Nats caught out by move on climate

The National Party appears to have been stumped by the Government’s climate change policy to delay a price on agricultural emissions until 2025.

The Government has largely acquiesced to demands from the agricultural lobby, blunting the potential for National to run a ‘‘war-on-farmers’’ type campaign strategy favoured by the party on climate change.

National said there were parts of the policy to be worried about but it would ‘‘wait and see’’ whether it would actually change anything or vote against it.

The Government has given in to demands from the farming sector that agriculture stay out of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for the time being, giving the sector until 2025 to co-design some other kind of farm-by-farm emissions pricing scheme.

But there are teeth to the announcement in the form of a ‘‘backstop’’. Agriculture will enter the ETS at a farm-by-farm level by default in 2025 if no scheme is reached, and could do so as early as 2022 if the Climate Change Commission deems the sector isn’t doing enough.

The Government is actually giving Cabinet the power to force agriculture into the ETS by administrative fiat in 2022 if the commission says it should, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave an assurance this power would be used if recommended.

National’s climate change spokesman Scott Simpson said the announcement was a backdown for the Government’s greener supporters, but the ‘‘backstop’’ was a scary prospect for farmers.

‘‘We are broadly in support of the opportunity for farmers to make change. You can’t punish farmers until that technology [to lower emissions] exists. Hopefully by 2025 that stuff will be there.’’

Simpson said National would listen to how the wider sector viewed the proposal before coming to a more firm view.

‘‘We’ll take a breath, we’ll wait and see how this stuff lands, and then we will scrutinise the legislation that the Government puts forward and come to a view.’’

New Zealand should also ‘‘wait and see’’ if pricing emissions made sense in 2025, he said.

National leader Simon Bridges has indicated a willingness to work with the Government on climate change, and voted for the first reading of the Zero Carbon Bill. Yet there are clearly a wide range of views within the caucus, and National has fiercely opposed most other Government policies on climate change.