In this special episode of 'Now, That's What I Call Green', I sift through the environmental pledges of major political parties in the looming Aotearoa New Zealand election. Delving into subjects from climate change responsiveness to renewable energy vows, I'll lay out what each party is pledging—taking it with a grain of salt—for the well-being of our planet. Listen in to shape up as an informed voter and embrace your role as a dedicated kaitiaki (guardian) of our shared home.
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Transcript:
Kia ora kaitiaki or environmental guardians and welcome back to Now That's What I Call Green where we dig deep into the roots of sustainability. I'm Brianne West, you might know me as the founder and former CEO of Ethique or hopefully the founder and CEO of Incrediballs. But most importantly, I believe that the way to change the world, to solve the social and environmental problems we face is to change the way we do business, mainly because business caused so many of them. So today I thought we'd do something a wee bit different in light of the current climate and dive into the political landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand, specifically focusing on the environmental policies of the various political parties that are champing at the bit for your vote. Politics and the environment are definitely something that gets people heated, so try and stay calm in the comments because they're two topics that we really need to discuss openly, honestly, and not just based on what the media says.
We need to sift through the political jargon to find out who really cares about the planet, or at least has the best policies to say they do, to help you cast your vote. So whether you're a seasoned voter, or if you are voting for the very first time, this episode aims to give you the insights you need to make an informed decision, because really, truly, every single vote matters, even if it doesn't feel like it does.
Now, I'm filming this quite early on into the campaign, so there may be some policies that come up after this is recorded, but I'm off on an adventure next week to spend some time on a boat out near the Kimberley in Australia. But I wanted to do this for you, because there's so many people out there who are just baffled who to vote for. My tried and tested response to people who don't know who to vote for is to vote for other people. Vote for your community, vote for the people who need the most protection. So hopefully this will help you do that.
Now I am specifically focused on the environmental policies. I appreciate there is lots more to vote on, but if I was looking at all that, I'd be here for the rest of the week. Speaking of a week, I have had a week of irritating politicians, if you saw my video on the Kia World Class Awards last week, but I'm not actually out to annoy. I truly believe that many politicians have entered politics to try and make the world a better place, but the system is slow, broken, call it what you like. We should appal people for giving it a go, because the abuse politicians get is insane. It's pretty vile. And yes, we need to hold them accountable, but that definitely goes too far.
It's really easy to be idealistic about the environment. So I'm going to try and temper this with a bit of reality that addresses the least amount of disruption for people. And I am not going to tell you to vote for, I'm not going to tell you I vote for, and I'm not going to rank them or rate them because there are plenty of organisations who are doing that. I'm simply going to provide an insight to what everyone is promising to do. This is not just government promises or worth.
But if you want to go deeper and look into more things outside environmental policies, have a look at policy.nz to see what matters to you. That's where I do my research. It's a fantastic website that just conglomerates everything everybody's said. I'm going to focus specifically on climate change because, you know, it's kind of the biggest thing facing us,
well, that we're talking about anyway. And that is in regards to adaptation and emissions reduction. I'm going to talk about conservation and land protection, which encompasses freshwater and farms and oceans because, you know, that's my passion. Let's crack into it. Right, labour. Honestly, labour doesn't even have that many policies under the environmental categories, which is interesting. They're a mixed bag. They're taking a consider funding approach, investing in three new research hubs focusing on technology, climate change and health.
The funding would also include fellowships for promising scientists, there'd be a new pandemic centre, there would be a focus on climate change and disaster resilience with the National Centre for Research on Oceans. They will also consider a dedicated fund to retain and increase the number of Māori climate change researchers and scientists. Interesting. Now, you may recall a while ago they banned new permits for offshore oil and gas exploration, but they've kind of taken their foot off the gas.
Yes, pun intended. So, worry about their commitment. They still retain that focus on getting to 100% renewable energy, which is currently sitting around the 85% mark. And of course, that last 15 to 10% is going to be the hardest. And yes, this is the Black Rock thing. I appreciate many people don't like the Black Rock thing, but I think people are a little bit blinded by the hatred of large corporations.
