Thomas Coughlan questions why agriculture is getting $750m in funding when the industry doesn't contribute to the ETS. Video / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
Today's release of the Emissions Reduction Plan is meant to be the capstone of its central climate change policy, begun with the Zero Carbon Act passed last term.
That legislation created a Climate Change Commission, which recommended emissions budgets and policies that could be used to meetthose budgets. The legislation also forced the Government to respond to those budgets with a plan of its own, setting out how it would cut emissions to meet the targets recommended by the Commission.
This plan is meant to be the big deal - it's when we see policy; it's when the Government answers the "how" question we've been asking for decades. We know we need to reduce emissions, but how?
This is itself a fundamental change. What is underappreciated is that the whole process of the Zero Carbon legislation has changed the way we talk about climate change. Prior to this, climate change politics asked two key questions: how much should we reduce emissions, and how do we achieve those emissions reductions?
Climate Change Minister James Shaw's decision to suffer extensive political flagellation (some from his own side) to get NZ First and National Party support for the Zero Carbon Act, and, just last week, for the Government's emissions budgets, neutered the first question as a political issue.
That means there is no longer serious party political debate about how much emissions need to be slashed: Labour, National, and the Greens are on the same page (Act thinks they're too much, Te Pati Maori thinks they're not enough). Debates about the extent of emissions reduction will now take place between political parties and extra-parliamentary groups like Greenpeace.
What this means in terms of parliamentary politics is that debate now shifts to the second question: how to reduce those emissions in line with the targets. This opens up another question, which is where the costs of reducing those emissions fall: on businesses or households?
This is a much more natural place for political debate. Labour and the Greens have their constituencies to help through the transition, while National has its.
This draft emissions plan is heavy on subsidies for low-income households: nearly $600 million to help low-income households scrap polluting cars and buy EVs, plus subsidies to improve insulation and the installation of heat pumps.
That's not to say this is a truly Red-Green document: somehow the agriculture sector managed to secure nearly a quarter of the funding doled out from Emissions Trading Scheme revenue, despite currently not paying a cent into the scheme.
Deputy PM Grant Robertson arriving with ministers James Shaw (left), Michael Wood, Damien O'Connor and Megan Woods, before announcing the Government's Emissions Plan. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Despite the parliamentary love-in over the broad support from the emissions budgets last week, there are still clear signs the Government is concerned about political buy-in for reducing emissions - particularly at a time of high inflation.
Retail politics is everywhere.
Gone are proposals to ban new gas connections to homes. The only potentially problematic "ban" is a proposal to ban or severely penalise the importing of extremely high-emissions vehicles.
The Government does have a target of reducing the amount New Zealanders drive by 20 per cent by 2035, but this plan is not the urbanist utopian document some might have hoped for when the Government slashed public transport fares in half nearly two months ago.
The plan says the Government wants more, better, cheaper public transport, but there's no immediate, funded policy to achieve that goal beyond some funding to pay bus drivers better, leading to better services.
Instead, the Government pivoted the lion's share of transport allocation - nearly $600m - to subsidising the uptake of low-emissions cars for low-income households. It's hard to think of a more retail policy than helping people buy a new car, but there are questions over whether it's the most efficient use of public funds.
Likewise, the Government has kicked a decision on congestion pricing back to later this year, potentially because it fears the optics of announcing another tax in the middle of an inflation spike (this is despite nearly every party in Parliament backing congestion charges).
Monday's plan is the biggest single policy win for tackling climate change in New Zealand political history. However, stressing that too strongly disguises the fact that the real political battle for climate change was won last week when National extended its commitment from backing just the Zero Carbon Act to the emissions budgets as a whole.
But fears over the political toxicity of inflation persist - and those fears show just how fragile the political consensus over tackling climate change could become.
There's a sense in this plan that New Zealanders are not ready to live in dense, public transport-oriented cities like Europeans. This plan tries to strip emissions from our current way of life, ignoring difficult questions over whether we need to change our current way of life to reduce emissions.
The political necessity of such choices has been well litigated for 30 years, whether or not those political imperatives are scientific folly the next 30 years will tell.
