Angry Opposition MPs slam ETS hearings process

Thursday 15th October 2009

Public submissions began this afternoon on the amended Emissions Trading Scheme amid angry scenes, as Opposition MPs protested about the sudden decision to begin hearings today, and submitters scrambled to be available.

Former Climate Change Minister David Parker was bristling with rage as he left the finance and expenditure select committee just before it began hearings at 1.30pm this afternoon, complaining MP's, let alone submitters, had no chance to prepare adequately for the hearings.

"It's outrageous," said Parker. "The processes of Parliament are being abused by the majority party."

By the time the committee rose for Parliament's Question Time at 2pm, the committee had heard from just two submitters - the Council of Trade Unions and Federated Farmers - and is limiting all oral submissions to a maximum 10 minutes.

It will reconvene at 3.35 today and expects to sit until late into the evening.

Committee chairman Wayne Foss told reporters that the committee expected to meet again next week, but that there was very little scope to push beyond that. To criticisms that oral submissions would be rushed and incomplete, he said the important thing was that the 300 written submissions received were given equal weight.

More than 160 submitters have sought to make an oral presentation to the committee.

Foss said the committee had met most of yesterday to wrangle on the process for getting the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill back to Parliament by November 15.

"It's very tight, but that's the timetable Parliament has given me, and I can't change that," he said.

Former Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said the rushed process was "particularly ironic" since the select committee that considered Labour's ETS Bill last year had spent almost a year hearing submissions, only to be criticised by then Opposition climate change spokesman Nick Smith for undue haste.

She accepted that those hearings and the nine month inquiry of theETS review select committee this year meant most of the big issues had already been "done to death".

"But this Bill is highly specific," she said. "It deals with methodology for the allocation of free credits, the impact on the forestry sector and phase-out timetables for free allocations.

"The details have changed beyond all recognition."

The hearings process was the best way for Parliament to discover problems with draft legislation and a rushed process made that very difficult.

The CTU's Peter Conway told the committee the ETS as now proposed ran a serious risk of creating trade backlashes against New Zealand, because the country would be seen as off the pace on climate change action.

With few border tariffs on manufacturing and an international image built on its environmental credentials, New Zealand was particularly vulnerable to a weak ETS, said Conway.

Don Nicolson, president of Federated Farmers, continued to argue for complete repeal of the ETS or amendment to write out of the legislation any obligation to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which account for 50% of New Zealand's greenhouse gas discharges annually and are almost exclusively from farm animals.

Nicolson appeared flat-footed when challenged by Labour finance spokesman David Cunliffe, who noted that Federated Farmers was arguing both that it was already doing all it could to reduce emissions through good pastoral farming practice and emerging science, but also wanted not to be covered by the Bill.

"You can't have it both ways," Cunliffe said.

Businesswire.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet