Business Roundtable releases climate change submission

The Business Roundtable has released the submission which it presented today to the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee of parliament.

Executive director Roger Kerr said that the key point made in the discussion with the Committee was that the regulatory impact analysis (RIA) required in the Committee’s terms of reference had not been undertaken.

These called for “a high quality, quantified, regulatory impact analysis to be produced to identify the net benefits or costs to New Zealand of any policy action, including international relations and commercial benefits and costs.

The analysis recently commissioned from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and Infometrics would be limited in scope and did not cover benefits. More work needed to be put in train to produce a compliant RIA.

Mr Kerr expressed concern that submitters with large economic interests at stake were only permitted a 15 minute hearing, and that they were prohibited by the Committee from discussing issues with government officials.

“This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs”, Mr Kerr said. “At a point when there should be the time and opportunity for developing a careful, well thought-out, and broadly supported approach to climate change policy, such a process risks repeating the chaotic ‘more haste, less speed’ experience with climate change initiatives in the past.”

The Business Roundtable submission calls for the establishment of an expert group, along the lines of the recent Resource Management Act task force, to advise the government and the select committee on climate change policy issues.

ENDS

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