SMELLIE SNIFFS THE BREEZE: Where's the ETS report?

SMELLIE SNIFFS THE BREEZE: Where's the Emissions Trading Scheme Reportback?

By Pattrick Smellie

August 28 (BusinessWire) - It's been a particularly satisfying week at Parliament for those of us olfactorily inclined. I hung out there like the old days, watching John Key smack down the smacking referendum, only to have it rise from the grave to be smacked down again, like The Creature in some bad horror movie.

I was not there for the smackdowns, but in search of an apparently fragile species, the reportback of the select committee reviewing the Emissions Trading Scheme. After almost nine months of deliberation, the Government needs the committee to stop trying to decide to do with the legislation already in place, in time to change it before the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

It is particularly important to National that there be a highly united parliamentary position on the ETS and Labour knows it, so has considerable sway in getting things it wants. After all, if Climate Change Minister Nick Smith's ETS fails, there's still the one Labour put in place last year.

In addition, a big majority for a new ETS would give everyone what they need in this area: certainty. One of the bedevilling aspects of the country's experience with carbon policy to date has been the amount of uncertainty it's produced.

Most vital industries need the rules before making major investment and business adjustments, and much of what has happened lately has simply served to confuse and deter investment. For example, carbon sink forest planting, which should be happening apace, is stalled.

Poking around Parliament on Monday produced neither hide nor hair of the shy beast, although there had been a final committee meeting scheduled on Thursday the previous week. Select committees place great store by old-fashioned notions like not breaking confidences, especially with journalists.

However, whisps of information suggested that publication date was Wednesday, and more than one minority report would be attached. Something about it didn't feel right, Kemosabe.

Come Wednesday, I pottered off down to Parliament again around Question Time, when select committee reports are usually tabled. I ran into a gaggle of cameras and microphones, having managed somehow to get a nano-second in front of John Key as he headed to the House for Questions. Looking a bit ashen, he said he would comment at 3.30 on John Boscawen's smacking bill - unexpectedly drawn that afternoon in the Private Members' ballot - and threatening to reignite an issue that surely even its backers must be tiring of.

Back to my mission, I checked for the ETS reportback, which wasn't there, so sought out the committee chairman, Peter Dunne in the House. A proof-reading delay meant Thursday publication, he said.

As I waited for Dunne, Key scooted out of the Debating Chamber with National's long-serving political tactician Murray McCully, and disappeared into a meeting room, carrying a distinct waft of smacking.

There followed a couple of hours of total confusion where the issue was loose again, in which Key's office was unaware of the PM's intentions, no one knew where this mythical 3.30 statement would occur, whether that time was right or, most intriguingly of all, which way Key would jump.

At times like this, Parliament becomes a living organism. People are walking about consulting one another, bumping into each other, sharing impressions and information, observing what others are up to. Stay on the move yourself, and you will find the source of events by osmosis, by who is hanging around where, by the knowledge that everything must cohere in time for the 6pm news.

And all the time, that unsettling scent of the ETS select committee reportback, still in hiding.

So, 2p.m. Thursday, and it's time to trot back down to Parliament to try and pick up the reportback. Still nothing. Up to the Press Gallery; to witness the back end of a huge parliamentary ruckus about where the report is, and why one minority report has been pulled, possibly in breach of Standing Orders. Labour's last Climate Change Minister David Parker is trying to table his own copy, but the Speaker is disallowing it.

Dunne looks a little perplexed and is uninvolved, although the Speaker insists this is all the committee's problem until the report is tabled in the House.

No one will discuss the issue, partly because it would be a particularly serious and noticeable breach of Standing Orders to reveal committee doings in times of high drama like this, but also because there is genuine confusion.

Into such vacuums swirl spicy theories. From cock-up to Machiavelli, the range is complete.

The Maori Party has always supported a carbon tax rather than an ETS, and opposed Labour's scheme because it was too soft on major greenhouse gas emitters. Its minority report apparently backed a carbon tax. With the Nats' version looking weaker than Labour's, it's unlikely the Maori Party would have changed sides suddenly to support an ETS.

Or did someone in the Maori Party say: "oh no, not another issue where we lose to the Government when they ignore us again, like they did most recently with super-city seats? Can we pull this report and just keep our heads down?" Or something like that.

Or did someone in National fear policy failure and a new bad political issue? Did they decide it was time to talk turkey with the Maori Party about things like forests claimed under the Treaty of Waitangi? Or the treatment of such forests under an ETS, or some variant of all of the above? Who knows?

Did the Maori Party perhaps decide to have another crack at cutting a forestry deal with National to support their ETS, having reportedly failed with Labour in a similar negotiation before it opposed Labour's ETS? It has a plausible ring, but there is nothing concrete suggesting it.

Did someone in the Maori Party get cold feet or horribly confused about the whole thing and set in train a series of foot-shooting actions all too familiar among new political parties who are still getting to grips with the weird formalities of parliamentary practice?.

Or is it as mundane as the select committee clerk acting on an instruction to withdraw the minority report when they shouldn't have, or Dunne blundering in allowing it to happen?

Who knows? None of the above may be true. No one can discuss it so I certainly don't know. But as a test of the parliamentary nose, a particularly cheeky little week indeed. I'm off to Beervana.

(BusinessWire)

Disclosure: Pattrick Smellie gave pro bono communications advice to the Yes Vote campaign that supports the 2007 reform to the s59 defence in the Crimes Act.

© Scoop Media