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Critics have condemned the "unacceptable" burden placed on New Zealand consumers by planned new fuel taxes and levies.
Politicians and consumer advocates said regional fuel taxes and the planned emissions trading scheme would combine to place heavy costs on consumers, via increased petrol prices and power bills.
Among them, the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill before Parliament would allow regional councils to levy a fuel tax of up to 10c a litre.
And the Institute of Economic Research has estimated the carbon-emissions trading scheme will result in extra costs of $600 a year to households by 2012, rising to $3000-$5000 a year by 2025, depending on the international carbon price.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday that the Government would delay the introduction of petrol to the emissions trading scheme until 2011 instead of 2009 as planned.
She said the Government had always said it would assist "vulnerable consumers" when they were hit with higher power bills as a result of the scheme.
Helen Clark also said large increases in fuel taxes would be phased in to ease the burden on consumers and she would veto a 5c jump in Auckland's regional fuel tax.
United Future leader Peter Dunne said delaying the introduction of transport into the emissions trading scheme would spare motorists extra costs but do little to reduce the overall impact on households of climate change policies.
He said the reprieve was welcome but a "kneejerk" reaction which did not solve the longer term problem of the extra costs climate change policies would have on households.
"People are prepared to pay their part in a global sense. But if they get a sense that the way they're going to play their part is by paying all the bills, then I think public support for Government policies in this regard evaporate quickly."
Clear information was needed on how it would affect the household budget, and householders should be compensated for it. "If the compensation is to be by way of the forthcoming tax cuts and nothing else, then I think people will feel cheated. They will be given to with one hand only to have it taken back with the other," said Mr Dunne.
Guy Hallwright of Carbon News said emissions trading globally was based on "questionable science" and the end reduction in carbon emissions might not justify spending potentially billions of "hard-working New Zealanders' dollars".
Consumer NZ urged tougher monitoring of petrol prices to ease the burden on consumers and the immediate appointment of a petrol commissioner like the one just appointed in Australia. Its chief executive Sue Chetwin said the commissioner should have the power to order companies to adjust their prices if they were too high, issue fines, monitor the price of petrol, diesel and LPG on a daily basis and check refining margins and crude oil prices.
"An independent commissioner is a better answer than the Government cutting GST or petrol tax. These can only be short-term measures and the Government will want to catch up its tax shortfall somewhere else."
Ms Chetwin described present petrol-price monitoring as "toothless", and said New Zealand motorists had been getting a "hard time" from oil companies all year.
"They've raised prices at the pump as soon as crude oil prices have risen and then failed to pass on savings from falling prices and the high New Zealand exchange rate," she said.
Consumer NZ testing manager Hamish Wilson said Aucklanders would be the hardest hit by the regional fuel tax and that the combination of petrol prices, carbon credits and fuel taxes would filter through to every aspect of household spending.
The Treasury admits global food and energy prices have risen to their highest levels since the early 1970s, driven by sustained periods of growth in the emerging economies, production shifting to biofuels and bottlenecks in global supply channels.
But despite high world prices flowing into New Zealand consumer prices, it expected fuel and food commodity prices to moderate as producers increased production and speculation in commodity markets decreased.
- NZPA
