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The ACT Party wants to undo the government’s energy and climate efforts, promising to repeal the Zero Carbon Act and the Emissions Trading Scheme, lift the ban on oil and gas permits, and open up “low-value conservation lands.” for mining.
Leader David Seymour, who announced the policy at a campaign stop in New Plymouth on Monday night, said more than half a million kiwis had moved to Australia in the past due to using the country’s resources to enrich themselves and create jobs.
“It’s really an attack on the hypocrisy of people who sign anti-mining petitions using their iPads,” Seymour said. Stuff.
Martin De Ruyter / Things
Act leader David Seymour speaks to Act Party supporters at a meeting at the Honest Lawyer Hotel in Nelson.
“The fact is that our way of life depends on the consumption of minerals and energy, and attacking the extraction of energy and resources in New Zealand soil, while continuing to consume them, is hypocritical.”
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In 2018, the Labor-led government banned future offshore oil exploration; however, if discoveries are made with existing permits, which are due to end in 2030, oil and gas extraction could continue for many years.
The Government has similarly expressed its intention to stop the opening of new mines in the Department of Conservation. [DoC] land, but has yet to turn this into a ban due to disagreement between the coalition parties on the scope of the policy.
New Zealand had more energy and mineral resources than Australia on a per capita basis, Seymour said.
“We have simply chosen not to use them. We’re talking tens of billions of dollars over the next few decades … I suspect there are more New Zealanders working in the mining sector in Australia than in New Zealand.
“The DOC should encourage mining in low-biodiversity areas, to earn money and protect high-biodiversity areas.”
Seymour said the former land of Landcorp on the west coast, which he claimed was scrub land over lithium, nickel and copper, would be better utilized if mined, for example.
“The Zero Carbon Act does not achieve what New Zealand really needs to do, which is to do enough to be part of the global effort, not to do so much that we generate carbon leakage,” he said.
Carbon leakage occurs when a strict carbon policy in one country leads to increased emissions in another, such as high costs in one country, making a high-emissions industry more viable in another country.
“It will not be effective in reducing emissions, because there are many hatches,” he said.
ACT would instead set a carbon price that was linked to the weighted average price in the top five countries New Zealand trades with, effectively linking New Zealand’s emission reductions to that of its international trading partners.
