28th February 2008.
Finance and Expenditure Select Committee
C/o Parliament Buildings
Wellington
By email carol.brouwer@parliament.govt.nz.
Submission to:
The Finance and Expenditure Committee
Submission regarding:
Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill - Bill No 187-1
Submission by:
The Northland Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc.
General Nature of Submission
The Northland Chamber of Commerce opposes the Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill. We support action to reduce global emissions of Greenhouse Gases but we believe the government should not be imposing restrictive measures upon New Zealand businesses ahead of other countries.
Decision sought
To put aside these measures and reconsider once our trading partners implement
In place of these measure to implement a broad-based greenhouse gas charge accompanied by a corresponding reduction in income tax as an alternative to the emissions trading scheme.
The Northland Chamber of Commerce
The Northland Chamber of Commerce currently has 363 financial members that employ the equivalent of 5000 full time employees.
Since 1903, the Northland Chamber of Commerce has served the needs of the Northland business community through its public policy and advocacy initiatives and its business development programs and services.
The Chamber also works to ensure that Northland has a business-friendly environment where all businesses can grow and prosper. With this, also comes paying close attention to the quality of life the region offers our members’ employees and families. The Chamber works to make a difference in Northland’s future and to help Northland grow.
The Northland Chamber of Commerce generally favour well researched development projects that add value to the economy, community and infrastructure of the region especially those projects that undergo rigorous scrutiny to ensure that the community and environment are protected.
Our Submission
The Northland Chamber of Commerce opposes the Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill.
We support action to reduce global emissions of Greenhouse Gases but we believe the government should not be imposing restrictive measures upon New Zealand businesses ahead of other countries.
The measures proposed in the Bill, specifically the Emissions Trading Scheme and the limitation on thermal electricity generation, will result in significantly higher energy and transport costs for New Zealand businesses which our trading partners will not have to face.
These costs will reduce New Zealand’s international competitiveness and result in a loss of investment and jobs as companies contract activity, close down or relocate offshore.
If businesses do relocate offshore, this will do nothing to reduce global emissions. In fact global emissions might increase if that economic activity were to shift to another economy with more lenient climate change policies.
The impacts of supporting the Emissions Trading Bill are job losses and a diminishing of our economic base
The Government’s figures show that 1630 jobs would be lost in Northland alone – a 2.7% contraction.
An impact of this size on the economic base of our region would have devastating consequences and would be unacceptable. We urge you to reconsider this legislation.
We strongly believe that New Zealand should not introduce emissions trading or any other price based mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions until our major trading partners face similar costs.
Putting aside the issue of New Zealand moving too far and too fast, we consider the emissions trading scheme to be a flawed way of reducing emissions.
We are concerned that without some sort of mechanism to temper market forces the proposed scheme will result in excessively high and volatile energy prices.
We are also concerned that the free allocation of emissions Units to protect the energy intensive companies will disadvantage smaller businesses relative to larger ones.
We believe a broad-based greenhouse gas charge accompanied by a corresponding reduction in income tax should be considered as an alternative to the emissions trading scheme. This would result in much more stable energy prices.
We would appreciate an opportunity to speak to our submission at the Select Committee hearing.
Yours faithfully
Jeff Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Northland Chamber of Commerce
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1 comment:
We attended the carbon credit seminar held in Whangarei approximately 4 months ago. What we listened to was a rushed draft that had not been thought out and much squerming from the presenters when intelligent questions were asked. I am afraid, we made the decision to stay right away from it. Recent events have proved us right in our decision. After seeing what other countries emit,the NZ effort is minimal. I have noticed that it is only the small countries signing up with the Canadians withdrawing, this surely is an indicator that if we carry on down this path NZ will no longer be competitive.
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