KEY POINTS:
It is troubling how wide a gap has emerged between what the new Government is saying and what it is doing, with respect to the select committee review of the emissions trading scheme.
At this stage it is probably still entitled to the benefit of the doubt about its intentions, but the amount of doubt is piling up fast.
At his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, Prime Minister John Key said he wanted the "issues resolved" and legislation passed by September 30 next year.
When reminded that National was highly critical of the previous Government and select committee for rushing the passage of the existing legislation, Key said: "Let's assume the ETS is the mechanism for delivery. It's a different issue to be changing that legislation, as opposed to starting from ground zero. There's quite a number of aspects of an ETS that we agree with. There are aspects that are debatable, but the core framework is largely in place.
"I think the timetable is doable but we will have to suck it and see."
Such comments imply, and this would be consistent with the position National campaigned on, that emissions trading is the right approach but the regime passed just before the election has some design flaws that need to be addressed.
But if you look at the terms of reference the select committee is to be given, you get a starkly different impression.
It is the Act Party's wish list verbatim, apart from the removal of the ludicrous suggestion that the committee hear competing views on the science.
That has been rephrased as "identify the central/benchmark projections which are being used as the motivation for international agreements to combat climate change; and consider the uncertainties and risks surrounding those projections".
Instead of being asked explicitly to resolve practical issues of concern, such as how to determine how many free units trade-exposed emitters are allocated and the rules for subsequently clawing back that allocation, or whether to allow offsetting in the case of deforestation, or whether to restrict their access to AAUs to the greened variety, the committee has the task of considering much more fundamental questions.
One is to "examine the relative merits of a mitigation or an adaptation approach to climate change for New Zealand".
These are not alternatives. We have no option but to adapt to climate change.
So if the question means anything it is: Do we want to do anything to reduce the magnitude of that challenge, or should we just free-ride on the efforts of others?
Fully half of the select committee's terms of reference relate to the international environment.
Up to a point this is fair enough.
What other countries do about climate change is central to determining where doing our bit ends and futile self-sacrifice begins.
Conversely, what other countries make of what we are doing - and so far that's not much - is central to any calculation of costs and benefits.
But something more cynical is at play here.
Emitters naturally want to pay as little as possible. So some of the business lobby groups have taken to advocating a carbon tax instead of emissions trading, just as long as it is set low, at a fraction of the prices prevailing on international carbon markets.
This leaves them open to the charge that they are just offloading the cost of complying with the country's international treaty obligations on to the taxpayer.
To which they reply that the geopolitics of climate change are so fraught that the Kyoto system is bound to collapse and New Zealand will not have to honour its undertakings.
The taxpayer, in other words, will be off the hook. So no question of cross-subsidy arises.
This is an unsafe and discreditable assumption on which to base policy.
One of the questions for the select committee to consider is the prospects for an international agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period, which runs until the end of 2012.
Another is to "consider the timing of introduction of any New Zealand measures, with particular reference to the outcome of the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting, the position of the United States and the timetable for decisions and their implementation of the Australian Government".
In other words, let's wait and see what everyone else does before deciding to do anything.
Unfortunately the international negotiation process is liable to be pretty unforgiving of such an approach. Remember that our starting point is that we have one of the world's highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita and per dollar of GDP.
We have signed up under Kyoto to a target of reducing our emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. On current projections we will be about 25 per cent above it.
Yet we were prepared at the Bali conference a year ago to endorse European calls for a collective goal for developed countries of reducing emissions to 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, knowing full well that there is not the remotest possibility of achieving such a target ourselves.
The Government has dispatched Tim Groser to the climate change talks in Poznan this week to special-plead like crazy on our behalf.
But here's what any of his counterparts, briefed by their embassies here, might say to him in response: "Ah yes, Minister Groser, tell me - is New Zealand like Australia on track to meet its Kyoto target? Not by a long chalk? Well then, what has New Zealand done to reduce emissions growth? Not really anything as yet? And what's all this about a select committee of your Parliament considering whether it is worth doing anything at all to mitigate climate change? Not exactly the moral high ground you are occupying there, is it?"
Seven of the select committee's members, including its chairman, Peter Dunne, belong to parties that voted against the emissions trading bill passed in the dying days of the previous Parliament.
It may go differently this time.
On Tuesday Dunne described the committee's task in these terms: "To look at whether the regime is workable and ensure it does not impose too many costs on New Zealand households."
A throwaway line by Key on Monday suggested he is thinking more in terms of delaying the application of the scheme to stationary energy (mainly the electricity sector, due to come in at the start of 2010) rather than scrapping it altogether.
All that suggests the load-bearing language among the terms of reference is the references to considering the impact of climate change policies in light of the weak state of the economy and considering the timing of the introduction of any measures.
The name of the game, in other words, may be to give those who have more fundamental objections and who felt they were not given a fair hearing last time a chance to vent, before getting on with adjusting the existing scheme.
That is starting to look like the optimistic scenario.
The alternative, which takes the terms of reference literally, would mean going back for another long and tedious session in front of what is now a very old and battered drawing board.
