Bye-bye bi-partisan climate pact

Sunday, 9 November 2025

Vernon Small is a journalist and former Labour Government advisor.

OPINION: It’s not clear whether the political consensus on net-zero climate change emissions is still alive or whether its corpse is simply being chauffeured around by the coalition to convince us – and the world – that it still has a beating heart.

With the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference COP30 starting in Brazil tomorrow it was, to put it kindly, strange timing to announce on Tuesday moves to undermine the flagship consensus forged between then-climate change minister and Green Party co-leader James Shaw and National’s Todd Muller.

Maybe that was why the email announcement was slipped out quietly on Tuesday evening and was not sent to all the usual media addresses or even all the specialists in the area. In these hyper-connected days, that is probably a conspiracy too far, but at the least it was a cock-up because it suggested there was something to hide.

The proposed amendments to the Climate Change Response Act, which sets in place the architecture for the 2050 net zero target, add to a long list of changes to the country’s efforts on climate change, while all the while the Government has on paper remained – and says it remains – committed to the headline promise.

In summary, they include: scrapping the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund and raiding its cash to help fund the 2023 tax package, championing thermal energy use and exploration, dumping investigations into a “battery project” to store power (including looking at the Lake Onslow proposal), removed agriculture from the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and putting its full introduction on the never-never, halving the biogenic methane reduction target, and ending subsidies on EVs and charging EVs road user charges at a rate that undermines their competitive advantage over petrol vehicles.

On top of those, it will now decouple the ETS from our international commitments under the Paris Agreement, detune the Climate Change Commission’s role in preparing advice on the country’s emissions reductions plan, and push back to 2050 - a massive 25 year postponement, not just a delay - the deadline for the public sector to reach carbon neutral.

Oh, and increasing the threshold for businesses that report on their efforts to reduce climate change emissions from those worth $60 million to $1 billion.

In each case, Government ministers have had a reason to justify the change – efficiency, fairness, practicality, international competitiveness for our industries, streamlining, avoiding duplication, the promise of future technology that will fix everything – while sticking with the net zero target and staying true to our Paris commitments. Having said that, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts at one time seemed to take the strangely cynical view that our (unenforceable) commitment under the Paris Agreement required us only to show we were trying, not that we had to succeed.

But the sum of all the parts amounts to a serious undermining of the country’s efforts. In effect, the targets remain and the promises live on, but many of the ways to achieve those goals are being cut out from under the pledges.

It’s no surprise that Labour cried foul, and the Greens saw Tuesday’s announcement – made without consulting the Opposition - as the moment the Government officially blew the whistle on the Shaw-Muller bipartisan accord.

The markets (which presumably the Government gives more weight to than Green Party opinion) delivered their verdict too, damning the new level of uncertainty and lowering the traded price of carbon - the cost of a unit allowing one tonne of carbon dioxide to be emitted into the air – by about 20% before it rebounded somewhat.

In other words, the market judged it would become easier – and cheaper – to emit pollution once the latest amendments come into force. Put another way, the carbon market sent the message that the Government’s plan has undermined its own rhetoric that the emissions trading scheme will do the heavy lifting on reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

When Treasury finally quantifies the scale of our liability in meeting our Paris undertaking, we will be able to judge whether the country is still on the hook to buy many millions of dollars’ worth of overseas credits– something which has always been assumed but which the Government has hedged about confirming.

Or will things be even worse - will more billions be sent offshore after the changes this Government has made? Will we simply not meet our commitments? Or will we magically succeed, despite what the Government has done?

So, in light of all these changes, should the virtual death of the bipartisan net-zero accord be a surprise?

Not to those who heard Resources Minister Shane Jones’ interview on a net-zero-hostile show on Sky Australia three months ago.

“Brick by brick we’re dismantling it mate,” Jones said about New Zealand’s commitment to the net-zero target, pointing to support for the coal industry and $200m put into encouraging the oil and gas industry. And in a Jones-esque flourish, he rejected the “unicorn-kissing” view that only renewables would keep the lights on.

He said NZ First would campaign on the complete inversion of the commitments former prime minister Jacinda Ardern had signed New Zealand up to.

The economy could not bear the deadweight costs of these policies, which run the risk of deindustrialisation, so Jones said NZ First wouldn’t “maintain a set of expectations or targets that our economy cannot bear”.

Now, NZ First is not the Coalition Government. And most National Party ministers seem wary of saying anything that might clash with undertakings in some of our important trade agreements or might be read as openly back-sliding on New Zealand’s strong reputation on climate change issues.

But if the words are not the same as Jones’, the actions point in the same direction. And actions speak louder.

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