Labour should not cut spending on climate change

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, August 30th, 2023 - 22 comments
Categories: chris hipkins, climate change, grant robertson, greens, labour, science - Tags:

At one level I think this is smart politics.

The Government’s budget changes, designed to deal with a reduction in the tax intake and remove discretionary spending areas for National to cut is, politically, very smart.

Over the past two election campaigns National has shown that it could not put a budget together to save itself.

And it now has a mammoth task to come up with something coherent that adjusts for the Government’s latest changed.

Good luck with the calculator boys.

But Labour’s choice of where to cut leaves me somewhat cold.  It has cut funding from the Climate Emergency Response Fund on the basis that the money would not be spent.

From Radio New Zealand:

Finance Minister Grant Robertson says he will apologise to the Climate Change Minister over cuts to climate spending announced without James Shaw being informed.

On Monday, the government announced $4 billion will be freed up through cuts, savings, delays, and reprioritisations. It will not be made available for new spending, and will be treated as savings.

While some of the money will come from trimming future Budget operating allowances, as well as a directive to public sector agencies to cut their baseline spending and reduce their use in consultants and contractors, $1.018b will come from immediate savings.

Some $236m will come from the Climate Emergency Response Fund, which is supposed to be ring-fenced for climate spending, but instead will be returned to the general savings pool.

According to Newsroom, James Shaw knew the government was doing a savings exercise and was briefed on a $10m cut to a waste priority – but only found out about the remaining $226m at the same time the public did.

Robertson admitted Shaw was supposed to be informed.

“Yes, he should have,” Robertson said.

“It appears there was a communication breakdown around that, and so I’ll have a chat with James and apologise to him for that. He definitely should have known about it.”

But Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said there was no need for Shaw to be informed as much of the climate savings came from programmes and portfolios Shaw was not responsible for, such as transport, agriculture, and forestry.

“These were savings that were identified by the ministers concerned. I wouldn’t have expected necessarily, if they weren’t in his portfolio area, I wouldn’t have necessarily expected that he would be,” Hipkins said.

Robertson was right to apologise.  A mea culpa was well and truly deserved.

Hipkins’ response was not so good.  You do not form a deep meaningful relationship by offering technical defences to budget cuts in an area of utmost importance to your most closely aligned policy.

And now is not the time to make cuts to measures designed to address climate change.  The fund has already had significant benefits including one project that will cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking 300,000 cars off the road. A further investment will cut coal use by Fonterra significantly.

And although gross emissions are now falling a great deal more has to be done for New Zealand to meet our international obligations.

From Stuff:

New Zealand remains significantly off track to meet a promise it made to the United Nations to reduce its net carbon emissions to half of its 2005 gross emissions by 2030, the International Monetary Fund says.

But it says doubling the real price of carbon credits by 2030, while “politically difficult”, could largely close gap.

The Washington-based financial institution said that New Zealand had made progress in narrowing the gap between its projected emissions in 2030 and the commitment it made to the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021.

The IMF expected the country’s net emissions would peak next year and decline sharply from 2030 as recently-planted forests matured and started to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere.

But it estimated the country would miss its 2030 commitment by emitting 17 million tonnes of net emissions more than it had agreed to emit that year.

That was an improvement on the 24 million-tonne miss that was projected last year, it said.

Using fiscal pressures to reduce action on climate change sets the wrong priority.  It is almost inevitable that the cost of responding to climate change will mean that there are permanent fiscal pressures to deal with.   But if we are going to play our role in reducing emissions we have to to make the resources available.

22 comments on “Labour should not cut spending on climate change ”

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  1. Ad 1
    30 August 2023 at 10:02 am

    I don't know why Robertson is still there.

    We need to go through his media release from yesterday because there's a lot in it:

    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2308/S00175/government-tightens-belt-and-clamps-down-on-spending-on-consultants-and-contractors.htm

    “Since May we have seen further deterioration in the global economy, particularly in China. This will continue to have a direct impact on the New Zealand economy, and it is important that the Government responds to meet our balanced and responsible fiscal goals."

    Are Treasury forecasts even 6 months into the future that bad? A minister well versed in dealing with economic shocks should have done a better job at interrogating them.

    "The economy is turning a corner, but inflation remains sticky. It is trending down but is doing so slower than we would like so we are doing our bit to help nudge it downwards faster,”

    So let's just pause for a moment and recognise the inflationary fever the government helped cause with $60 billion of COVID expenditure. But then forgot to have a plan for how to get out of it. We are not 'turning a corner': current forecast is for recession or 1% growth. We went into tens of billions of debt just to stand still. This is a pathetic result.

