Smith continues to mislead on ETS Numbers

Climate Issues Minister Nick Smith continues to take advantage of the complexity of the ETS by making misleading claims about the way it works, says Charles Chauvel, Labour's Climate Issues Spokesperson.

Charles Chauvel, pointing to Nick Smith's claim that his Government's amendments to the ETS mean that it will cost households less than the original scheme says: “This is wrong for at least 4 reasons:

1. As John Key admitted at the post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, on the front page of the Herald yesterday - the amended ETS last year shifted ‘a disproportionate amount’ of cost from businesses to households. Under the original scheme, businesses would have paid a much fairer share of the costs we all face for their emissions. Under Nick Smith's, as the Sustainability Council pointed out last week, ordinary Kiwi households bear those costs.

2. As Nick Smith keeps saying, National have halved the upfront cost of the ETS to businesses for the first two years of their scheme by capping the price of carbon and doubling the value of the carbon credits given to businesses. This may help to keep some prices under control (although not if you're a Contact or Mercury customer). But there is still a cost to doing this - it's just that instead of being borne by businesses and their customers, every taxpayer pays for it instead.

3. The original ETS would not have imposed additional costs on the public in the same year as Treasury is predicting 6% inflation from a GST increase, an ECE grant cut, an ACC levy increase etc, and in the same year as nil wage growth. Nor would it have brought two sectors - transport and energy - into the ETS at the same time, because this exposes households to the double-whammy of increased power and petrol price rises at the same time.

4. The original ETS would have funded energy efficiency measures, and a decent transition. Nick Smith's scheme does neither. David Parker, as Minister of Climate Issues, announced on 27 August 2008 a billion dollar home insulation package and a one-off electricity rebate in 2010 to assist with power bills, and a targeted one-off cash payment for those receiving benefits, superannuation and Working for Families tax credits, broadly equivalent to the total amount of the increased electricity costs faced by the household sector in the first year of electricity’s introduction into the original ETS.

"Kiwis need to take anything Nick Smith says about the ETS with a big grain of salt," Charles Chauvel says.

ENDS

© Scoop Media