Look, I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad, but investment into renewable energy is a great thing. They are going to work to partner with Fonterra to cut coal use at their dairy factories. Now, Fonterra is one of the biggest users of coal in Aotearoa, so, you know, if we got them off it for their boilers and everything else, that would be a big win. Fonterra has committed to undertaking a range of projects to cut coal use across six manufacturing sites, and that will result in about 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 reduction, which is not a small thing.
Labour also want to develop a biodiversity credit system to incentivise and reward landowners for protecting New Zealand's indigenous flora and fauna, rather than just planting bloody pine trees. And Labour don't have a great deal in the way of protection for our oceans, but they have said they're going to expand the Hauraki Gulf protection area by 18%. So that's something. So to put it mildly, they're a mixed bag. And their commitment to reaching 100% renewable is commendable, along with their partnership with Fonterra and other organisations. So overall, ambitions could be higher, but they're certainly not the worst.
So let's crack into National. So National want to abolish the clean car discount for electric vehicles. It would retain the clean car standard, which regulates vehicle importers to reduce CO2 emissions. But for those of you who are buying an electric car, you're not going to have that incentive. Now they're doing that because they believe that that tax is unfair for those who need to buy utes and things, which is primarily farmers. They want to develop a whole bunch of national policy statements on things like hydrogen, electricity distribution and renewable energy. And I honestly don't have much to say about this because, I mean, we don't know what those statements will say. If they're saying that we're going to get to 100% renewable energy by 2050, well, I'm not pro that. That's a little bit too late.
They want to make the installation of electric vehicle chargers a permitted activity under the Resource Management Act, the RMA. So why does that matter? Well, permitted activities don't require a building consent, so this would speed up development of charging sites, which they say is holding people back from transitioning to EVs. They also increase funding of electric vehicle chargers. National want to hold on to the idea of cars versus public transport, and EVs are definitely better than internal combustion engines, and yes to all those people shaking their heads in the audience, in the audience, shaking their heads who are listening, in every country except Poland, who use coal almost exclusively to generate electricity.
And there's LCAs and stuff to back up that comment. It's not some EV-induced propaganda anyway. So they are focused on cars over public transport, which is obviously the reality for a country that's quite as spread out in Aotearoa, but perhaps not to necessary cities like Wellington, Auckland. That's also why they are, of course, working on building lots of roads and why they're called the Let's Build More Roads Party. They will encourage green building standards. I guess that's good. The only policy they have under climate adaptation is to support research into the construction centre.
That seems lacking. The worst one for me, though, for National, and this hasn't formed part of their policy, is that last year they said they would overturn Labor's ban on the offshore oil and gas exploration. To me that's an absolute non-negotiable and I'd love some clarity on that. If anyone has seen anything about that further, please let me know. So it's pretty lacklustre, but in fairness to them, they're not the party that leads on environmental stuff. People vote for them because they think they'll be better for the economy.
Whether they are or they aren't, well, that's up to your judgment. So National are planning to abolish the clean car discount, they want to maintain clean car standard though, they're looking to speed up the development of EV charging which is great and they'll encourage green building standards but they're definitely not leading on climate adaptation. So the focus seems to be a lot more on the economy than the environment. Now I appreciate we are in a cost of living crisis, this is absolutely what the voter wants to hear, but I would like to point out that you can have both. You can have an environmentally sustainable country and a financially sustainable one. So to the Greens, now I can't comment on every policy they have or I would be here for hours because as you'd expect, this is the Greens' reason for being.
So to the policies I think will have the most impact or are the most interesting. They want to have a dedicated ministry that is essential to drive a coordinated, Te Tiriti-based response to climate change. So they're going to take bold action to cut climate pollution, which they think needs more direction and management to the government level, to transition Aotearoa to a zero carbon climate resilient country. They want to amend the Zero Carbon Act to require that government decisions are consistent with a 1.5 degree warming limit, which, you know, that ship may have sailed, but I admire the ambition nonetheless.
