ETS deal between Govt and Maori party wrong.

The Kiwi Party
Press Release
25 November, 2009

Kiwi Party leader Larry Baldock said today that he and Kiwi Party Maori Affairs spokesperson, Vapi Kupenga, were attending the presentation of a petition organised by a concerned group of New Zealand Citizens called Climate realists. In doing so, says Baldock, we are making it clear that the Kiwi Party is strongly opposed to the Emissions Trading Legislation being rushed through the house in urgency this week.

"The deal struck with the Maori Party is wrong for a number of reasons.

"Firstly it is simply unjust not to allow all pre 1990 forest owners that have had their rights to determine the land-use of their own property taken away.

"Many of us who have travelled through the Bay of Plenty in recent years have seen the large-scale conversion of the Government owned Land Corp’s forest into dairy farms without the imposition of the liabilities of fraudulent carbon credits. The government had no regard for its CO2 targets when it did this, so why should anyone take them seriously now, especially the pre-1990 forest owners.

"Secondly there is no justification for the Government to be trying to settle out of court with the five Iwi, a case for compensation that would have taken care of itself in due course, at no cost to the tax-payers of NZ.  To add to that, the funding of the travel expenses of any Iwi leaders, especially cash and asset rich ones like Ngai Tahu, to a talk-fest/brain washing in Europe is an insult to those struggling to pay their bills and keep their homes.

"The plan to replant conservation and crown land is long overdue. I have been calling for this since entering Parliament in 2002 and it has been Kiwi Party Policy since its inception. What is wrong is the way it is being done based on fraudulent expectations of carbon credits in years to come. Trees are valuable and worth planting, either solely for environmental reasons, or for the value of the timber they will produce in due course.

"Those who think they will profit from carbon credits will be disappointed indeed. The climate has been cooling since 2002 and in another 5-10 years when this current warmer period is over, the very idea of carbon credits will be as worthless as junk bonds and sub-prime mortgages," said Mr Baldock.

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