The ETS review panel has now received the submissions for its review. It will hear from a selected few before making their recommendations. I have asked to be heard on the 20 April. They are probably not too keen on hearing from too many, in fact I do not expect the review panel sees this as more than a rubber stamping exercise for the ETS. Nick Smith has indicated he did not expect it to look at Agriculture’s entry date because there was time to do this in 2014. This is code for telling the panel not to review it. This is also a curious position for someone who said that industry needs certainty when ramming through the ETS amendment in 2009. Agriculture is our biggest industry and so certainty for it is even more important. Spending millions of dollars preparing the reporting mechanisms for agriculture’s entry and leaving the decision to the last minute is unacceptable. It also indicates there is little appetite in the Government to delay agriculture’s entry. Farmers should not be lulled into a false sense of security and think agriculture’s entry will be delayed because the tenor of the review panel’s rhetoric is that it will not. This is a shame because 2014 is also election year and it will be even harder electorally to pull agriculture out then than it would be now.
Again I find myself frustrated that the types of organisations that will get a hearing from this panel like Federated Farmers refuse inexplicably to argue the science against including methane in the ETS. The science is solid, these emissions are climate neutral, and we have proved that now. Feds refusal to articulate this is astonishing.
The terms of reference for the review were tight and were limited to operational aspects however with in this there was plenty of scope to make submissions because the ETS is so lacking in operational consistency and environmental integrity which are two of the points on which the panel invited comment.
PFCR’s submission was 10 pages long so I won’t go into the submission details at this stage but I would like to comment on the worrying aspects of the review. The Panel in its issues statement indicated a bias to the ETS. The tenor of the Panel’s rhetoric in its issue statement was really to try and justify a couple of things which can’t be justified.
Firstly the cost; it sated the cost to the average dairy farmer will be $13300 per year rising each year. They tried to diminish the impact of this by saying it should be put in perspective of total costs of $494000 per year. I submitted the true perspective was that $13300 per year per farm represented 9% of farmer’s net income which last year was $144000 for the average dairy farm.
It is worse for sheep and beef farmers who face an 11% cut in income with the average cost being $6700 per farm per year against an average income of $57000.
The other point I will comment on now is that the panel attempted to justify NZ including agriculture in its ETS when no other country in the world does.
They said Australia was not including agriculture in its carbon tax but they did have the carbon farming initiative. The panel is comparing chalk with cheese. Under NZ’s ETS farmers pay for livestock emissions and they can not offset these against things like soil carbon increases. Under the proposed CFI in Australia farmers do not even pay for their livestock emissions but they can receive payments if they reduce them. How sweet is that? Aussie farmers can also receive payments for increases in their soil carbon. Nick Smith has said repeatedly we should link with Australia, well the deal Aussie farmers get will see them making money out of the carbon farming initiative and the ETS in NZ will see farmers paying money. Nick Smith should give farmers here the same deal as their Aussie counterparts.
Lastly the panel included nitrogen fertiliser reduction regulations that exist in other countries to reduce nitrogen leaching into waterways as some sort of excuse for including nitrous oxide emission in our ETS. They miss an important point here. Protecting waterways can be justified environmentally whereas there is no environmental justification for penalising farmers for nitrous oxide. They also make a scientific mistake because reducing nitrogen fertiliser does not necessarily reduce nitrous oxide emissions. Most of the nitrous oxide produced from fertiliser is in fact only that created from the extra nitrogen returned to the soil in animal waste due to the increased diet from extra grass grown. If instead of using nitrogen fertiliser a farm buys in extra feed, the nitrogen returned to the soil in animal waste is the same. The only nitrous oxide produced directly by N fert is from any NH4 that volatilises into the atmosphere and is then returned to the soil in rain and then is not used by a growing plant and is then leached into a waterway and then converts to nitrous oxide. It is a tiny amount and the Panel’s argument that these regulations overseas are comparable to what NZ farmers face in the ETS is laughable.
I hope to be able to tell them this face to face but I do not think this is likely.
On the Beef and Lamb remits, not good news, they were lost 13286 votes against to 7189 for with 16 abstentions. The votes are weighted, 1 vote per 250 sheep, or 50 cattle, or 100 dairy cows.
These 20000 odd votes were cast by only 900 farmers which was a disappointing response it has to be said. I can’t think why farmers did not take this opportunity. And I would not even want to guess why any farmer would vote against these remits. Still well done for Neil, he is doing his best, as are we all but without a little help from farmers in NZ it is hard to see anything but a future in which each of you takes a 10 % pay cut and pays your $13300 or $6700 per year. To those who took a couple of minutes to cast your vote thankyou.