The Opportunities Party leader Geoff Simmons. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Opportunities Party (TOP) wants to double the price companies pay for emitting carbon and use that money to get more electric vehicles on the road.
It wants the price of carbon to be $60 a tonne which, according to leader Geoff Simmons, would raise roughly $1 billion a year.
That money would be used to implement a raft of environmentally friendly policies, he said.
This includes making the country's housing stock and businesses more energy-efficient and well as increasing urban density, which would allow more efficient use of public transport.
"Our houses have been described by some as 'wooden tents'," Simmons said.
He added that the policy would have a real impact on the health and wellbeing of many New Zealanders, as well as putting more money in people's back pockets.
But the key pillar of the plan would be to use the money to make electric vehicles more affordable by removing the Fringe Benefits Tax on low-emitting vehicles.
This is the tax that businesses pay on benefits provided to their employees, such as work vehicles.
TOP wants that tax gone on greener vehicles – "this will encourage businesses to invest in fleets of EVs and will eventually make EVs more accessible to ordinary New Zealanders", Simmons said.
New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) charges companies a price to emit greenhouses gases – this aims to incentivise less pollution.
The price of carbon is roughly $35 a tonne.
The party's climate change policy also includes a plan to restrict tree planting to off-set agricultural emissions.
At the moment, businesses can plant trees as a way to offset their carbon and avoid the carbon tax – these are called carbon credits.
"The idea that companies can avoid taking real responsibility for continuing to burn fossil fuels by permanently locking up land in forest is nuts," Simmons said.
He said that New Zealand is the only country in the world that allows unlimited forestry offsets.
"The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has called for this practice to end, and only TOP will deliver that."
A disregard for authority could be why those attending court are thumbing their noses.