NACT policy – like pistons in a Vespa

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, May 8th, 2009 - 18 comments
Categories: flip-flop, national/act government - Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Jeanette Fitzsimmons has written a very good post from the Emissions Trading Scheme special select committee* about her views on the impact of farming on our Kyoto obligations. She commented on the Federated Farmers submission which essentially said that they thought farming should be excluded from paying anything. That really isn’t feasible in NZ because…

However, in NZ methane and nitrous oxide from farming are the large half (51%) of our emissions. Leaving them out means taxpayers fork out a hefty subsidy to farming, or other energy users pay twice as much as they otherwise would.

What is as interesting as Jeanette’s post was the long set of comments, once you got past some of the usual commenting suspects and get into people genuinely discussing the issues raised. The need for research in the primary sectors keeps coming up over and over again. The techniques that are known to have some efficacy at reducing greenhouse gas emissions are not accepted by the Kyoto protocols because they have insufficent evidence to back up their claims. The main reason appears to be that there simply hasn’t been enough work done on them.

This was part of what the $700 million Fast Forward Fund that Jim Anderton put in  place last year was designed to start moving into high gear. It was a long-thought out proposal that probably didn’t do enough bearing in mind the size of the industry in NZ, as Rod Oram said. However National reflexively and immediately denounced the plan and said that they would scrap after the election without bothering to look at the plan – to widespread condemnation by the industries that supported it.

Organisations that have issued statements welcoming New Zealand Fast Forward include Business NZ, Dairy NZ, ZESPRI, Fonterra, the Meat Industry Association, Meat and Wool New Zealand, PGG Wrightson. Horticluture New Zealand, Crop and Food Research and many more.

National said they’d replace it with a ‘better’ system, and then very quietly snuck off and dumped it in Feburary after the election.

Well it is now months later and it appears that there is absolutely nothing to replace the FFF, and apparently nothing in the pipeline. Moana Mckey from Labour asked about it in a press statement earlier this month and as far as I can see there was no response.

Our current Minister of Finance said while denouncing FFF

Mr English says National will make long-term funding commitments to science, research and development which provide certainty to the sector.

Now you’re dumped the certainty, how are you going to regain it as you promised? Is it in the black budget?

John Key said that

National is committed to boosting research and development into emissions-reducing technology, especially in agriculture. Around the world, countries will be focusing their research dollars on the main causes of their own emissions, and so should we.

Yeah right – where is it? There doesn’t appear to have been a single movement towards any of the points Key outlined since the election apart from some slash and burn ‘cost-cutting’ across all departments. I certainly can’t see any visible on the net.

In fact the best description of NACT ‘policy’ since the election was in a prescient statement by Jim Anderton last year

Imagine if these guys were in government. Policy would fizz backwards and forwards like the piston in a Vespa,’ Jim Anderton said.

That is what it exactly how it has looked like since the election. Lots of activity, strange schemes, and nothing much happening apart from an economy sliding further into a recession.

* This select committee is becoming a bit of a farce, as MP’s from the party Act who initiated this review are not attending. The slacker appears to be Rodney Hide, and presumably whomever he gets to attend in his absence. No Right Turn speculates that this is because they don’t want evidence to upset their preconceptions. However it is as likely that Rodney is busy firefighting the super-city proposals defects.

18 comments on “NACT policy – like pistons in a Vespa ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Irascible 1
    8 May 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Rodney’s non appearance might be because his credentials as a “Climatologist” so often broadcast in election advertising last year might be exposed as being as fictional as his ability to answer questions about his super city scheme and the real costs involved.
    Remember the old rule of survival: “When your credibilty and integrity are liable to be exposed as being non existent it’s time to fail to front up to the questioners.”

  2. fietoncounter 2
    8 May 2009 at 5:49 pm

    who’d wanna b rodney hide huh?

    oh wait, the jobs filled.

    and he didn’t even need to apply.

    nepotism of the worst kind. inbreeding hillbillies of Epsom?. but he’s not from there. he’s ‘made up’. A lickspit&polishtician.

    i suspect rodders of narcissism

    not nazism.

    mmmmm rodney, ooh roddy u r nooughty,… no u r,…. oh shush yr……mmm i like it like tha…..ooh…..what? what did i? …ahhh luvverly…….

