11 December 2015

ETS review a farce as Groser evades advice

The Secretary for the Environment has admitted that the Ministry for the Environment gave no advice to Tim Groser about excluding agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from the review of the emissions trading scheme, says Labour’s spokesperson for the Environment David Parker.

“Vicky Robertson’s admission at the Select Committee review of the Ministry for the Environment follows the announcement by Tim Groser in November that the review of the ETS will exclude the growing half of New Zealand’s emissions which come from agriculture.

“It is now clear he deliberately did this blindly without advice from the Ministry or Treasury.

“Both have previously said the ETS does not work properly with agricultural emissions excluded. So did the Government’s own 2011 ETS review, which the government has since ignored.

“It’s clear excluding agricultural emissions encourages those emissions to get worse.

“It’s clear also that excluding agriculture pushes the economic cost of those increasing emissions on to other parts of the economy.

“And it’s clear that excluding agriculture undermines forestry, encouraging more dairy emissions.

“At the very time when New Zealand is being criticised in Paris for not doing enough on climate change, the National Government is caught doing an unprincipled deal for its farm voters at the cost of our economy and our environment,” says David Parker.

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