the money from the Spencer Trust, to her bosom. Clause 5(1)(c) in my amendment would explain that. Helen Clark is kissing goodbye to New Zealand and saying: “Look at me.” Helen Clark knows that she is toast at the election, and I think it is appalling that we are rushing through this legislation, with 785 amendments, in the dying days of a teetering Labour-led Government, with a Minister of Foreign Affairs with no portfolios—all baubles and no work. The real purpose that we are putting through this bill is for Helen Clark to say to the rest of the world and to her lefty mates: “Look what I did. To hell with New Zealand!”.

I think this is a disgrace.