OPINION:
New Zealand farmers are the world's best, but their lobbyists are even better. While it's not true that today's Green Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fonterra, it's understandable some environmental activists are starting to think so.
Since giving up corporate life to enter politics, Greens co-leader James Shaw has been singularly focused on securing a Labour-National consensus on climate change.
Shaw is a true believer, not of the traditional green philosophies of anti-capitalism and technophobia, but that climate change is an existential threat and that New Zealand should "lead by example ... and show the world what meaningful, ambitious and lasting climate action looks like".
Many Greens believe their role is less governing than pushing the boundaries of debate. Shaw, a volunteer for National's Wellington Central campaign in 1996, disagrees. He argues becoming Climate Change Minister was essential to deliver a legislative framework so climate policies survive changes of government, the way Roger Douglas' Reserve Bank Act and Ruth Richardson's Fiscal Responsibility Act did for monetary policy and economic and fiscal transparency.
Shaw's single-mindedness even led to a brief flirtation with the idea of negotiating with National after the 2017 election, if only for leverage over Labour and NZ First.
We'll never know what Prime Minister Bill English, his blue-green mate Nick Smith and arch-pragmatist Steven Joyce might have agreed to, to lead a 64-seat National-Green Government. It couldn't have been worse than what transpired. But entertaining the idea for a moment displayed Shaw's ignorance of the Greens' founding ideology and activist base.
Those activists would have been happier with one of Shaw's original options for his Zero Carbon Act. It would have given Rod Carr's Climate Change Commission unilateral powers over every aspect of society that would have made Adrian Orr's Reserve Bank — and perhaps Mao Zedong — blush.
The bank is required by law to aim for the Minister of Finance's inflation target and may even now be doing so. The commission would have had powers to independently set its own binding targets for each greenhouse gas (GHG).
Similarly, the bank has "just" the official cash rate, large-scale asset purchases, negative policy rates, term lending programmes, exchange rate intervention and its rhetorical abilities to work with. The commission or its minister could have had powers to unilaterally regulate on anything they thought would lower emissions.
Labour and National would never agree, so achieving the consensus of everyone but Act required limiting the commission to advising on budgets, timelines and policies, and monitoring and critiquing progress.
The first critiques are in, not from the commission but from business and dairy lobbyists on one hand and environmental activists on the other. Broadly, the former welcomed Shaw's first Emissions Reduction Plan while many of the latter are furious.
Business NZ says Shaw's plan is "a comprehensive approach to a low-emissions future". Dairy NZ boasts "it's great to see our work on behalf of farmers coming to fruition".
Federated Farmers is "pleased the Government has recognised solutions to agricultural emissions lie in new technologies and tools, and is stepping up investment on that front". Lobbyists say they didn't even ask for the $710 million over four years to research lowering agricultural emissions, invent new biofuels and plant trees. It was the biggest single allocation from Shaw's four-year $2.9 billion climate budget, which is nearly as much as the $3b over three years for Shane Jones' Provincial Growth Fund.
For the environment, University of Otago professor Lisa Ellis says Shaw's emissions budgets are "unfair and insufficient" and the plan to implement them "unlikely to succeed".
Victoria University of Wellington's Mike Joy says Shaw's plan suggests the Government is "captured" by big business and "run by agriculture".
He calls it "spin" and "fiddling around", delaying real change until 2035 and "once again just letting agriculture, our biggest emitter, basically carry on".
Massey University's professor Ralph Sims also laments the lack of urgency, saying there's little new or challenging. He predicts our gross GHG emissions will continue rising "for some years yet".
Professor Martin Manning of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute says any urgency "is buried under the details of a policy framework that is still being constructed". He doubts the agriculture targets are consistent with the Paris Accord.
Sustainability Council boss Simon Terry says pastoral farming and emitting industries will be subsidised with money collected mainly from households and small businesses under the emissions trading scheme.
Shaw's plan only begins phasing out imports of fossil-fuelled cars from 2035, unlike Boris Johnson's Conservatives, who are banning the sale of new ones from 2030.
AUT's Dr Jeff Seadon predicts plans to investigate banning organic waste from landfill by 2030 will be fruitless.
Phasing out existing coal plants waits until 2037.
Former Green MP Catherine Delahunty despairs that there's "a Green minister inside a Labour-dominated Government and all they're proposing is to keep on keeping the farmers happy".
Greenpeace, led by former Greens co-leader Russel Norman, calls the plan ridiculous.
With the Greens' constitution now allowing both co-leaders to identify as women, the knives are out for Shaw among his key constituencies.
Expect the next attack on Shaw to relate to dirty rivers, for which he has some responsibility as an Associate Environment Minister. Five years since it was formed, responsibility for the state of our rivers shifts to the current Government. According to Richard McDowell, Professor of Land and Water Resources at Lincoln University, the average time for nitrate loads in rivers to reflect on-farm changes is now just four-and-a-half years.
In April, Stats NZ reported that nitrate levels at Tuakau Bridge, the last monitored water-quality site on the Waikato River and thus the one most accurately measuring all farming activity in the region, are "very likely worsening at a rate of 2.5 per cent a year". They are over 200 per cent worse than a decade ago, and on track to double again by 2050.
The picture is similar throughout the country, especially in Bay of Plenty and Southland.
The good news for Shaw is that the latest data is from 2020, so he can still blame John Key. But that won't wash when the next data becomes available, or when the raw data leaks out from regional councils.
The most recent nitrate data should surely be released just ahead of the election, like Treasury's Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update. It will be the first to indicate whether Shaw being a minister has been any better for river pollution than for GHG emissions.
'I regret these documents were not simply sourced and provided at the time' - Cooper