    “Public sector agencies are being required to trim one or two percent off their existing baselines. They have been directed to do this while protecting front line services. To ensure this, I have excluded several agencies from the exercise entirely. These permanent savings will apply to about 19 percent of the government’s expenditure,” Grant Robertson said.

    Which agencies? Which services? Didn't we just have a budget and Parliamentary budget debates that took $4b of savings out already? Incoherent.

    The Greens are right to complain that if Labour had instigated the tax plan they had clearly rehearsed, we would not be in a position requiring Robertson to strip the public service out.

    • Incognito 1.1
      30 August 2023 at 10:15 am

      I see it as a pre-emptive strike against the Opposition. It will be Labour’s cost saving vs. NACT’s service cutting. The first one is a necessary move to preserve core services. The second one is an cynical ideological sacrifice to pay for tax cuts for ‘middle NZ’ to win the election – this time National have fewer SOE’s to sell off and cannot raise GST to pay for it.

      • Ad 1.1.1
        30 August 2023 at 10:40 am

        It would be outrageous to strip out the public service solely as a political tactic in case Labour loses the election.

        I'm not sure even Hipkins is that cynical.

        Labour should be shown to have a spending plan that makes sense for a future Labour-led government.

        • Incognito 1.1.1.1
          30 August 2023 at 10:52 am

          Agreed, but this is about the narrative vs. counter-narrative of two political sides fighting for victory on Oct 14.

          Labour is trying to paint NACT into a financial corner with no wriggle room.

          $4B is nothing much in the greater scheme of things.

        • bwaghorn 1.1.1.2
          30 August 2023 at 11:54 am

          I'm not sure even Hipkins is that cynical.

          Love your optimism

      • Anne 1.1.2
        30 August 2023 at 11:00 am

        You be right there @ 1.1

        $590 million on average per year Climate Dividend, returning taxes raised on climate polluters to Kiwi families rather than giving subsidies to large corporates.

        https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300960309/election-2023-live-national-set-to-release-new-tax-plan

        Luxon is operating straight out of the 1975 Muldoon copy book. Appeal to excessive greed (by abolishing Labour’s superannuation scheme on that occasion) and who cares about the untold damage and lost revenue further down the line.

        Did not Luxon say when he first became leader how he admired Muldoon? Something along those lines.

  2. bwaghorn 2
    30 August 2023 at 11:52 am

    Finance Minister Grant Robertson says he will apologise to the

    So Robertson is apologetic and Hipkins doesn't even think he had to tell Shaw!!

    Must be fun round the cabinet table at the moment

    • gsays 2.1
      30 August 2023 at 12:17 pm

      When I first read that, my response was it was the difference between a leader (Robertson) and a manager (Hipkins).

  3. Chris 3
    30 August 2023 at 12:37 pm

    More grist for the nactoids’ mill. Just when you think Labour can't do anything sillier…

  4. That_guy 4
    30 August 2023 at 2:17 pm

    At this point, unfortunately, I want Labour to get a historic drubbing. Obliterated at the polls, preferably in the teens. And I want it to be clear as day: this happened because you didn't behave like a left-wing party and you didn't treat the ecological crisis like a crisis.

    Wipe the slate clean, remove a lot of dead wood, give Labour a reason to reset and refocus. Three years in opposition should do it.

    This country can survive three years of bad policy. What we cannot survive is having no major political party that treats crises like crises and is actually left-wing.

    • Ad 4.1
      30 August 2023 at 2:33 pm

      National stay in for 9 years.

      So you would consign our 100,000 5-year-olds to schooling and healthcare and welfare system until they were 14 under National and Act.

      Because you want something purer to align with your ideology.

      • bwaghorn 4.1.1
        30 August 2023 at 6:15 pm

        Yip unfortunately we’re in the lesser of two weevils territory

      • That_guy 4.1.2
        31 August 2023 at 9:44 am

        I don't think National will stay for another 9 years. I understand your position and I have sympathy.

        I don't want something purer to align with my ideology. I want action that aligns with the laws of physics. I care about 5-year-olds, and their education and welfare and health. The laws of physics do not, and the situation is critical. Every day we see evidence of this.

        I also care about 5-year-olds having a livable future after they reach 14. No credible scientist thinks this will happen on the current course. I've weighed up the options and a hard lesson is needed and some people who are not me will suffer because of this and I accept that.

        Yes, I feel like dogshit saying these things. I don't want Labour to cease to exist. I just want them to start acting like Labour, otherwise what is the point of them?

