In recent weeks the parties seem to have been largely competing on who can cut the most from government spending while refusing to increase taxes for the most wealthy.
But what exactly are they promising for sustainable business? Let’s focus on the Sustainable Business Network’s (SBN) three main themes. Climate change. Waste elimination. Nature regeneration.
It’s been hard to put this together. It seems one thing the parties have in common is doing a poor job of telling us what they stand for in advance of the pre-election maneuvering.
Labour
Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins walks a fine line. It's somewhere between a balanced approach to sustainability, and a bait and switch.
His predecessor called climate our “nuclear moment”. She led the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration. But his government extended tax cuts on petrol and diesel. It scrapped the ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme intended to help rid us of the most polluting cars. It announced they wouldn't prioritise reducing carbon emissions in transport policy. It won in court arguing it wasn't bound by the advice of the Climate Change Commission.
But more recently they've announced positive moves they must have known were in the pipeline.
There’s Fonterra's $90million from taxpayers to switch milk drying from coal to electric. This can be seen as a smart green investment. It's estimated it'll reduce emissions by the equivalent of taking 120,000 petrol cars off the road.
Fonterra is the nation’s highest emitting company. But it's set aside $790million to halve its carbon emissions by 2030.
However, the subsidy can also be seen as a sweetener for a sector that’s got climate foot-dragging down to a fine art. Or even corporate largesse for a company making up to a possible $1billion a year in profit.
Then there’s $140million from the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). This is going to Australia-based, globally listed NZ Steel. The money will help the company swap out its coal furnaces for electric. It's estimated this will contribute 5.3% of the emissions reduction needed to meet New Zealand’s second emissions budget (2026-2030). It'll contribute another 3.4% cut for the one after that.
And in the last few weeks BlackRock pledged to invest $2billion to make our energy generation 100% renewable by 2030. BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with around US$9 trillion on its books. We haven’t seen any dollars yet, or the small print. But it’s only a spot over one ten thousandth of the dough they have control of. So it looks doable.
And Labour will be needing that cash, if they’re in power. Labour has ruled out significant tax increases for the wealthy or corporations. It oversaw a collapse in business confidence in the Emissions Trading Scheme, wiping $800million from the coffers due to unsold credits.
And local councils will see a reduction of $50million in available funds for walkable neighbourhoods and cycling networks.
On waste, the Labour Party has pledged to phase out single use and hard to recycle plastics by 2025. It has established a $50million Plastics Innovation Fund. This will support projects to minimise plastic waste. They plan to standardise kerbside recycling nationwide.
Nature regeneration has been boosted by the Labour Government in a number of areas. For example, there’s the $1.19billion Jobs for Nature - Mahi mō te Taiao Programme. This came in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It has enabled 446 projects. They've completed more than 8.2 million hours of conservation and regeneration work. In the process, this has employed more than 12,508 people. This was also a key driver in the expansion of SBN’s own work in this area.
The party also believes its ‘Three Waters’ reform of national freshwater management will help the clean-up needed there.
National
The National Party prides itself on balancing economic growth and climate action. As late as 2005, three years before becoming Prime Minister, John Key was adrift of the science. He said: “The impact of the Kyoto Protocol, even if one believes in global warming — and I am somewhat suspicious of it — is that we will see billions and billions of dollars poured into fixing something that we are not even sure is a problem.”
His party has since got more with the times. They're committed to the nation’s target of ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. They want to tweak the ETS to credit on-farm sequestration beyond tree planting. That will include things like wetland restoration. This is a far cry from 2014, when National MP and then minister Judith Collins said: “I don’t like wetlands – they’re swamps…Go and find someone who actually cares about this, because I don’t.”
National also want to legalise genetically modified organisms. This, they believe, will help tackle animal burp methane emissions. They’ve pledged to fast-track consents for wind, solar and geothermal energy generation.
But they’ll postpone agricultural emission pricing until 2030. They'll scrap the Clean Car Discount, which penalises high emitting vehicles to subsidise low emitting ones. They’re scrapping the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax. They intend to redirect income from the ETS from emissions reductions funding, using it instead for other purposes.
They want to build quite a lot of new roads, which will push emissions up further. And they, like Act, want to repeal the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.
They’ll repeal nearly all the ‘Three Water’ freshwater reforms. Instead, they favour maintaining local control and funding.
And the smaller parties?
It's unlikely any of the major parties will work with New Zealand First. The only match up that isn’t explicitly off the table is with National. And that’ll only happen if they're close to winning and can't get the numbers to form a government with Act.
All the other smaller parties are polling below 5%. They won't get a seat unless they win a local contest. It also means their policies are likely to stay on the drawing board until next time round.
So that leaves Act to possibly work with National. The Greens could try another term with Labour. Let's check out their agendas to see what they might be able to slip in.
Act
In 2008, the then party leader Rodney Hide was a full-on climate change denier. In 2016 current party leader David Seymour said: “I question the extent to which it is dangerous.” He recently re-affirmed this.
Act were the only party to oppose the Zero Carbon Act in 2019 and would like to repeal it.
They'd allow farmers to use existing farm plans provided from within the industry. This would be self-regulation backed by regional councils and “approved third party verifiers”.
Act wants to peg our price for greenhouse gas emissions to that of our five main trading partners. They don't want to put a price on New Zealand's agricultural emissions until other countries do. This is to ensure we move no faster than them. They’d scrap the Clean Car Discount, ending that stimulus for electric vehicle uptake.
They also want to extend carbon credits to “wood products that store carbon for at least 50 years”. This mainly refers to housing products. How this would be monitored is unclear.
They want to consider ‘waste to energy’ (as does New Zealand First). That might reduce emissions from landfill in some cases. But burning resources flies in the face of developing a circular economy. It also comes with a host of potential pollution problems.
Act, like National, would repeal the ‘Three Waters’ freshwater reforms. They'd switch it for local control and funding. They’d also do away with the requirements of Significant Natural Areas. Local authorities would no longer identify and protect these areas of ecological, cultural or historical significance.
The Green Party
The Green Party’s commitments on sustainable business are the only ones detailed enough to need a list.
They’d:
- create a Ministry of Climate Change
- let the Climate Change Commission set carbon credit supply to match its budgets
- require government decisions to be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees
- price agricultural emissions and reinvest the proceeds in on-farm emissions reduction
- reduce livestock numbers to cut methane emissions
- expand the ETS, including indigenous reforestation and the restoration of coastal wetlands
- increase public transport subsidies
They’ve also put forward a range of climate resilience and adaptation measures.
A lot of our recent progress on waste began with the Waste Minimisation Act 2008. This was created and pushed through by the then Green MP Nándor Tánczos. Today, the Greens have a comprehensive range of waste policies towards a circular economy.
This includes the legal right to repair and funding community based repair services. It also means continued expansion of mandatory product stewardship. These ‘take back’ schemes mean firms have to find responsible ways to deal with their products when customers have finished with them. They support a global treaty to control and reduce plastics use. They would seek to prohibit most single-use plastic products, as well as non-recyclable and non-home-compostable packaging.
The “conservation and biodiversity” section of the Green’s Manifesto includes banning new mining on conservation and stewardship land. It has a commitment to double the extent of natural wetlands by 2050. It will provide funding for work on indigenous biodiversity, especially where led by Māori. It will increase funding for the goal of making Aotearoa ‘predator free’ by 2050, and keep and expand the Jobs for Nature programme.
So vote wisely. Consider which of these looks like the future you want to see.