Emissions legislation 'not race based' - Govt

The Government is rejecting claims by Labour that its proposed deal with the Maori Party over new climate change legislation is race-based.

Labour leader Phil Goff told reporters this morning that National’s proposal to give a sweetheart deal to some Maori foresters in exchange for the Maori Party votes on its Emissions Trading Scheme legislation amounted to race-based treatment.

"You can’t give concessions based on ethnicity. You've got to be fair to all parties in the same position. The officials explicitly advised against a special deal for Maori foresters saying that it wasn’t warranted," Goff said.

"This is a desperate government trying to buy votes but it's not creating a scheme that can be in any way sustained into the future."

The deal would potentially deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative carbon credits to iwi, who would be able to enter contracts to plant forests on conservation and other Crown-owned land.

It also includes a beefed up home insulation package for the low paid, predominantly Maori, and a Treaty of Waitangi clause in the Government's emissions trading legislation.

Goff said there had been no transparency over National's dealing with Maori and the public had no idea what was being negotiated.

"It almost seems like a deliberate strategy … to rush this through at the last moment."

Goff said he would not rule out Labour re-entering talks with National, but only if a "reasonable" deal could be reached.

But Prime Minister John Key said there was no "sweetheart" deal for Maori in general – it was only those with affected Treaty settlements who were involved.

Key told reporters on his way into National's weekly caucus meeting that the Crown faced potential legal action at the Waitangi Tribunal or the High Court if it did not come to some agreement.

Ngai Tahu and several other iwi are pondering legal action over what they claim is a plunge in the value of their forests purchased from the Crown as part of Treaty settlements, if the ETS goes ahead in its current form.

"We're trying to work through a situation where it's possible that iwi may not have had all the information when they entered negotiations in good faith," Key said.

"I think this is a potentially constructive way through that helps both our climate change issues and may resolve (the problem) but I wouldn’t want to prejudice those particular court cases if they take place."

Climate Change Minister Nick Smith said the plan was for native trees to be planted on Crown land that could not be harvested. The commercial gain for iwi would be the carbon credits those trees accrued.

"The preference is for a long term permanent forest sink in native trees on those lands."

Smith said the Department of Conservation was also in negotiations with foreign foresters to plant trees on marginal DOC land. "It would be odd for DOC to be prepared to do deals with foreign companies … but not with our own iwi and other New Zealanders."

Meanwhile, Key has also slammed Treasury predictions that the proposed changes to the ETS would add $50 billion to the price tag of the scheme.

"The numbers from Treasury are nonsense. Treasury can't tell us what the deficit is going to be in December let alone what's happening in 2030 or 2040.

"The argument we should over-tax the economy in the order of tens of billions of dollars and that it's to have no impact on slowing down New Zealand is completely inconsistent with every other piece of Treasury advice."