This is edition 2026/093 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. The Lobbyists who wrote the climate law
Bryce Edwards
- 🔥 New Zealand's Government announced it would retroactively strip citizens of the right to sue major greenhouse gas emitters, overriding official advice to let courts proceed.
- 🏢 Fonterra and Z Energy each hand-delivered a printed briefing note to a staffer inside the Prime Minister's office in June and July 2024, both companies have confirmed.
- 🧾 The briefing proposed actual statutory language — a "two-sentence legislative amendment" to the Climate Change Response Act to wipe out tort-based climate litigation.
- ⚖️ The amendment was designed to kill Mike Smith's climate damage case, which the Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu kaumātua has pursued through the courts since 2019.
- 🏛️ On 12 May 2026, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced the Government would do precisely what the corporate briefing had requested, framing it as a matter of "business certainty".
- 🔍 In March 2025, an Official Information Act request specifically targeting documents about Smith v Fonterra returned no mention of the meetings, the briefing note, or any hint the document existed.
- ⚠️ A second OIA request from Lawyers for Climate Action NZ produced the same result — nothing.
- ⏳ The corporate defendants missed a court-ordered deadline of 27 March 2026 to disclose lobbying-related documents, only releasing them after Goldsmith's announcement.
- ⚖️ On 21 May, Justice Peter Andrew ruled Fonterra and Z Energy's confidentiality claims could not be sustained and ordered the document released publicly.
- 🔵 Christopher Luxon's spokesperson said the PMO "has no record of either on file" regarding the meetings and briefing notes, adding Cabinet "makes its own decisions".
- 📰 Journalist Andrea Vance identified an identical pattern in 2024, when three primary industry lobby groups drafted RMA amendments after losing a court ruling on the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation scheme.
- 🏛️ The Government amended the RMA under urgency within weeks of receiving that industry letter, granting councils power to issue the consents the industry wanted.
- 👥 Smith describes the episode as "a co-ordinated campaign of secret lobbying, political interference and corporate influence at the highest levels of power".
- 📊 The briefing note appears to have been prepared in substantial part by elite law firm Chapman Tripp, acting for the corporate defendants in Smith v Fonterra.
- 🛑 Smith noted that "ordinary New Zealanders do not get private access to the prime minister's office to discuss shutting down active court proceedings against them."
