Helen Houghton
Conservative Party leader
In recent years, hundreds of thousands of hectares of productive New Zealand farmland have been lost to pine trees, prompting a bill that limits the amount of land being converted to ‘carbon farming’. Submissions are being heard by the environment select committee, but Conservative Party leader Helen Houghton says the proposed law change simply highlights the stupidity of ongoing government commitment to the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The ETS is the problem and the solution is simple – just get rid of it. But, instead, they’re making the system more and more complicated, even introducing an annual ballot system to determine which land can be allocated carbon credits for new forest. This is insane: what are they trying to do – keep the price of carbon credits artificially high? The problem is the market distortion created by the ETS, which inflates the value of forestry, and they want to introduce even more distortions. The fact that Māori land needs to be exempted from the new restrictions to avoid breaching Treaty obligations should be a clue about how problematic the whole proposal is.
Why is parliament wasting its time persisting with this? It is ‘big government’ thinking at its worst. The reality is, none of this does anything for the planet; it isn’t going to stop the floods or the droughts and it’s just keeping us poor. We could cover the whole country with pines and it wouldn’t save the planet from anything. The only people who benefit are those making money from the system and the politicians who use it to grow their power.
It really is time to ditch the delusion of fighting climate change – we just see it driving an endless string of bad policy decisions.
Recent months have seen:
· Concerns raised over a perceived rush of forestry conversions, timed to beat the introduction of new rules.
· A government proposal in late December to plant ‘low value’ Crown-owned land with carbon forests, including New Zealand’s largest working farm, Molesworth Station, which covers the high country between Blenheim and Hanmer Springs. The proposal was criticised by environmentalists and seen as a slap in the face for those who had farmed much of the land, which was accumulated through the tenure review process, essentially deciding it was “too valuable to farm”.
· The resignation recently of Molesworth Station’s long-serving manager, who was known to be frustrated with the threatened planting after decades of work to control wilding pines.
· The government signing up to new emissions reductions commitments, on top of existing commitments, which are estimated by Treasury to cost taxpayers $24 billion by 2030 – $12,000 per household.
· The development of a “green taxonomy” rule book targeting agriculture and forestry, launched by Climate Change Minister Simon Watts. Farmers fear this will make it increasingly difficult for them to access finance.
· Proposals for an extreme ‘ute tax’ were introduced by stealth as IRD changes to fringe benefit tax rules, and only quashed by a grassroots campaign calling out Simon Watts in his role as revenue minister.
The Conservative Party calls on the government to repeal the Zero Carbon Act and end the Emissions Trading Scheme and all other climate-focused taxes, subsidies, and regulations.
Get rid of all this nonsense! It makes it harder for our farmers to feed the world. It makes it hard for industry. And it makes everything more expensive for consumers. It is long past time to end this ‘green’ war on New Zealanders.
