Emissions Trading
AUTHOR: Judy Turner
Occasionally an issue comes along that is of such immense importance and with such wide-reaching implications that it is deserving of cross-party parliamentary support. The Emissions Trading Scheme is one such issue and can be compared with other historical biggies like Superannuation and Kiwi-Saver.
While there is always room for ongoing tweaking and amending of any Act of Parliament, the public is not well served if major policy initiatives are turned into political footballs.
Let me start by saying the UnitedFuture agrees in principle that some sort of emissions trading scheme is the best way to meet our international obligations as signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to address climate change concerns.
However this week we pulled our support for the current legislation for the following reasons.
1) It appears that Labour are desperately keen to get this through before the election and so has sought to achieve this by by-passing robust cross-party consultation in favour of cobbling together the 61 votes needed.
2) The cost of the current bill was calculated back at a time when carbon was trading at $15 per ton on the international market and experts calculated that the flow on cost to NZ householders would be about $6 a week. Carbon is currently $60 – $70 a ton and so one doesn’t have to be a maths expert to figure out the implications for NZ families already struggling with higher fuel and food bills and mortgage interest rates.
3)They have shunned all our attempts to discuss compensation for households.
It is the Ministers unwillingness to even dialogue that has led Hon Peter Dunne to comment that “Labour should accept that this crash-through style simply does not work on contentious issues under MMP.
“It should abandon the blinkered approach to passing the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation at virtually any cost, just so as to look good before the election, and focus on the broader picture of developing a regime that is both politically and environmentally sustainable.
“Ideally, it should be doing this in concert with our major trading partner Australia”.