Nicola Willis: Govt not prepared to ‘send billions overseas’ to meet Paris pledge
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has qualified the Government’s commitment to meeting a key pledge the country has made under the Paris climate change agreement by making clear the pledge is a case of “best endeavours”.
During a fiery meeting of Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure select committee this morning, Willis accused Labour climate change spokesperson Deborah Russell of being “a conspiracy theorist” for suggesting the Government had made changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) just to “balance the books”.
That prompted a retort of “for goodness sake” and “ridiculous” from the visibly angry Labour MP.
Willis told the committee the Government’s position was that it was still committed to meeting its commitment under the Paris Agreement to cut net carbon emissions to 50% of 2005 gross levels by 2030.
“Yes, that remains our priority,” she said.
But she appeared to rule out the Government buying any material volume of overseas offsets in order to hit the target.
“We have said that we're not prepared to spend billions of dollars sending money offshore,” she said.
Former climate change commissioner Rod Carr has told The Post the Government’s decision last month to de-link the settings for the ETS from its 2030 Paris pledge would increase the need for the Government to buy overseas offsets — assuming it remained committed to the agreement.
The de-linking appeared a recognition that the Government could not meet the 2030 target through the ETS alone without crashing the economy.
But the Treasury has so far not factored the potential cost of buying overseas offsets into its fiscal forecasts and has advised The Post it is not reviewing that policy as a result of the change to the ETS settings.
Clarifying the Government’s position after the hearing, Willis continued to describe the 2030 Paris pledge as a commitment but also said it was “extravagant”, criticising former Green Party climate change minister James Shaw for agreeing to it and emphasising the Government’s 2050 “net zero” target — enshrined in domestic legislation — was more important.
“We're making our best efforts to realise that commitment,” she said of the Paris pledge. “It remains our view that our domestic efforts are what is most significant.
“We have set a very clear position that we don't think New Zealand taxpayers, many of whom have been struggling for these past few years, would thank us for sending billions of dollars offshore to meet that Paris obligation,” she reiterated.
Willis also noted Treasury had advised the Government had no legal obligation to meet the target.
“Faced with the choice of sending billions of dollars of New Zealanders’ hard-earned money offshore to meet James Shaw's performative statement, or, on the other hand, ensuring that we are continuing to reduce emissions here at home and making endeavours to reduce them more in the future, I choose the latter.”
Prior to the clashes over climate policy, Willis warned MPs on the committee that the way the economy had tracked this year would impact the next set of fiscal forecasts that the Treasury is due to release later this month.
Economic forecasts had “generally been revised down over the past two years, as a greater understanding has developed about the nature and duration of the downturn and the recovery”, she said.
“These revisions made the Government's fiscal strategy harder to achieve.”
The last set of fiscal forecasts, released by the Treasury at the May Budget, forecast the Government’s net core Crown debt would peak in proportional terms at 46% of GDP, or $230 billion in the year to June 2028.
“The biggest reason by far for the change in government forecasts over time has been downward revisions in Treasury's tax revenue forecasts,” she said.
The Government’s strategy remained to bring down government spending, as a proportion of GDP, from the current level of 33.1% “towards 30%”, she said.
“That is the key to getting the books back to surplus.”