speaking to a crowd of environmentalists at the Sustainability Trust, imnofox tore into the government for their disastrous environmental record

“Kia ora, everyone- it’s great to see so many of you here today, and it’s no surprise so many of you are so energised to change this government after a long term of environmental destruction. This is a government that has slashed funding for every environmental program that they could find, and have done so in a way that means we are seeing even less action on climate change than we had before the Greens took office in the first Labour-Greens government.”

“The budget of the Labour-Greens government committed a net $200 million of new spending towards environmental programs, with the remainder paid largely by the new carbon tax, replacing the broken emissions trading scheme, the nitrate pollution charge and the tourism levy. But due to this government’s cuts, we’re seeing worse consequences for the environment and the climate than we did under that flawed emissions trading scheme.”

“This government kept taxing emissions, kept taxing nitrate pollution, and kept the tourism levy. But instead of putting that towards the environmental programs they were meant to pay for, this government chose to use those to give tax cuts to the rich and buy new planes for the military. The nitrate pollution levy is one gross example. That was $137 million a year, paid by farmers in response to nitrate pollution in our waterways from fertiliser and the likes. That entire $137 used to go straight back into the clean farming package, designed to support farmers and clean up our waterways. But under this government, the clean farming package was wiped, while the charge was still applied. Instead of having polluters pay for the clean up, that money goes straight into the government’s general funding pool, meaning our waterways and our farmers see nothing in return.”

“The same goes for our carbon tax. The emissions trading scheme was a broken system. It allowed New Zealand to buy fraudulent overseas credits instead of investing in cleaning up our own environment. It totally excluded agriculture. Alongside many other issues. But at least the emissions charges went straight towards offsetting those emissions. It still did a decent job at ensuring emissions were offset- mostly. The carbon tax was a better solution, with the funding going straight into local carbon sinks through tree planting. Polluters still paid, and net emissions were stabilised if not reduced. But this Liberal-National government decided that while they’d keep the carbon tax, they’d wipe the tree planting programme off of the map. That’s only half of the equation when it comes to reducing and offsetting emissions. Sure, it’s good that polluters still pay. But what good is it that we stop doing anything to offset those emissions? Even the broken emissions trading scheme did a better job than this government’s absolute destruction of the carbon tax. Instead, they used the carbon tax revenue to pay for tax cuts, doing absolutely nothing to reduce emissions.”

“I can promise to you all today that the Greens will fix the carbon tax so that it actually does something to reduce our net emissions. We’ll resurrect that tree planting programme, investing in our regions and cutting emissions: like we have to. Because this government has clearly forgotten the legal commitment to reach a net-zero emission economy by the year 2050, and urgent action must be taken to have any hope of meeting that goal. We need to restore funding to clean up our rivers, like the government promised they would in their throne speech before absolutely wiping funding for the programmes to do so.”

“We are not alone in the fight against climate change, but we are alone if we do nothing. The fight to keep global emissions below 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming is important for the survival of our planet, our people, and our economy. Every nation needs to take action on this issue as global partners, not leaving it up to someone else like the Liberal-National government has chosen to do. They claim to stand by farmers, but everyone recognises that farmers will be hit hardest, both by climate change and the cuts over this government’s term.”

“It’s time to take back the Beehive, to make an Aotearoa where climate change is recognised and fought against. Because that’s an Aotearoa worth fighting for. Kia ora.”

the crowd applauds, pleased that someone is standing up to the destructive programme of the current government. imnofox shares fair trade coffee with the audience afterwards