How prepared are our political parties for a climate election?

Thursday, 23 February 2023

In the months before being elected Prime Minister, National leader Christopher Luxon said Cyclone Gabrielle was a wake up call on climate change.

Gareth Hughes is a former Green MP and now works for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa. He is not a member of any political party.

OPINION: With the country battered by a succession of extreme weather events, will the recent tragic floods make this year’s election a climate election?

Cyclone Gabrielle followed the Auckland Anniversary flood by only a fortnight and comes on the back of damaging wildfires, floods, slips and hail storms affecting other regions last year.

For decades climate scientists have warned we can expect the frequency and severity of extreme weather events to worsen thanks to a warming climate, and that’s exactly what we are seeing now.

For decades New Zealand has muddled-on with climate policy.

* Chris Hipkins commits to 'build back better', anticipating billions needed for cyclone recovery

* How to pay for 'Gabrielle' damage will be the major question this election

Scenes of devastation after Cyclone Gabrielle struck Hawke’s Bay suggest that climate change will be centre of voters’ concerns come election day in October.

As far back as 1990, both Labour and National parties campaigned on ambitious greenhouse gas cuts.

In the decades since, targets have been set and missed, policies announced and scrapped, and now New Zealand has the sixth-highest per-person emissions in the developed world, and infrastructure totally unprepared for the future we can expect.

This year we will see our first election campaign set against a backdrop of a climate emergency where communities will still be picking up the pieces.

Prime Minister and pragmatist Chris Hipkins has performed well in the crisis aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle, but the real challenge for him and Labour remains how to deal with the longer-term crises, writes Gareth Hughes.

Climate change could sit alongside the economy as two of the most important issues for voters in 2023. Most New Zealanders now have their own story of experiencing what a rapidly changing climate looks like. They know what it looks and smells like.

Global warming is no longer academic or only affecting far-off lands. This isn’t just about polar bears or penguins, this is personal.

In 2022 Australia had their “climate election” set against a backdrop of horrific bushfires and floods. How will our political parties fare if this year is our climate election?

For the Labour Government, they once again stepped up and performed well in the crisis. New Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and new Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty looked like old hands in the response, but this has always been Labour’s challenge – stellar in the moment of immediate crisis, less so dealing with long-term systemic crises like climate change or inequality.

Come October, Labour have a number of practical climate policies they can point to across two terms such as the clean car standard, but no genuine agricultural, transport or energy transformations delivered.

If this was our “nuclear-free moment” there hasn’t been the equivalent to the 1980s ban on American warships. Exploratory oil rigs and ships laden with coal still berth at our ports.

Eyeing a third-term, a difficulty the Labour Government has is to deliver emission reductions in tough economic times.

Political pragmatist Chris Hipkins is focused on “bread and butter issues” and so far this has meant ditching the biofuels mandate and extending the fuel tax cut a fourth time, leaving a large climate and fiscal hole.

Climate change Minister James Shaw talks about the climate response in light of Auckland's floods. (First published January 31, 2023.)

It was bad optics a week after Auckland’s floods, and surely protecting our communities from climate change is as bread and butter as it gets.

The investments needed to rebuild flood-affected areas, better prepare communities for a future of even more and worse weather events, and transform New Zealand’s economy to a low-carbon one will be staggering.

The scale is mammoth and it’s hard to square this circle under the current low-tax, low-debt status quo.

National has different climate challenges both on policy and perception. They voted for the Zero Carbon Act and are happy backing this distant 2050 goal, but have opposed pretty much every single one of the Government’s policies to achieve it.

With a lack of policy, we are able to glean National supports offshore oil drilling and double-cab utes, but not much else. How would a National Government achieve a zero carbon New Zealand? Do they even know?

Gareth Hughes is a former Green MP and now works for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa.

Then there’s the party’s perception problem. West Coast-based list MP Maureen Pugh’s high profile flirtation with climate denialism was an unwelcome distraction when Parliament resumed after the weather disasters.

Christopher Luxon and senior MPs distanced themselves immediately, but it‘s a reminder National hasn’t always been united behind the science on climate change or seen to be taking it seriously.

The Greens have also been divided – between those who want to diligently deliver Labour’s programme through a Green minister, or distance themselves more forcefully from the cross benches.

Co-leader James Shaw has had to walk a tightrope, saying more has been achieved by this Government than in the last 30 years but that it’s insufficient. His Climate Commission has binding science-based targets that aren’t legally binding, and the Paris commitment to slash emissions in half by 2030 will be achieved … by paying people offshore to do two-thirds of it.

Incoherencies and inconsistencies aside, voters still believe the Greens are best placed and most trusted to lead on the issue.

With Ardern’s departure it will be easier for the party to position themselves as the heirs to the “nuclear-free moment”.

Expect the party to remind voters in Ashburton, Westport, Nelson, Wellington, Auckland, Northland, Coromandel, the East Coast and Hawke’s Bay how global warming affected them personally, and how with political power the party would go “further and faster”.

ACT meanwhile don’t have the same pressure to prove their carbon-fighting credentials, but the top policy listed on their website – asking politicians to pledge to cut flights to Wellington by 25 percent – shows they don’t have any genuine aspiration to do so.

The real question climate-caring voters will have to ask is, if the only party to vote against the Zero Carbon Act is in a position of power, what will they force National to do? How would the small-state, smaller-tax party invest the billions needed for adaptation, and why on Earth would the free-market party link New Zealand’s carbon price to China’s?

All political parties face their own unique challenges dealing with climate policy this year, but that’s nothing compared to what Kiwis are facing right now.