Key should pull the plug on this dog of a bill

OPINION: Am I hallucinating or did I hear the cry of one law for everybody?

That echo of National's 2005 election campaign came, ironically, from the lips of Labour leader Phil Goff as National wrestled with the concept of giving race based favours to iwi forestry enterprises in order to buy Maori Party votes for the Emissions Trading Scheme.

As a deeply divided Parliament prepares to debate the details of the ETS legislation today, it is fascinating to see how the tables have turned since that fundamental one law for all campaign was started by the Nats in Opposition.

Labour might be uncomfortable with running the same theme, and it might be unsettling for many of their own Maori supporters, liberals and MPs, but they have to respond to the wide concerns in the Pakeha electorate.

To do otherwise would be to turn a blind eye to race-based deals aimed at pushing through, under urgency,
highly questionable ETS legislation when the estimates of downstream costs are wildly variable (the Treasury now estimates the cost at a staggering $110 billion by 2050, rather than the original $50b).

Prime Minister John Key could ultimately pull the plug on this in order to regroup and reconsider.

That would mean hanging Climate Change Minister Nick Smith out to dry, in much the same way as Sports
Minister Murray McCully and Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman were left hanging over the Rugby World Cup broadcasting rights debacle.

Not that this would affect Mr Key. In fact, it would probably add to his reputation as the Mr Reasonable
of politics, trying to find a sensible way through an intractably complex problem where the downstream effects and costs are so alarming they are beyond comprehension.

To barge ahead will mean forcing through, without adequate debate and scrutiny, legislation that has no
across-the-board backing, and which could have catastrophic economic effects.

This raises comparisons with Helen Clark's governments death rattle over the Electoral Finance
Act, the final act of folly that dogged Labour all the way to the 2008 election.

That measure was also a dog, and there were alarming warnings all along the way. But Miss Clark and her advisers seemed to think that backing off and rethinking would be read as a sign of weakness.

No-one has come up with a compelling reason why New Zealand should try to legislate an ETS programme before the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen next month.

In fact, it would seem more sensible to await the decisions by major trading partners Australia and America, as well as any outcome from Copenhagen itself.

Crying taihoa would also give the Nats a chance to take a better sounding in the electorate about that sweetheart deal sought by the Maori Party on behalf of Ngai Tahu and four other associated iwi.

Among other concessions, the iwi want first refusal on rights to carbon farm on Crown land, flexible land
use to shift forest plantings, and priority in partnership deals with state-owned enterprises.

Mr Key argues this is a constructive way forward as the Government could face legal claims from iwi over
Treaty settlements made when there was no intention of landing ETS costs on the claimants.

Mr Goff counters that concessions cannot be based on ethnicity, that officials advice and Crown legal advice is that there is no breach of the Crowns undertakings, and that Mr Key is raising the false spectre of a legal claim in order to do a dirty deal.

Faced with this dogs breakfast, reconsideration of the approach would seem logical.

But this would give the Government problems with the Maori Party and powerful iwi business interests.
A rethink could also rebound in the direction of a low rate carbon tax and subsidy scheme rather than an
ETS.

National would win ACT's backing for that, and possibly even qualified backing from Labour, which would make legislation more sustainable, but a switch at this late stage would be regarded in Maori Party ranks as Pakeha treachery.

That would add to Hone Harawira's mana   he has opposed deal making with the perfidious Nats all along  and would undermine the mana of the Maori Party leadership.

There are fish-hooks galore for Mr Key in this.