    I’d vote for me. Ay Rodney?

    captcha: matts when they

    what the hell?

  3. edoze 3
    8 May 2009 at 5:55 pm

    fUCK you people suck balls, big hairy stinky balls.

    Why dont you people do something cool, post on the kiwis test tonight.

    Nah didnt think so, you tossers wouldn’t be into something as masculine as sport would ya. Crochet and talking smack about politics is your thing aye.

    • Eddie 3.1
      8 May 2009 at 6:09 pm

      edoze. this is a political blog, there’s a hundred other sites you can go to to talk league, or you can just talk to your mates about it.

      Speaking of masculine, how ‘masculine’ is it to have a cry because we’re not writing about what you want?

  4. Doug 4
    8 May 2009 at 7:44 pm

    Responses to “NACT policy – like pistons in a Vespa’
    But But The public don’t think so.
    http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/4376/

    • r0b 4.1
      8 May 2009 at 8:28 pm

      But The public don’t think so.

      Not yet…

      Speaking of good ideas that would have stimulated the economy, and that the Nats cancelled against advice, let’s not forget the dumped R&D tax credits and the slashed funding for small exporters. Unbelievably short sighted thinking.

      • Rex Widerstrom 4.1.1
        8 May 2009 at 10:24 pm

        Agreed. And considering the beneficiaries of these measures were businesses, and the FFF would have been of benefit to farmers, perhaps the Nat leadership need reminding of their core demographics.

        I doubt the average swining voter would have been too vexed over the items you mention, yet business gets them ripped away.

        Yet something pro-business but unpopular with the voters, like harsher employment laws, gets paraded as a “100 days” achievement.

        See, this is what puzzles me when people here start going on about secret C/T master plans. Either a) there isn’t one or b) there is and they’re crap. I pick b, in which case I’m surprised the left isn’t positively encouraging the situation.

        • r0b 4.1.1.1
          8 May 2009 at 10:53 pm

          I think the C/T master plan was about how to get elected, the end. Now they’re the government they haven’t got a plan, so they’re falling back on the old, old instincts.

    • ak 4.2
      8 May 2009 at 9:30 pm

      Ah, not quite Dougie. Not “the public”. Just the crucial 5-8% of Joe and Polyanna Ever-Swingwell voters who determine our leadership.

      And sure, at the moment they’re happily chaffing back the Nactana Cocoa Pops dished up daily by their granny and her gummy pals: why wouldn’t our pets love it in the absence of anything substantial?

      Trouble is, Doug, sugar rushes never last. Especially in a fibre-free zone. That rumble you hear isn’t just the sound of Rodders’ paltry poll falling below Winnies: it’s the intestinal precursor to severe diarrhoea coming later in the year. To a street and a town near to mine and your own.

      Watch closely Dougal; the eyes have it: Sunny Biketrack’s grin is all wind: and the fear-to-fart creeping into those fish-eyes is all about the pressure behind Billy’s Fudgeit Budget. Fascinating entertainment coming up: the “Christian” versus the lyin’.

  5. serpico 5
    9 May 2009 at 8:30 am

    Flashback – I had a V8 Vespa with ape hangers back in the 60’s when I was doing acid undercover work.Rock on man.

  6. inpassing 6
    10 May 2009 at 3:28 pm

    re your – lprent (hi, this in lieu ripp0) asterisked note’s word “preconceptions” above..

    please see comment also and relating same/similar subjects.. and can we suspect for the same reason/s.. 🙂

  7. Gareth 7
    11 May 2009 at 2:19 pm

    So given the combined issues of:
    – the removal of necessary funding for research in this space, and
    – few recognised (in the Kyoto sense) options for farmers to actively respond to the price signal aspect of a carbon charge,
    why don’t we set agriculture up with a 100% revenue recycling emissions scheme that invests a large chunk of the tax-paid/units-bought into an NZFFF-type fund focussed on emissions reduction. The remainder could partly go towards paying their share of the Kyoto obligation. Keep it away from general taxation and invest to reduce our emissions bill in the medium term.

    • Zaphod Beeblebrox 7.1
      11 May 2009 at 9:29 pm

      Why not just have a general carbon tax. Use the revenue to compensate the worst affected and invest in clean technology and emissions reduction.

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