20 June 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Govt urged to extend emissions trading review

The New Zealand Climate Change Coalition has called for the Government
to extend the time frame for the Select Committee reviewing emissions
trading, and to clarify its real intentions on this issue.

Owen McShane, chair of the coalition’s policy panel, says Climate Change
Minister Nick Smith is creating confusion with his continual references
to the Government’s commitment to an emissions trading scheme, and this
is compounded by the allocation of over half a billion dollars in Vote
Climate Change in the 2009/10 Estimates, even though Government is
waiting on the now delayed report of a Select Committee established by
Parliament to review emissions trading.

“Statement after statement by Minister Smith give all the indications of
a fait accompli, with clear terms of reference for the Select Committee
being over-ridden or ignored completely. For instance, the allocation
for 2009/10 of $474 million to cover emissions units is in clear
conflict with the term of reference that requires the Select Committee
to examine the relative merits of an emissions trading scheme or a tax
on carbon or energy as a New Zealand response to climate change.

"Clearly, regardless of whatever the Select Committee may recommend, the
Government has already rejected the option of a tax on carbon dioxide
emissions.

“Even more disturbing is the failure to action the clear "term of
reference" requiring a high quality, quantified regulatory impact
statement (RIS) to identify the net benefits or costs to New Zealand of
any policy action, including international relations and commercial
benefits and costs. Not only has the absence of such an RIS been a
severe handicap to the many people and organisations who have made
submissions to the Select Committee, but the confusion caused by its
continuing absence has been highlighted in the past week by:
• the computation by the Major Electricity Users Group of the
significant increases in the electricity bills payable by New Zealanders
under an emissions trading scheme;
• the questions and caveats in a joint report by the New Zealand
Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) and Infometrics, and
• the recommendation by those two agencies that agriculture be excluded
as long as measurement of emissions is too expensive.

“While some have claimed that the joint NZIER/Infometrics report
supports an emissions trading scheme, our careful reading of the full
report reveals that it poses more questions than it answers.

m o r e
“Now that the Select Committee has indicated a need for more time to
complete its deliberations, while we await the required RIS, and while
science is re-evaluating previous projections in the light of the global
cooling over the past six years, and taking into account the major UN
conference on climate change set for Copenhagen next December, the
Government should act now to extend the time frame for the Select
Committee until at least March of next year, when the whole picture will
be better clarified.

"The Rudd Government in Australia has already announced postponement
until 2011 of the scheme for which it is trying to get legislative approval.

If our government means what it says about moving in concert with
Australia, we should activate a similar postponement.

“If this means problems will arise from the existence of the previous
Labour Government’s last-gasp and ill-conceived Climate Change Response
(Emissions Trading) Amendment Act 2008, there is a simple solution:
repeal it, and start again in 2010 with a clean slate,” Mr McShane
concluded.

Ends

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