Open letter to Nick Smith

Nick, I’ve listened with increasing interest to your disingenuous attempts to disown your comments from 2005 when you said this:

 

“The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.

 

“Labour Ministers may take pride in being toasted at International Climate conferences for being so bold and brave, but there is no justification for New Zealand going out in the cold by itself on this issue.

 

“New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions made up only 0.4% of the global total and on a per capita basis our emissions are half those of countries like Australia and the United States. We are the only Southern Hemisphere country with binding legal obligations under Kyoto and giants like China and India have got off scot free.”

 

You told Newstalk ZB’s Larry Williams that you made those comments in regard to a “carbon tax” and therefore that they don’t apply to the ETS.

 

Not so fast.

 

Your argument against the carbon tax, expressed above, was not because it was a tax rather than an ETS. Instead, your first mentioned reason for scorning it “is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.”

 

Indeed, the rest of your argument hinges almost entirely on the NZ acting alone issue, and negligible gain.

 

Act has already exposed your legerdemain in trying to equate NZ’s ETS with the much weaker European scheme, as some sort of misguided justification.

 

I don’t care whether you call your July 1 scheme an ETS, a carbon tax or one of Alison Holst’s crockpots...the arguments you made against the carbon tax in 2005 are equally valid against the ETS for exactly the same reasons.

 

Let the public record show your hypocrisy.

 

Regards

Ian Wishart

Author, international climate bestseller, “Air Con”

Comments

[Geoff]

The National party could well take a lesson from the UK elections.

David Cameron promised the country a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, then he backed off and disowned the Tory heartland, trying to form a new Conservative party in his own image

The UKIP picked up about 900,000 votes from the disaffected Tories and this has been calculated by Richard North of EUReferendum to have cost the Tories the outright majority.

The National Party is, in turn, turning its back on its heartland voters and will pay dearly for this in the next election of the ETS goes through.

[John Boy]

Ian has ranted on about Labour for years (and good on him) but National seem little different. This is why conspiracies grow - govts can't accidentally be so stupid.

[Shane Ponting]

The only thing that changed with the Nat government was the colour scheme....

[Anon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Smith_%28politician%29#Climate_Change

[Geoff]

Aussie Budget 2010 -
$652m budget for "renewable energy fund aimed at private sector"

[Tez]

It sounds to me like in 1995 when in opposition Nick was able to speak his mind, but now in office there are others pulling his strings.

Front up Nick, and tell them where to stick this nonsensical tax!

[Geoff]

One has to ask why NZ was one of only six countries at Cancun.

[Geoff2]

Perhaps he's forgotten to take his medication again; remember the episode under Brash?

[AcidComments]

"One has to ask why NZ was one of only six countries at Cancun."

Easy.

New Zealand has a 'bad habit' of hypocrisy in trying to over reach itself in the socalled World stage for UN Brownie point scoring and becoming somekind of Guinea Pig World leader on certain issues. It makes up for the lack of fortitude, honesty and integrity amongst those in charge of the purse strings. They think they can end up get some cushy posting after they retire from office in the UN or similar!

[Whitebread]

I can only say, Amen Ian!

I wrote Nick Smith earlier this year, citing references in your book and others on global warming and pointing out that New Zealand's entire economy could be completely shut down and it wouldn't make any measurable difference to world atmospheric CO2 levels. Smith wrote me back saying he'd read Air Con and the science in it was flawed. He didn't say exactly which bits.

He is already on record as stating that fuel will rise by 4 cents/litre immediately and electricity by about 7% and that this will get worse as the scheme proceeds. The ETS is expected to suck about $400 million annually from the economy upon implementation, upwards of $1,500 per household. I certainly can't afford that and most people probably couldn't.

An Investigate magazine issue in October 2009 posed the question, "are they still listening to you?" Well, no they bloody well are not.

[Whitebread]

And I think that the Nats in office have proven to be just a slightly pinker shade of red than Labour.

[AcidComments]

"He is already on record as stating that fuel will rise by 4 cents/litre immediately and electricity by about 7% and that this will get worse as the scheme proceeds. The ETS is expected to suck about $400 million annually from the economy upon implementation, upwards of $1,500 per household. I certainly can't afford that and most people probably couldn't"

Yeah and this comes ontop of a likelyhood of an increase on GST on that aswell!

More tax ontop of tax.

[Leon]

As long as we have a reserve bank and a round table, the game will always be rigged.
Voting for any of them is utterly pointless.

[Tanya]

National are a real let-down on this issue (and the smacking refendum), amongst others. So what next, vote for no-one, leave NZ for fairer shores or scrape to pay the bills, as usual. How sad. My vote will not be going to National again, or Labour. NZ deserves much better than this...and we're still waiting.

[Geoff]

..and for those of us that are trying to export to Europe, it is a triple whammy.

[Gooner]

And don't forget that it was National which signed us up to the Kyoto Protocol.

[jaymam]

http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Debates/Debates/3/2/8/47HansD_20050510_00001115-Climate-Change-Response-Amendment-Bill-First.htm

JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) :
"This is a complete and utter hoax, if I may say so. 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. Even if it is a problem, it will be delayed for about 6 years. Then it will hit the world in 2096 instead of 2102, or something like that. It will not work."

And do read the other similar pages at the link.

[John Boy]

NZ deserves much better than this...

No we don't. You get what you deserve. It shows what a degraded society we have become.

[Tez]

Nick's myth: if you repackage something then then the contents change.

Shakespeare knew about this trick when he wrote: What's in a name? that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet....

[Andy]

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

-Bertrand Russell