Open letter to Nick Smith from Ian Wishart

Nick, I’ve listened with increasing interest to your disingenuous attempts to disown your comments from 2005 when you said this:

“The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.

“Labour Ministers may take pride in being toasted at International Climate conferences for being so bold and brave, but there is no justification for New Zealand going out in the cold by itself on this issue.

“New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions made up only 0.4% of the global total and on a per capita basis our emissions are half those of countries like Australia and the United States. We are the only Southern Hemisphere country with binding legal obligations under Kyoto and giants like China and India have got off scot free.”

You told Newstalk ZB’s Larry Williams that you made those comments in regard to a “carbon tax” and therefore that they don’t apply to the ETS.

Not so fast.

Your argument against the carbon tax, expressed above, was not because it was a tax rather than an ETS. Instead, your first mentioned reason for scorning it “is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.”

Indeed, the rest of your argument hinges almost entirely on the NZ acting alone issue, and negligible gain.

Act has already exposed your legerdemain in trying to equate NZ’s ETS with the much weaker European scheme, as some sort of misguided justification.

I don’t care whether you call your July 1 scheme an ETS, a carbon tax or one of Alison Holst’s crockpots...the arguments you made against the carbon tax in 2005 are equally valid against the ETS for exactly the same reasons.

Let the public record show your hypocrisy.

Regards
Ian Wishart
Author, international climate bestseller, “Air Con”

ENDS

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