Heather du Plessis-Allan: Boris Johnson puts our Govt to shame

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson has brought a ban on new petrol- and diesel-powered cars forward by five years. Photo / AP

Opinion

This week Boris Johnson banned the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035. The ban was always planned, but not until 2040. Bojo brought the deadline forward by five years.

This year, according to Johnson, is the "defining year of climate action".

How badly is Bojo putting our Government to shame? He's a Conservative PM. A guy on the right of politics shouldn't be setting an example in saving the planet. Yet, he's doing much, much more than the very people who should be fixing the climate: our own left-leaning Government propped up by the Green Party whose whole schtick is the environment.

Our Government did consider a ban on petrol and diesel cars last year, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern canned the idea. Yes, the very person who declared climate change the nuclear-free moment of her generation. Instead, the Coalition Government introduced a - by contrast pathetic - feebate scheme where buyers get penalised a few dollars for choosing an emissions-producing car or get discounted a few dollars for choosing an electric car.

The point of this comparison between Bojo and NZ is to illustrate the giant shift that's taken place in this Government's motivations. There's a lot of compromise nowadays. It's been obvious from the moment the PM nuked the capital gains tax.

Gone, clearly, is the aspiration of being a transformational government. That's been replaced with the aspiration of just getting back into power. It seems you can save the planet. Or you can win the election. But you can't do both.

Nor can you win the election and also introduce a capital gains tax to make houses more affordable for the country's poorest. Or demand that farmers pay full price for their climate emissions. Or make pay fairer for the country's workers. Or fully implement justice reform. Or, as we now see, ban petrol and diesel cars.

This government should probably ask itself what the point of being in government is if they're just going to do a crappy impersonation of the National Party.

Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter. Photo / Mark Mitchell

These compromises will, of course, bug some of Labour and the Greens' more left-leaning supporters, if not also the parties' more ideologically committed MPs. Already, there are signs of possible tension. It was notable that chief cycling enthusiast Julie Anne Genter wasn't at the Big New Zealand Upgrade announcement. It might have been too stomach-churning for her to watch her government hand out billions for more roads in a country where transport is the second biggest emitter.

A few days later, Genter criticised the spend in a editorial, calling it "nowhere near what we need" and arguing the Greens would've done it differently. But they didn't do it differently. They just whinged a bit in public.

The good news for the major coalition partner Labour is that the much more principled Greens seem to have got the memo that they need to suck it up if they want to be back in the Beehive. Genter's editorial was pointed, but resigned to the spend up.

The bad news for both parties' supporters is that they also need to suck it up. There's nowhere, really, for them to go. It used to be that disappointed left-leaning voters could show dissatisfaction by protest-voting for the Greens. But the Greens are the government now. So a protest vote for them is just a vote for the status quo.

And there's worse news for them. The compromising isn't over. Already there's speculation Labour will next promise tax cuts. Nothing helps election chances like a tax cut. Problem is, Labour's more hard-core left-leaning voters might think there are better ways to spend that money, like lifting welfare or building state houses or anything else that benefits the country's poorest.

Tough luck for those voters. Looks like the Government's finally done the maths and figured out what everyone else has years ago. Elections are won in the centre and the centre is not a place where transformation happens.