Editorial: Farcical

OPINION: From the outset, National's emissions trading scheme was fundamentally flawed.

Now, as shown by the events of this week, even the process of enacting the legislation has descended into farce. First, Treasury admitted that the long-term cost of the scheme to the taxpayer would be double what it had originally estimated. Then, purely to ensure that it would have the numbers to pass its bill, National is seeking to stitch up a deal with the Maori Party, under which certain iwi would have forestry rights on Department of Conservation land.

A major fault of the bill, aside from the timidity of its emissions target, is that it would transfer more cost from polluters to the individual taxpayer. There would be a longer phase-out period for Government subsidies, no cap on emissions and agriculture's entry into the scheme would be delayed by two years.

For a Centre-Right party such as National, some of whose supporters are slow to grasp the reality of climate change, a different policy to the previous Labour Government was predictable. But New Zealanders had a right to expect that any new scheme would be soundly costed.

Yet towards the end of the select committee hearings into the legislation, Treasury revealed that the changes would cost around $110 billion, or twice its original calculation. Labour estimates that each taxpayer would face a $92,000 bill by 2050.

It is always easy to point the finger at Treasury bean-counters when the department errs. On this occasion, the miscalculation might be due to the extreme haste with which the new scheme was drawn up, a problem which also led to the select committee being given too little time to hear submissions and consider the bill. National's need to offer the Maori Party a sweetener for its support followed an inevitable split in the select committee. This sort of wheeling and dealing is a totally inappropriate way to pass legislation dealing with a global problem of the magnitude of climate change.

No matter how National justifies a forestry concession, most New Zealanders will regard it as preferential treatment for one group. And the total absence of political consensus for the bill in Parliament does not bode well for its survival under any future government.

The timetable for passing a scheme before next month's climate change talks in Copenhagen was always impossible if the end product were to be robust, fair and subject to adequate consultation. It would have been advisable for the Government to have stuck with Labour's scheme but worked longer term on the preferable option of a carbon tax.

Already New Zealand has begun to attract international mockery for its response to climate change. A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper contrasted New Zealand's promotion of its clean, green image with the "measly" size of its promised emissions cut.

This comment might be expected in a Centre-Left newspaper which has campaigned on climate change, but both the bill itself and the shambolic process used to pass it do have the potential to threaten New Zealand's environmental credibility. And the finished legislation will be so limp that it will end any prospect of this nation having moral authority or leverage at the Copenhagen talks.

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