        • weka 4.1.2.1
          31 August 2023 at 11:24 am

          counter proposition,

          everyone throws their weight (time/money/activism) behind the Greens and TPM.

          A L/G/TPM government with many more GP /TPM MPs and less Labour ones will partially serve your purpose (pushing L to sort its shit out).

          We don't have three years on climate and Nact will do a lot of damage in that time.

          Remember, the Greens have said that the cross benches is an option this year. That plus 20 Green MPs and 4 – 5 TPM MPs is a game changer.

          • That_guy 4.1.2.1.1
            31 August 2023 at 12:04 pm

            Yeah, I'm holding my nose and voting Green. Despite their problems and the 20% of the party that are idiots, they do understand that people living in poverty have one priority (not living in poverty) and that a crisis is a crisis. Can't really avoid it, I did run for them last time.

            That said, we will not get a left-wing government nor do we have three years to act. We have about -30 years to act. Failing to act for 30 years is not that much different to failing to act for 33 years. There are now no good options, just a selection of shit sandwiches, and I'm picking the shit sandwich that I think will result in a real left-wing government in 3 years.

            • weka 4.1.2.1.1.1
              31 August 2023 at 12:36 pm

              it's a tight election, no-one knows who is going to win. Just put a post up about it,

              https://thestandard.org.nz/the-report-of-our-death-has-been-grossly-exaggerated/

              • That_guy …
                31 August 2023 at 1:24 pm

                Sure, there's always hope. My preferred option is for Labour to get walloped but still be able to form a government. Because then lessons will be learned.

                • weka …
                  31 August 2023 at 1:35 pm

                  the point of the post is that if we talk up the negative, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

                  The Greens and TPM are within reach of having 20 MPs. That leaves Labour needing 41 MPs. Not a bad ratio. I think we can do better.

                  I'd be good with that being a permanent state of affairs, and the left side of the ratio increasing, rather than seeing Labour getting a walloping and then getting back to being the main party with some small coalition partners.

  5. Tiger Mountain 5
    30 August 2023 at 2:44 pm

    The once in a generation 2020 MMP majority Labour Govt. will now likely forever be known as the “shoulda, coulda” Govt. thanks to much of the NZ Labour Caucus unstinting inertia re Roger’n’Ruth’s legacy. Even the IMF announced in various papers almost 10 years ago, that trickle down did not work for lower and middle income groups.

    Yet here we are with Labour tops bricking themselves at the prospect of CGT and fairer tax overall. Weak on the supermarket duopoly and oil industry. Weak on tackling polluting Dairy. If NActFirst attain office the incremental reforms from Free Prescriptions to FPAs and minimum wage will be rolled back.

    This election is basically a lottery now. It will be luck and chance if we do not have a filthy tory Govt. the day after October 14. Hopefully the fruitcake parties will get lots of votes, and Winston 4.9%, that looks the only show at the moment.

  6. newsense 6
    30 August 2023 at 9:50 pm

    It just makes Labour look daft and unable to punch back.

    In terms of messaging, with climate initiatives they are important or they are not. We’ve seen Labour say they are not- Hipkins cut them when he arrived and now here’s a further cut and an insult to boot.

    National completely call their bluff- well there’s savings to be found, you’ve said 4billion, we say 8 billion. You say we don’t need this amount of climate funding, we say we don’t need this amount and we’ll return it in tax cuts. For the kids and cost of living etc etc.

    Labour has already done National’s work for them. Any attack on their lack of a climate plan is damaged from the start.

  7. satty 7
    31 August 2023 at 1:51 pm

    There's a link between "Climate Change" and "Cost-of-Living" and this link is growing stronger every day, every month, every year. Not many people (or the relatively useless media) speak out on this yet.

    Expect:

    • Higher (central / local) government spending on climate disasters
    • Higher (central / local) government spending on climate adaption
    • Higher government support for fossil fuel transition of important industries / transport (in case a government wants to implement some mitigation)
    • Higher health costs
    • Higher required tax income, higher rates
    • Higher insurance costs
    • Higher building / repair costs
    • Higher rents
    • Higher food costs

    And some political parties still try to sell "tax cuts" as a way forward… delusional.

    Here's an article with some climate related cost increases for households:

    Guardian – Australia’s greenhouse emissions are a national disgrace that are destroying the planet and costing households

    • newsense 7.1
      31 August 2023 at 6:56 pm

      Well the PM has already defined climate change funding as nice to have during a cost of living crisis.