Real life and science fiction have merged. The National led Government is determined to "boldly go where no man has gone before." It appears stubbornly committed to enacting an Emissions Trading Scheme ("ETS") in New Zealand. Why? Why? Why? It is on the verge of skewering us all with one of the largest tax increases in our history. It stubbornly persists in this vain exercise when the rest of the world is backing away rapidly. Why is New Zealand being so bovinely stupid?
The Prime Minister's consistent rationale has been soft on the science but hard on the trade implications. He has argued that if we don't put an ETS in place we will lose preferred trading status around the world. We will pay a huge cost in the long run. But that argument is collapsing by the day. It's time that Mr Key fronted up, acknowledge that things have changed substantially, and put the ETS madness on deep, deep ice.
What are the changes? Clearly Copenhagen is going to fail to produce any global agreement. It will produce aspirational eructations, wistful longings, but nothing more. Everybody acknowledges that now, as the recent APEC meeting conceded.
The EU--the most strident anti-global warming continent--has sought to muscle up, agreeing to pay billions of euros to underdeveloped nations to compensate them for not undertaking economic development. Well, not really. It has an out clause. It will pay up, only if everybody else does the same. The "I will if you will" commitment is now nothing more than a hollow gesture--and they know it.
New Zealand's "we will anyway" in the light of this hypocrisy is ludicrous. We are rapidly becoming the Don Quixote of the world--which we could stomach, for what worth is national pride anyway--but what we cannot stomach or afford is the gigantic impost of new government taxes upon everyone to "pay" for carbon emissions.
It is now clear that the United States will never pass a "cap and trade" bill. It seems deader than a dodo in the Senate, notwithstanding President Obama's rhetorical flourishes and relentless hectoring. The man is looking more and more like a C-grade actor, out of depth, whose only contribution to the civilised world is his ad nauseum lilting intonation as he reads from his teleprompter. The US, in one of its worst recessions in its history, is not about to add a huge tax burden upon every American. The Senate knows it will be electoral suicide. Europe knows that it will never get through the Congress, and is already accusing Obama of betrayal. The US Senate, it would seem, appears much more sensitive to its constituency than the New Zealand government.
What about Australia? Kevin Rudd famously reversed the prudent scepticism of John Howard, his predecessor, and has ardently pushed and prodded for Australia's own ETS. But the Australian Senate voted it down. So, Rudd has made increasingly frenetic and desperate moves to regroup and get the thing through. He recently launched a vitriolic attack upon "deniers" which was full of gratuitous slurs. All he did was show just how desperate he has become. Now the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Rudd is in the doldrums over the matter.
And while Rudd scored a predictable victory in the Lower House with the package of laws that will create his proposed greenhouse emissions trading scheme (ETS) its passage through the Senate continues to look next to impossible.
Further capping a grim beginning to Parliament's final session of the year, a Newspoll in the Australian yesterday showed Rudd had taken large hits on his personal standing. Another poll suggests support for his ETS is sliding fast, and industry is fuming at the likelihood its emissions costs will rise because of the exclusion of agriculture from the scheme.
Rudd agreed to dump agriculture in a bid to win the support of the Opposition in the Senate, but has been warned in return that more concessions will be needed.
Even if Opposition negotiators strike a deal with the government, it has to be signed off by a Liberal Party that will include a sizeable number of climate change sceptics and others who want the scheme delayed until after next month's Copenhagen summit.
Two Liberal Senators have indicated they will cross the floor if the party does agree to the deal and more may follow. The junior Coalition partner, the Nationals, bluntly refuse to vote for an ETS in any form, and two other non-government Senators are unlikely to support the scheme.
Let's get this straight. Australia's flailing around has resulted in agriculture being removed from the scheme? Right. So NZ's insistence upon keeping agriculture in it means that once again we are leading the world, right John--the very thing which you once said you did not want to see happen.
So, to sum up. Europe has made a Clayton's commitment which is worthless. The US will simply not pass a cap and trade bill. Neither will Australia. But we are going to--and before Copenhagen, by golly. It's become farcical.
But worse, in the political manoeuvring to try to get the ETS legislation back into the House it would seem that the NZ Government is prepared to bribe (there is no other word for it) Maori business interests with our money, in order to secure the support of the Maori Party which it needs. This thing stinks. It is becoming more odious by the day.
So, Mr Key, here is where you face one of those defining moments of your political career. You will either secure the sobriquet "Honest John" on the matter of the ETS, or your will forever be painted as dishonest and untrustworthy in everything.
You once said that it was wrong that New Zealand weaken itself just to make a political propaganda point before the rest of the watching world. In the matter of carbon emissions we should not lead, but follow, you said. We are now, once again, in a position of leading the world--not because your original ETS conceptions have changed--but because the rest of the world has. It has backed right off, leaving us well out in front. Are you going to be honest about this, or continue to dissemble? Where is your vaunted pragmatism now? Or are you morphing into an ideologue of the beltway?
You have said that not having an ETS would damage our trading relationships. That is now patently not the case. Our major trading partners are dropping their ETS proposals like hot cakes, or have so qualified them that they are symbolic gestures only. They have all reluctantly acknowledged that Copenhagen will be nothing more than a talkfest. Our trade is clearly no longer at threat and we don't need anything like an ETS to defend it. Are you going to be honest about this, or not?
Finally, you have lectured your own members repeatedly on the imperative to get the big things right in order to retain the confidence of the New Zealand public. The ETS is the most revolutionary act of self-inflicted economic damage proposed in the history of our country. Will you be honest and true to your own MP's, or are you going to tell them to "do as you say, not as you do". Make no mistake. The ETS madness will be an unparalleled expansion of state power in the economy. It will undermine the competitiveness of our economy. It will put us still further down the international economic league tables. It will make every New Zealander poorer. At the stroke of a pen you will consign our economy to greater headwinds than it has ever before faced.
"Honest John", or "Tricksy John". Which is it to be?
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