Unravelling the Zero Carbon Act

For twenty years, Aotearoa's climate change policy went through a continuous cycle of governments making big promises, then doing nothing at all to meet them, resulting in targets being unmet and problems getting worse. But in 2019, in a rare act of bipartisanship, Parliament passed the Zero Carbon Act, which was meant to break this cycle. Governments would have to be upfront about what their targets were and how they planned to meet them. And to keep them honest, an independent Climate Commission - He Pou a Rangi - would advise them and review their work, making it clear to the public whether the politicians were doing enough.

Unfortunately, the current regime are climate change deniers who want to revert to the old way of doing nothing. And so they plan to end He Pou a Rangi's watchdog role over their emissions reduction plans:

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts repeatedly adamantly denied any plan to remove the Climate Change Commission's role in advising on emissions reduction plans, only for his office to two days later confirm the Government was considering exactly that.

1News can reveal the Government was weighing up whether to remove the Climate Change Commission's role in advising on emissions reduction plans — a move the Green Party says would undermine independent scrutiny of climate policy.

The proposal was part of a broader review of the Climate Change Response Act, which requires the Climate Change Commission to provide independent expert advice on the Government's five-yearly emissions reduction plans.

The 1News story focuses on the Minister's deceit, and that is bad - Ministers should not lie to the media and the public like this. But the policy effect of removing He Pou a Rangi's advice on emissions reduction plans will be to enable the government to lie to the public about the effects of its policies, while reducing a key accountability mechanism. Which obviously suits the current regime - which has removed all effective climate policy, and whose emissions reduction plan therefore will not meet its legislated targets - very well. But it seems actively harmful to us, the public.

The other lesson in this of course that there is simply no point seeking consensus or bipartisan agreement with national on this or any other issue, because they have clearly demonstrated that they are cheats and liars who will play you for a sucker. The next government should take this lesson to heart, ignore the wailing from National and its polluting, ecocidal backers, and legislate for real climate action, which drives said backers out of business and ends their destructive pollution as quickly as possible. As National has shown, its easy to smash things. So lets start smashing.