The Greens are trading the futures of Māori and their potential economic freedom in a calculated ploy to capture a few more votes, says Māori Climate Commissioner Donna Awatere Huata.

Greens leader James Shaw is planning the release of the Government’s ETS review next week, following a long period of secret development, during which a small number of Māori were provided extremely limited and strictly controlled opportunities to review material.

“Māori have the most at stake in this review as the proposals directly impact the future of whenua Māori,” says Commissioner Awatere Huata. “Yet, despite the best efforts of Māori to engage fully and openly in the process, we have been denied our rightful place at the table.”

“As a result, we will see a series of policy proposals which dash the hopes for economic freedom for Iwi Māori, cost the Māori economy billions of dollars in future earnings, and attempt to assert extraordinary levels of control over the freedom of Māori landowners to determine how best to use their whenua.”

With over half of whenua Māori in forestry – one of the leading drivers of regional employment and sources of intergenerational wealth – the impacts of the new proposed ETS will be far reaching for Māori communities.

“With climate czar Rod Carr and James Shaw’s plan to nationalise the ETS market by making the Government the sole buyer of carbon credits, they are in-essence proposing to steal the value of whenua Māori to line the public coffers,” says Commissioner Awatere Huata. “The ETS proposals would see a massive confiscation of value from Māori – possibly the worst single example of this since Māori were driven off their lands following the colonial wars of aggression in the 19th Century.”

“Rod Carr has infected James Shaw with the ideology of his radical UN agenda,” says Commissioner Awatere Huata. “Because of Carr’s obsession with measuring New Zealand’s progress on gross emissions – when our international agreements are based in net emissions – we will need to rapidly decarbonise the whole economy. In doing so, Carr and Shaw will trigger enormous costs, making the current recession and cost of living crisis look like a garden party.”

“Crushed under the weight of this radical restructure of the economy will be Aotearoa’s poorest and most vulnerable, including generations of Māori.”

“Adding insult to injury, James Shaw has spoken about creating a carbon dividend to offset the new cost of living crisis they are engineering. What this means is stealing the value of whenua Māori to pay carbon welfare to Pakeha New Zealand and robbing rural landowners of the value of their whenua to prop up the Green’s support in urban Aotearoa.”

Commissioner Awatere Huata says the whole process has been an appalling example of a failure to meet – or even understand – the obligations of partnership under Te Tiriti.

“Whichever way you add this up, at every stage of this process and through every long-term impact and abuse these proposals will create, the ETS review is anti-Māori and should be consigned straight to the dustbin of history with every other misguided, racist and colonialist policy.”

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