Emissions scheme: You pay!

Can you believe this National Party? Their Emissions Trading Scheme is such a crock it is starting to look like Humpty Dumpty after his fall. Broken!

There seems to be no one who can support it other than the Maori Party with yet another sweetheart deal. We have deals for the farmers, deals for the big industrialists and now for a selected group of iwi forest owners.

And who is going to pay - the tax payers of the future - you and me. How much? Well, scrambling for answers the Treasury gave the Select Committee two figures about $500 million dollars different over the course of two days.

The commentators are really starting to catch on -  take a look at Rod Oram's column in the Sunday Star Times of November 28, talk about a blistering attack. And its not restricted to local media, the UK Guardian has commentary under the by line "Fred Pearce' Greenwash" in which he assesses countries performance in response to their Kyoto obligations and observes:

"But my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the worlds as "clean and green".

Is John Key going to Copenhagen to defend his master cop out (and defend his Tourism portfolio's precious brand) - no way.

It is not just that the Bill that goes to Parliament is a crock. It  is the two fingers that the Nats have given to the Select Committee process with compressed submission times and stumbling advice from too hard pressed officials, culminating in a report with more minority reports than we had meals over the weekend.

Take a look at the one our team prepared. You can see Labour's minority report between pages 4 and 18 of this Climate Change Response document.  

In it, you will see that our MPs - Charles Chauvel, David Cunliffe, David Parker and Moana Mackey took the time to critique National's rushed process, analyse the effect of the proposed changes, and explain the detail of a bi-partisan arrangement that we put to National some time ago to avoid precisely what is happening now - a last minute rush to get a deal with a minor party that will not create a lasting consensus.