Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

Good work to Rodney Hide for getting the Gnats to agree to a 'fundamental review' of the Emissions Trading Scheme, as part of ACT's support deal with National.

ACT campaigned heavily on dumping the current legislation, which would be the best solution for the economy and for all New Zealanders.

Unfortunately National being National campaigned with a serious lack of spine (surprisingly with the backing of Federated Farmers), and only want to "water down the existing legislation", with John Key still keen to pass an amended ETS into law by the end of next year.

The only immediate change will be the lifting of the ban on new fossil-fuel power generation. The NZ Government are not yet planning to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.

However, the select committee being set up to review Labour's Emissions Trading Scam will have to hear "competing views" on the so-called "science" which claims humans are to blame for climate change, as well as the merits of a carbon tax, and the timing of any changes.

Unfortunately the signals from the National Party aren't all good. Key says he personally believes "human-induced climate change was real", and has just appointed card-carrying leftie and tree hugger Nick Smith as his Environment Minister and "Minister for Climate Change Issues". Aargh!

There is some hope with the appointment of Gerry Brownlee as the new Minister of Energy. As Greenpeace today pointed out in a media release, Brownlee has publicly labelled coal as sexy in the past.

(Then again, this is the same Gerry Brownlee who in 2003 said that "ACT MPs had little respect for ordinary New Zealanders and National Party members who admired ACT should "bugger off" and join it.")

Bully Brownlee aside, the South Island of NZ in particular has immense amounts of natural resources which are not being utilised or explored.

There is huge potential for New Zealand to grow its mineral wealth, with the previous administration ensuring much of it remained buried underneath "Conservation land", areas which were greatly expanded for no real benefit, thanks to the reckless spending of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

However, even ACT seems to have lost some of its balls, with their detailed agreement with National claiming the party...

"is not opposed to New Zealand adopting responsible climate change policies... and if a select committee inquiry establishes a credible case that New Zealanders would benefit from action by New Zealand... ACT would be prepared to support legislation giving effect to such action".

That sounds like a paragraph inserted to pacify National, but I hope it does not mean Rodney Hide and the ACT Party are considering backing down from their stance as against the whole false religion of "Climate Change".

Given that they are about the only sensible heads in the New Zealand Parliament when it comes to questioning the ever-diminishing arguments for "global warming due to CO2" (at least the only ones willing to make their views public), ACT's MPs need to stand firm against the claptrap from the misguided greenies and PC-brigade, who have bought into the myth perpetuated by the "mainstream media".

* NBR: ETS up for `fundamental review' in ACT deal