Politics Moves to ACT

The Haps

Nine ACT Local Candidates have been elected from Northland to Otago, thank you to everyone who helped with the campaigns. It’s been a successful first outing for ACT in Local Government, now the Party has an opportunity to show its value to communities at that level.

Politics Moves to ACT

David Seymour voted alone against the Earthquake regulations. This year the Parliament will vote to repeal most of them. The same thing happened with the Zero Carbon Act that set targets for methane reductions. Now the targets are being halved. If you read Free Press you are a core ACT supporter, thank you for supporting ACT even when it wasn’t popular.

The Labour-New Zealand First Government, supported by the Greens, brought the methane targets in. National joined in to support the Zero Carbon Act, and still refuses to repeal it completely. However, the targets for methane reduction are being halved so Kiwi farmers can keep feeding the world. Politics has moved to ACT.

Special credit must go to Mark Cameron. Mark almost literally believes he’s related to every other farmer in New Zealand. He believes this extended family has been under attack. He responded by joining ACT, then campaigning and winning Government to bring the change.

Mark is one of three Dairy Farmers in the ACT caucus. Cameron Luxton retired to become a builder, former Federated Farmers President Andrew Hoggard is still in the game. Between the three of them ACT has the strongest dairy connection of any party.

What are the changes? The Zero Carbon Act put methane reduction targets in black and white legislation. It said that methane emissions must fall by at least 24 per cent below 2017 levels by 2050. A reduction as large as 47 per cent could be required if other countries cut their own emissions more.

These changes would mean less farming by the world’s most efficient farmers. For New Zealand to reach the goal, some farmers would need to quit. The maths behind a conversion to forestry was strengthened by this equation. The Zero Carbon Act was driving farm-to-forest conversions, a cause of major angst in rural communities.

The Government has decided it will change this law. Instead, a minimum reduction of 14 per cent will be required, it might be a maximum of 24 per cent if people in other countries do more than expected. In other words, the amount Kiwi farmers need to reduce their methane emissions by (more accurately their animals’ emissions), has been halved.

In the words of one farmer known to Free Press ‘this means I can keep farming.’ It means Kiwi farmers can keep feeding the world, instead of their customers being driven to less efficient producers who emit more offshore. That would have been a lose-lose scenario, bad for reducing emissions, and bad for Kiwi farmers. The law will also be changed to explicitly recognise and protect the importance of food production in New Zealand.

This change comes at the end of a good month. First the Net-zero Banking Alliance collapsed. It was driving banks not to bank industries on their naughty list. Soon to follow, Nestlé pulled out of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance. Fonterra executives who’ve been using Nestlé to buttress their own climate activist positions are publicly panicking. This comes after more and more countries effectively give up on the Paris climate agreement.

Sometimes reality becomes clear after the fact. What’s emerging is a picture of corporate hijacking. Well-off urban executives on six-figure salaries have gone rogue on their shareholders, instead pursuing their own political objectives. Starting ‘Alliances’ and ‘Forums’ to push their own causes. Air New Zealand stopped taking off and landing on time while a tiny airline tried to lead the world in developing biofuels.

The people have had enough, and a more realistic climate narrative is emerging. Technology will enable us to live better lives with lower carbon emissions. The world has been decarbonising for two centuries without any climate policy. Compare the emissions of an open fire, where most of the heat goes up the chimney with the smoke, to a heat pump. Innovation drives efficiency every day, doing more with less.

What nobody is prepared to do, and never have been, is live poorer lives even as technology improves. No matter how much the activists and the media try to scare people by blaming regular severe weather events on climate change, people just aren’t buying it. The winds of change are blowing, and it was the ACT party that picked the wind shift way back when. Long live New Zealand farming.