In the blue corner

There is absolutely cross-party consensus for the need to reduce our net emissions and curtail the effects that climate change has on our country and the world.

Parliament is united on getting to the net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which the last National led-Government signed New Zealand up to. The contrary of opinion is how we get there. What we need is sound and pragmatic policies which deliver for all New Zealanders, not just a select few.

The Emissions Reduction Plan was meant to be this Government’s hallmark piece. The Government told New Zealanders 18 months ago that we were in a climate emergency and urgent action was needed. Yet in typical fashion, the Emissions Reduction Plan was largely underdone and toothless.

Instead of targeted and pragmatic climate policies, we got hundreds of pages of more announcements, more spin, more working groups and more bureaucracy. In fact, the policies in there are only projected to reduce emissions by 4.1% through to 2025.

A quick word search of the document has the word ‘develop’ appear 194 times, ‘investigate’ 49 times and ‘consider’ 89 times. It’s a smorgasbord of two years worth of half-baked ideas with little substance. The sad reality of that is New Zealanders will pay for it.

We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis which is showing no sign of going away any time soon. The Government has delivered their backwards budget and it won’t help to alleviate the crisis we are in.

Right now, we need a government who have a well-thought plan on how it will make New Zealanders better off with every cent of taxpayers money they spend. This Emissions Reduction Plan fails to do that.

A clear example of poor spending is $600m the Government will give businesses and corporations to decarbonise. We have an Emissions Trading Scheme that will already promote businesses to take these measures, but the Government are instead giving away taxpayer money for corporate welfare. New Zealanders deserve much better fiscal discipline than this.

The problem we will run into is that low-income households and the squeezed middle-income earners will feel the pain the most, and this Labour Government is failing them. Ultimately, the wasteful spending in the Emissions Reduction Plan actually risks losing public support for decarbonisation because it will put too much strain on household budgets.

We need climate change policies that complement the Emissions Trading Scheme, are well costed and actually deliver a reduction in our emissions.