National’s ETS will cost taxpayers dear

It is becoming clearer by the day that National's changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme are unaffordable, ineffective and unsustainable, says Labour's Climate Change Issues spokesperson Charles Chauvel.

Nick Smith has now admitted that the number of companies eligible for an initial taxpayer subsidy to continue to emit greenhouse gases has ballooned from around 65 under the original scheme to about 800.

"This dramatic added cost to the taxpayer is a result of the Government's decision to adopt, across the board, an ‘intensity’ model for measuring a firm's liability for emissions,” Charles Chauvel said.

“This was the model at the heart of the Australian ETS, which was adopted in New Zealand by Nick Smith to harmonise New Zealand and Australia's Emissions Trading Schemes, despite advice the two schemes were incompatible.

"The intensity model was designed around the needs of industries reliant on coal-fired power stations, and results in a much more generous subsidy to emitters than Labour's original scheme. It also deletes Labour's caps on emissions by sector, meaning that the ETS now provides no limits on greenhouse gas pollution.

"The costs of the subsidy to New Zealand polluters will grow significantly but taxpayers won't know just how much they’ll be paying because Nick Smith has deliberately exempted details of subsidy allocations under his ETS from the Official Information Act.

"He has to release some information in Budget documents but Nick Smith is doing all he can to mask the full and massive cost to taxpayers over the next few decades.

"We now have an ETS that gives big increases in subsidies to emitters without requiring them to reduce their emissions and where subsidy decisions are taken in secret.

“Labour’s ETS, scrapped by National, was fair and applied the costs to where the pollution was being generated,” Charles Chauvel said.

ENDS

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