Rt Hon John Key
Prime Minister & Leader of the National Party

9 November 2011

Practical, balanced plan for the environment

National’s environment and climate change policy will enable New Zealand to have a strong economy and a clean environment, Prime Minister and National Party Leader John Key announced today.

“Our environment is a valuable resource that we must preserve and protect. It’s a big part of our quality of life and it’s central to our international reputation, primary sector, tourism sector and wider economy,” says Mr. Key.

“National’s practical environmental plan will see cleaner rivers and lakes, more trees, more renewable electricity, cleaner air, better management of our oceans and more recycling.”

Mr Key says National will also continue to make sure New Zealand does its fair share to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our climate change policies carefully balance the costs to households and businesses with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“That is why we intend to slow the phasing in of the emissions trading scheme from 2013 to 2015, at which point we will look to align our scheme with that adopted by Australia. Any change to our emissions trading scheme will be fiscally neutral,” says Mr. Key.

Mr. Key says a major focus for National in a second term will be protecting and managing activities in our oceans.

“We will pass new legislation on managing activities in the Exclusive Economic Zone and Extended Continental Shelf by 1 July 2012. We will also provide new legislation to update the Marine Reserves Act 1971 to extend the purpose of marine reserves, to allow them beyond the territorial sea and to improve the way they are created.”

National will also introduce a new Environmental Reporting Act in 2012 so there is greater transparency in how we match up to New Zealand’s clean, green brand.

“This will enable our lakes and rivers to be ranked from the cleanest to the dirtiest. It will help us prioritise our lake and river clean up programme and monitor progress.

“National has made solid progress in improving water management, delivering cleaner air and addressing climate change in our first three years. This policy builds on that and sets an ambitious work programme for the next three years,” says Mr. Key.

Visit the policy at: http://national.org.nz/PDF_General/Environment_and_climate_change_policy.pdf

ENDS

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