Kyoto Rorts And Scams

The fart tax on pastoral farming and Labour's appropriation of forest-owners' carbon credits is just the start of the Government's Kyoto rorts, ACT New Zealand Deputy Leader Ken Shirley said today.

"I am advised that the Government used carbon credits, appropriated from forest-owners, to subsidise State-owned enterprise Meridian Energy's venture into wind farming at Te Apiti in the Tararua foothills," Mr Shirley said.

"The rort is that Meridian Energy has then sold those carbon credits to the Dutch Government - the Government has effectively cashed in on the stolen carbon credits through the dividend payment from its own SOE.

"Forestry carbon credits have a current value of $25 per ton of CO2. The acceptable plantation forestry sequestration of carbon under Kyoto is 720 tons of CO2 per hectare. This gives a carbon value of $18,000 per hectare.

"On this basis, the carbon credit/tax on forestry is about 15 times the value of the land, and considerably greater than the value of the timber. Therefore, it no longer makes sense to invest in forestry if you are locked in and incur the tax with any future change in land use.

"It is little wonder that new forestry planting has dried up and investment is flowing away from plantation forestry. Government has quite literally killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

"If wind farming is so competitive and wonderful, why does it need a subsidy over and above the comparative advantage it has over gas and oil, which will be hit with the carbon tax?

"Perhaps the biggest risk of the Kyoto nonsense is its pathway to a command economy with Government progressively influencing and distorting all investment decisions. This is a recipe for disaster.

"ACT is the only Party in New Zealand that is stating unequivocally that we will withdraw New Zealand's ratification of the fundamentally flawed Kyoto Protocol" Mr Shirley said.

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