ETS questions in Parliament 15 Sept 09

Morning all,

ETS got a good going over in Question Time in Parliament yesterday.
There were four questions.

I was struck by this Q & A:

Charles Chauvel: Why is the Minister now promoting an emissions trading
scheme that renders a price signal substantially ineffective as far as
emitting greenhouse gases in the agriculture sector is concerned?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I do not consider it to be ineffective, because when
agriculture comes into the sector in 2015—and we will be the very first
country in the world to come into an emissions trading scheme in
2015—there will be a very real incentive for those involved in the
agricultural sector to adopt technologies that will reduce emissions. I
think that everybody in the House realises that currently those
technologies are quite limited. That is why the work being done by this
Government, through the Minister of Agriculture, David Carter, around
pursuing technologies in that area, is so important for New Zealand.

What concerned me was the note of pride in Nick Smith's voice when he
said, in a clear reference to agriculture, "we will be the very first
country in the world to come into an emissions trading scheme in 2015."

I hope someone will pass this on to Don Nicolson and any other farmers'
group: first it was Labour crowing about being first (and still only!)
in the world to include agriculture in its Kyoto undertakings; now it's
National (traditionally the farmers' government) crowing about being the
first in the world to actually whack farmers with the costs that former
FedFarmers VP, Frank Brenmuhl, in an excellent column in the latest
issue of "Rural News" (15 Sept) describes as "horrendous".

What's Nick up to? The new recruitment agent for ACT?

Terry Dunleavy