The Greens’ own environmental policies vs National, ACT and NZ First’s Dirty Dozen

This Green Party press release on the weekend positioned its own environmental policies alongside the Dirty Dozen policies from the right that will continue to harm the environment if NACT First get another term,

“I am asking New Zealanders to vote for those without a voice, including our threatened wildlife and wild places, while keeping their eyes wide open to the alternative which will devastate entire species and ecosystems,” says Green Party Co-leader Hon Marama Davidson.

“All of the Greens’ policies this election are now on the table, including our commitments to end mining on public conservation land, to protect our oceans and end bottom trawling, to restore our wetlands, rivers, and to limit the influence of big money that has corrupted our environmental laws.”

“By contrast, this has been the most environmentally destructive government Aotearoa has seen in a generation, and as Luxon, Jones and Seymour tell New Zealand every day, they have only just begun on their anti-nature programme. There will be much worse to come,” says Davidson.

The Greens full environmental policy package: Nature and Climate. It’s worth remembering the Greens also build environmental policy into all their other policies. An example is Just Transition, the process of moving society and our economy into a post-carbon world in a way that doesn’t leave people behind. Hence the focus on ending poverty. Job creation goes hand in hand with electrification. Water protection relies on farmers being supported to shift to regenerative methods.

Meanwhile, National, ACT and NZ First’s Dirty Dozen,

1. Conservation Amendment Bill. If passed, this bill has proposed changing the primary focus of conservation land management to ‘enable use and development to the greatest extent practicable,’ rather than manage for conservation.
2. Mining on public conservation land and other important and rare places, including coal mining on Denniston Plateau, Bream Bay sand mining, sea bed mining, industrial gold mining in central Otago drylands at the proposed Bendigo gold mine.
3. Fisheries Amendment Bill. If passed, this bill will hand unprecedented control over to the fishing industry. It includes the proposal to fine anyone sharing cameras footage from fishing boats up to $50,000, reduce public consultation, and incentivise trawling over more selective fishing methods, as well as reduce penalties for exceeding catch limits.
4. Failure to meet climate targets. International assessments of this government’s actions on climate put us in the league with Donald Trump at reversing climate action. We are putting international agreements at risk through our failure to meet climate commitments.
5. LNG fossil fuel facility. The Luxon government plans to use $1 billion of taxpayer money to underwrite an liquid gas import facility, locking New Zealand into more expensive power bills, and more climate heating emissions.
6. Gene Technology Bill. If passed this bill will radically deregulate genetic engineering and would allow genetically modified organisms to be released into the environment with inadequate risk assessments, oversight , tracking, and accountability. It would even allow GE experiments to be done outside of labs, with no expert supervision.
7. Environmental Reporting Amendment Bill. If passed, this bill will weaken environmental reporting and public accountability by changing the frequency  of comprehensive State of the Environment from three to six years.
8. Natural Environment Act has been passed but has not yet taken effect. This bill embeds climate denialism and environmental exploitation into law by removing or weakening environmental protections.
9. Planning Act has been passed but has not yet taken effect. The controversial ‘regulatory relief’ rules force councils to pay or compensate landowners to not destroy biodiversity. Councils and experts made clear they can not meet these costs and this Act risks unprecedented biodiversity loss.
10. Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Act allows the Department of Conservation (DOC) to authorize the killing of protected wildlife where they stand in the way of development.
11. Re-opening offshore oil and gas exploration. While the law change has passed, the climate impact hasn’t happened yet. New permits, exploration, production and combustion will all play out over the next coming years, locking in climate heating emissions.
12. Possible withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Act and New Zaland First have said the support removing NZ from our international obligations under the Paris Agreement, risking trade agreements and international credibility.