New investment fund is 'greenwashing'

The so-called New Zealand Green Investment Finance Fund is just a different shade of corporate welfare, according to ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Every political party – National, Labour, NZ First, and now the Greens – is guilty of wheeling and dealing, trying to picking winners, and getting into business with other people's money.

“The Nats did it over nine years. Shane Jones put their corporate welfare machine on steroids. Now Green Party supporters get their own corporate welfare fund.

“This kind of policy inevitably leads to government waste and corruption.

“The Fund will be picking technologies that can't attract capital in an open market. It will pick them precisely because they fit the Government’s own particular political preferences.

“This is greenwashing. If the Government and the Green Party were serious in their views about climate change they would whack a big carbon tax on New Zealanders or change the Emissions Trading Scheme.

“The fund is a sop to the Green Party and its voter base. Meanwhile, Shane Jones has made off with a fund which is 30 times bigger.

“Only the ACT Party truly believes in low, flat taxes and letting business people get on with building businesses – not politicians pretending to be businesspeople with taxpayers' money.”