In the first of a series scrutinising every party's commitment to climate action, Rod Oram looks at the National Party, starting with where it stands on the Zero Carbon Act
Opinion: Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle were foretastes of our utter and terminal unsustainability, as will worse cyclones to come, if we fail to confront our climate crisis.
A good way to ensure we ingrain our recent lessons and respond fully to them is to make our general election in October a referendum on climate.
For a real referendum, though, every party must show voters its depth of knowledge on climate, the level of leadership it’s offering and the policies it is determined to deliver. And each party must lay all that out for us by mid-May.
READ MORE:
* With our politics, it’s amazing we’ve got this far on climate
* NZ is on climate glide time
* We’re light years from the change we need
Thus prepared, we can have informed, rigorous debates across Aotearoa before the election so we can vote wisely. Then hopefully, we can forge at last a bold and practical consensus on our disaster recovery, climate adaptation and mitigation to achieve true resilience.
Our traditional electioneering won’t work. Some flashy but vague policies unveiled a few weeks before the election with no commitment to deliver them will leave us as ill-informed and aimless as we are now.
Because our next government could be in office for several terms, this election is our last chance to turn the politics of climate into a powerful force for change. If we squander yet another half dozen years, we will dig an even deeper, more dangerous hole for ourselves.
This column will scrutinise National – subsequent ones in coming months will do the same for every party's commitment to climate action.
Even the Bluegreens, the association of MPs and party members who espouse environmental issues, are wandering clueless in the wilderness
National is the right place to start because it’s the biggest mystery on climate. It says it is committed to climate. But it has never articulated a comprehensive or convincing suite of policies. And the little it has said on climate is hedged one way or another.
A very telling example of that came this week from Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis, National’s leader and finance spokesperson respectively. They said fellow party MP Maureen Pugh, who has long denied humanity’s role in the climate crisis, had a lot of climate reading to do and they were going to ensure she did it.
But that raised the question of how much reading they’ve done and how much it’s shaped their climate thinking. Over the past year or so, Willis has been making a concerted effort to come up to speed, and she has admitted to some of the experts she’s consulted that she has a lot to learn.
Luxon learned something about climate through the narrow lens of the airline industry. But as a politician, he’s yet to articulate a strong, grounded and ambitious whole-of-economy view on climate, let alone a whole-of-society one.
Worse, the climate myopia is party-wide. Even the Bluegreens, the association of MPs and party members who espouse environmental issues, are wandering clueless in the wilderness. This is evident, for example, in the vapid agenda for their annual meeting this weekend in Blenheim, as business editor Nikki Mandow described in the morning 8 Things email to Newsroom Pro subscribers on Tuesday. A long quote is at the bottom of this column.*
When it comes to climate, dissembling is the latest form of denial. So, National must tell us what it would deliver on climate if it formed the next government. Here are six issues for starters:
First, it must tell voters exactly where it stands on the Zero Carbon Act. That’s the bedrock legislation on which we’re building our climate response. All actors, not just businesses, need confidence there is a strong, all-party, long-term commitment to it so they can plan and invest accordingly. Much of the UK’s climate success to-date is based on its equivalent which has endured for 14 years so far despite the UK’s political turmoil.
National voted for the act in 2019. But delivered a list of seven significant changes it would make within 100 days of forming a government. It has never made clear which it considers are no longer necessary or which it would still change.
Second, National must lead on agriculture’s climate issues as it considers itself the true voice of rural New Zealand. But to-date it has been a follower, going along with the dominant views in the sector that our farmers are already world-leading on climate (not true); that minimal, slow action on climate is all they can manage (not true); and that overseas customers and competitors are not up to much (not true).
Third, National must work with the nation’s carbon budgets this government has agreed and the Emissions Reduction Plan it has launched as a key step towards achieving them. Both relied on substantial analysis from the Climate Change Commission. Relitigating the budgets and back-pedalling on the ERP would be chronic examples of deliberate climate procrastination. Both are very strong platforms crying out for ambitious government policies so they can deliver on their promise.
Fourth, National must be explicit about its plans for the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as a meaningful price on carbon is vital to incentivising climate action. It gutted the ETS in 2008, the previous time it resumed office. It took some years for the current Labour government to make it fit-for-purpose again. But just before Christmas, the Government significantly weakened it again. Currently the price of carbon is only $70 a tonne, compared with €100 ($170) in the EU.
Fifth, National must demonstrate it deeply understands the climate challenges of major sectors such as transport, housing and urban form, energy (electricity and fossil fuels), forestry and infrastructure. Also the very significant opportunities all those sectors have to contribute to climate solutions. But only if they are helped by the right policies and incentives from government and there is a strong voter support for them that political leaders have helped build.
Sixth, it needs to be credible on climate to those voters who rate it high in their priorities. As National will find far more of them towards the centre of politics than the far right, it should actively court them with ambitious climate policies, rather than procrastinating to protect its far right flank from further incursions by ACT.
Particularly because Labour, for all its vaunting climate rhetoric, has failed to establish its climate credibility. But that’s the subject of a later column.
* As Nikki Mandow, Newsroom business editor, wrote in the Tuesday morning email to Newsroom Pro subscribers:
“This weekend, the Bluegreens, the National Party’s policy advisory group on environmental issues, will hold its annual forum. About 100 people are expected to travel to Blenheim to attend.
“National Party leader Chris Luxon will speak, as will deputy and finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis. Something like a dozen MPs, former MPs and mayors are on the programme, including former National leader Todd Muller, now in charge of agriculture and climate change.
“There is no shortage of big guns.
“Yet the focus – from the agenda at least – appears woolly. There are “pitch a policy” sessions from Greenpeace, the petroleum industry lobby group Energy Resources Aotearoa, Irrigation NZ and others, panels on RMA reform and “Agriculture and the Environment” (no further topic details), and a farmer presentation. At 6pm everyone will adjourn to the Allan Scott Bistro, and the next day there are field trips. Option a) wildlife centre. Option b) wine research centre.
“In an election year, with two almost unprecedented wild weather events in a month leaving few in any doubt about the urgency of action on climate change, an unambitious Bluegreen forum feels like a massive missed opportunity. Everyone loves a giant weta breeding programme but we urgently need grunty environmental policy from the party that might lead us from October.”
