5 Nov: Climate groups, unions and local government leaders are condemning the Government’s decision to delay the Carbon Neutral Government Programme benchmark from 2025 to 2050 — while also stripping the Climate Change Commission of its power to advise on emissions plans. The changes to the Climate Change Commission - established by the cross-partisan Zero Carbon Act in 2019 - mean that the government will now be able to avoid criticism of their climate plans.

Lisa McLaren is both the Co-Director of 350 Aotearoa - and the former convener of the Zero Carbon Act campaign, which shepherded the Act into law. McLaren says the changes are a “plain-as-day attempt to avoid criticism for their fundamentally flawed climate policy”.

“This Government knows its climate plans don’t stack up — so it is gagging the very body designed to hold it accountable. National once proudly voted for a strong, independent Climate Commission. Today, they are ripping a knife through the only bipartisan climate lifeboat we have,” says McLaren.

“Today represents a fundamental shift in the government’s climate approach, because it represents the government effectively backing out of their bipartisan commitment to maintaining the Zero Carbon Act as it stands. In 2019, National voted in favour of a Climate Commission with the power to assess and critique climate plans of the government of the day. Today, they are walking back on that commitment.”

Tertiary Education Union co-president Julie Douglas adds, "As tertiary educators, we value and understand the critical importance of independent, evidence-based advice in shaping policy. This is the function the Climate Change Commission provides for the New Zealand government’s emissions reduction planning."

In addition to the changes to the Climate Change Commission, the government has also made amendments to the Carbon Neutral government programme. Climate Change Minister Simon Watts claims "this change acknowledges that the original 2025 deadline was too soon for organisations to reduce their emissions enough to meet carbon neutrality." In response, 350 Aotearoa Co-Director Lisa McLaren says the government is responsible.

“First they sabotaged the programme by ending its funding — now they change the goal so their failure to deliver on it doesn’t become apparent. The programme was 100% necessary. Thousands of schools and hospitals are locked into gas heating during a gas crisis and a skyrocketing crisis with no funding to decarbonise. This isn’t just failure - it’s climate sabotage, plain and simple.”

“If climate destruction were a crime; this Government would be caught red-handed. Aotearoa once claimed to be a climate leader—today, we are an international embarrassment,” says McLaren. “This Government is choosing to run our public service on expensive fossil fuels - instead of free energy powered by the sun and wind. They are forcing communities to choke for 25 more years on fossil-fuelled air pollution - which is responsible for one in every ten deaths in this country. The science is crystal clear: every tonne of emissions now locks in more damage. Weakening climate action means locking in expensive fossil fuels, dangerous air pollution, deadly storms and deeper injustice.”

Sophie Handford, former Kāpiti Coast District Councillor, adds “In Kāpiti, we were confronted with the need to make a similar decision in 2023, at which point we’d already reduced our organisational emissions by 72% from a 2010 baseline but only had two more years to reach our original 2025 carbon neutrality target. We chose to push it out to 2040 — balancing pragmatism, and the limited resources at our disposal compared with central government, with the ambition the climate crisis demands, recognising it’s not a distant threat, it’s here, now. The Government shifting its goal posts to 2050 doesn’t reflect that urgency. If the whole country is meant to be carbon neutral by 2050, the government should be leading, not catching up at the finish line.”

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