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Helen Houghton
Co-leader New Conservative
nc.org.nz
New Conservative co-leader Helen Houghton says workers and taxpayers are being taken for a rort while politicians squabble over who has the smartest policies to fight climate change.
“The simple fact is there is no climate emergency – it is an invented political crisis, and unfortunately every party in parliament has bought into it.”
Since being introduced in April it has been revealed that the government’s ute tax has brought in $63 million. $95 million was paid out in “clean car” subsidies, meaning taxpayers have had to chip in $33 million.
Both the ute tax and clean car subsidy are unfair and unjust. Neither taxpayers nor owners of other vehicles should be subsidising the wealthy to buy Teslas.
Helen says “this sort of meddling is an abuse of government powers of taxation and regulation. NC will end all climate focussed taxes, subsidies, and regulations, including both the ute tax and the ‘clean car’ scam.”
“Putting more electric cars on the roads is simply virtue signalling that only benefits manufacturers, dealers, and the owners who can afford them.”
“Furthermore, it is irresponsible for the government to promote widespread adoption of electric vehicles when the country has neither the necessary electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, nor a plan to build it. Engineers have estimated that to service an electric vehicle fleet NZ will need to increase electricity generation by more than 50%, and transmission capacity by 100%. This is considered unlikely to be achievable within the next three decades, and will impose a massive financial burden on future generations.”
“In the meantime, we note that any increased demand for electricity is satisfied by burning dirty Indonesian coal at Huntly, so this policy doesn’t even have the intended effect of reducing so-called CO2 ‘pollution’.”
