ETS

Remind me again why we are bothering with an ETX.

I mean really…you can barely see our impact:

Hot on the heels of Phil Goff telling the truth about the the ETS, John Key has got into the game.

Key and Nick Smith have always said their ETS will be fiscally neutral.  It was even part of their election manifesto:

[The ETS] should be fiscally neutral rather than providing billions of dollars in windfall gains to the government accounts at the expense of businesses and consumers.  National does not think it’s responsible for government to use green initiatives to pad the Crown coffers while thinning out Kiwis’ wallets.

Since the election, John Key and Nick Smith have kept up this lie, saying their ETS would be fiscally neutral.

But yesterday, John Key finally told the truth.  He said that bringing agriculture into the ETS would raise money for the Government:

They are bring farming into the ETS two years earlier, so they gain revenue of $355m.

What’s in the water in Wellington?  After years of lying and saying the ETS is an environmental policy rather than a taxation-by-stealth policy, now both the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister are both telling the truth about it!

Labour has said it will use the Emissions Trading Scheme to fund its R&D policy.  At least they are finally being honest that the ETS is not an environmental policy and nothing more than a tax.

Back when David Parker was Climate Change Minister, he advised the Chairman of the ETS Select Committee, Charles Chauvel, in a secret paper that the ETS would raise $21 billion in extra tax by 2030.  That’s why Michael Cullen and the Treasury always supported the ETS even though they knew it would hurt the economy – it was a dishonest way of raising taxes.

The paper was kept secret and Labour always denied the ETS would raise tax – but Whaleoil has been given a copy by a deepthroat in the Treasury.

Nick Smith and Bill English are also lying when he says the ETS is fiscally neutral.   Smith supports the ETS because he is a mad greenie and his mate English supports it because he wants the $21 billion.

So, congrats to Labour’s Phil Goff for finally telling the truth – the ETS is all about taking money out of our pockets and handing it over to the Treasury to spend.

Letter From Minister Re Revenue and CPR 30 May 2008

It pains me to say this but Bill English deserves politician of the week for this statement.

”I think it shows that being driven by a fad, which at the time was to have lower carbon emissions….turned out more expensive than they expected”

Such refreshing honesty needs to be rewarded.

A direct question to Bill, though, needs to be asked.

So when is the ETS going to be abolished given that too was based on a fad?

Nick Smith is right about one thing.  His mad ETS is like Gallipoli – New Zealand will storm the beach before anyone else, get slaughtered and the rest of the world will say: “Thanks New Zealand, now the rest of us know not to land on that beach.”  Nick Smith is the Lord Kitchener of our tim.

This time it will be the whole country that is slaughtered on overseas economic battlefields.

The casualties will be New Zealand industry, New Zealand farms, and New Zealand workers.

We will sacrifice New Zealand and its people for a foreign idea, to save foreign countries, for foreign reasons.

And like Gallipoli it will be all for nothing.

The members are revolting. I know that is how Nick Smith sees them, but unlike other political parties in  New Zealand the pollies ignore their members at their peril in the National party.

The members are incensed. Just last weekend at the CNI conference a remit was passed unanimously to defer the ETS. The remit was passed in committee so that is why it took a while to leak out. Nick Smith spent Sunday vigorously trying to defuse the ticking time-bomb of the members. It isn’t working.

No Minister has released details of two remits proposed for the Northern Regional Conference in two weeks.

REMIT 2 : MANUREWA

That the National Party give urgent consideration to the deferment of the E.T.S.

Accepted subject to requirement that Manurewa work with Tamaki (Remit 5) on a joint proposal.

REMIT 5 : TAMAKI

That the Emissions Trading and the Carbon Credit Tax Schemes be delayed, until the money trail and the proposed benefits are clearly identified.

Accepted subject to requirement that Tamaki work with Manurewa (Remit 2 )on a joint proposal.

The Members aren’t happy Nick and John. They are in fact revolting. Best you deal with it. With CNI and Northern backing such remits, there is every chance that the parliamentary wing may well have policy foisted on them by the party, and they won’t like that. This sort of thing always happens when the parliamentary wing gets too big for their boots. This is why the party needs a President that stands up to caucus rather than bends over and presents his rear-end.

In the National Party the caucus ignores the party at its peril. Any board candidate that proposes dealing to caucus will be a strong contender.

Since no-one has blogged, not even the repeaters, then I guess it falls to me to reveal that at the weekend National Party CNI conference a remit was submitted and passed unanimously.

The remit was for National to ditch the ETS. As I said it passed unanimously.

At least some in the party have got their heads screwed on right.

I wonder when Nick Smith and John Key will start to listen?

Ian Wishart tears apart Nick Smith’s lies in an open letter.

Nick, I’ve listened with increasing interest to your disingenuous attempts to disown your comments from 2005 when you said this:

“The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.

“Labour Ministers may take pride in being toasted at International Climate conferences for being so bold and brave, but there is no justification for New Zealand going out in the cold by itself on this issue.<

“New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions made up only 0.4% of the global total and on a per capita basis our emissions are half those of countries like Australia and the United States. We are the only Southern Hemisphere country with binding legal obligations under Kyoto and giants like China and India have got off scot free.”<

You told Newstalk ZB’s Larry Williams that you made those comments in regard to a “carbon tax” and therefore that they don’t apply to the ETS.

Not so fast.

Your argument against the carbon tax, expressed above, was not because it was a tax rather than an ETS. Instead, your first mentioned reason for scorning it “is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.”

Indeed, the rest of your argument hinges almost entirely on the NZ acting alone issue, and negligible gain.

Act has already exposed your legerdemain in trying to equate NZ’s ETS with the much weaker European scheme, as some sort of misguided justification.

I don’t care whether you call your July 1 scheme an ETS, a carbon tax or one of Alison Holst’s crockpots…the arguments you made against the carbon tax in 2005 are equally valid against the ETS for exactly the same reasons.

Let the public record show your hypocrisy.

Regards

Ian Wishart

I’m starting a Whale  Oil Beef Hooked deadwood list and Nick Smith is the first one on it. Time to go Nick. Nelson doesn’t need you and we don’t want you.

The most lucid interview seen yet with Mad Nick.

John Key and Kevin Rudd chatting about Carbon Trading (image: John Ansell)

New Zealand stands alone in the world. It can’t be called leading because it is going to constitute bleeding more than leading. Australia has canned their plans for an ETS, at least for three years and now the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys and the Sausage Eaters have done the same.

If China, the US, India Australia, Germany and France don’t want a bar of emissions trading then why is that our government is still pressing ahead to keep New Zealand on the bleeding edge of emissions control when our economy produces less than 0.8% of the world’s emissions. It simply is economic suicide and folly.

Rudd in Australia bizarrely blames his flip-flop on the Opposition, a funny position to take considering he has an absolute majority in the House and the Senate with which to pass legislation.

Mr Rudd has put off his doomed emissions trading scheme until 2013 at the earliest, blaming a recalcitrant Opposition and slow global progress over climate change for the delay.

Back here in New Zealand, Fran O’Sullivan points out the precarious position that New Zealand now sits in and David Farrar, finally, if somewhat hesitantly pastes agrees that politically as well as economically our ETS is doomed. Ever the faithful mouthpiece of Bill English’s lies lines he suggests though that it simply isn’t possible to repeal or amend our ETS in time for July 1.

I’ll have to read the ETS legislation to check, but am unsure whether or not the Government can defer the entry of those sectors, without amending or repealing the ETS law. If a law change is needed, it couldn’t realistically be done by 1 July.

This of course is complete tosh. If a government in cahoots with an opposition can pass MP Superannuation schemes in the dead of the night in just 7 minutes then it can easily repeal, defer or postpone the implementation dates for each sector to at least match progress toward similar legislation by at least Australia a but should also include ALL of our major trading partners. This is easily a case for urgency of parliament, it is what urgency was designed for.

It is time now for John Key to put Nickpocrisy Smith and his daft ETS plans on hold, temporarily for now and permanently in the long run.

If Angela Merkel can see the writing on the wall and the short-arsed Frog is delaying then Nickpocrisy Smith and John Key should be able to come to grips with backing us out nicely from this folly. They should know they can get away with it, the polls tell them that,. If mining in national parks didn’t upset anyone, and the super city hasn’t either then I think they will find that ditching the silly ETS shouldn’t be too hard.

In any case it isn’t like Nickpocrisy Smith‘s officials have even got a working framework for the ETS to implement on July 1. They aren’t even close to having the scheme operational by then. There is no use having a market with the field being marked out and all the players aware of the game rules before commencing trading.\

Time for a little helping of humble pie John, ditch the stupid ETS and make it quick. i mean it isn’t like the fourth most abundant chemical element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen is even a pollutant. particularly when combined with two molecules of the third most abundant chemical element.