They want to set growth emissions reduction targets and to align those decisions to international commitment processes. They want to pass a climate change adaptation bill. This would provide a legal framework for specific measures and targets aimed at driving long-term policy, which is the key here, let's be honest. A lot of what government does is often short-term thinking due to the election cycle. I like a bit of long-term thinking. They want to ban new extraction of fossil fuels. Absolutely.
They want to protect and restore native ecosystems like forests and wetlands and floodplains and mangroves and so on and so forth, because they're not only helpful with mitigating climate change or in adapting to what's already happened, but also preventing further. This is an interesting one, and I know a lot of people are gonna have a lot of thoughts about this, but I will draw your attention to countries like Costa Rica, who have no military, and are one of the most environmentally friendly countries on earth.
Now, they would refocus New Zealand's defence policy to address climate change, provide humanitarian response, and conduct environmental monitoring. They'd also build capacity, support communities, and likely hotspots of instability and conflict by strengthening civil defence, and they want to assist the defence force in deploying to climate change induced significant weather events and natural hazards which to my understanding they already do. For example the recent cyclone. They want to establish a zero waste agency and introduce ambitious waste reduction targets. They want to standardise labels for compostable and recyclable products which is great because that's confusing as fuck but wouldn't it be better if we standardised the material companies could make things out of? Do we really need bottles that have got three different types of material?
Like, you know, aluminium and two different types of plastic? Because that means they never get recycled. Anyway, pet peeve. They want to create a beverage container return scheme. Good idea. This is something people have been working on for a long time, and they're carried out around the world. I understand there's complexities, but I do think this is something the government should return to and have another look at. So this is probably one of my favourites. They would introduce regulated stewardship schemes for products with a significant waste-related impact.
That's a big sentence to say they are going to ensure that companies need to be responsible for the entire lifecycle of their product. Finally! It's going to start with things like e-waste and batteries and agrochemicals and plastic packaging. That is fantastic. It would be an interesting thing to know how they'd actually want to roll out, but this is what I've been talking about for years. Companies that make profit from polluting are morally responsible for cleaning that up. And I know there's so many people in my TikTok comments who tell me I'm stupid and wrong for that. I don't know why you guys go to bat for oil companies, I really don't, because I don't go to bat for you. But this is a morally obvious policy. An interesting one I don't agree with at all is they want to ban synthetic nitrogen fertilisers. This is completely the wrong way of going about it. I've said it before and I will say it again. Go and read The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hagar and understand why these were developed in the first place. Sure, we absolutely need to do something about freshwater quality, I think, but this is the wrong approach. Synthetics are often more efficient in many ways with lower impact than you might think. Planting nitrogen fixes or applying natural options like manure just isn't reasonable.
Now, I know what they really want to achieve with this ban is a lower number of livestock on farming properties and yes that would definitely impact freshwater quality but the other side of it is the economic one for farmers. So this is an enormously complicated issue. So just moving to ban sedentary nitrogen, I'm not sure it's the right policy. Having spoken to several agricultural scientists, they don't think so either. Another favourite is they want to use energy company profits to invest in clean energy, which is basically a new tax. Fabulous. Love it. Again, if you are being paid to pollute, you've got to pay to clean it up. They want to ban unceasingly logged wooden products and they want to increase funding for indigenous forests whilst protecting the rights of Māori. I just think these are fabulous policies and I just don't have time to go into all of them. So, too long didn't read, or too long didn't listen. The Greens have an absolute plethora of policies as you'd expect.
They advocate for a dedicated ministry for climate change, with a Te Riti-based approach. They plan to amend the Zero Carbon Act, pass a climate change adaptation bill and ban new fossil fuel extraction. I am all for that. They do have some ambitious waste reduction targets, and they want to standardise labels, but I do think their approach to dairy farming needs to be a little bit more nuanced. The argument of course against the Greens is how are we going to pay for it all, and look I am far from an economist. In fact in a video with Simon Bridges last week I said economonomist, which is hideous and I suspect he'll put in the video. But anyway, I would like to point out though that sustainability and profitability, or productivity in the case of a country, are not mutually exclusive.
On to Te Pāti Māori. Now they are strong on the environmental policies. They want to ban oil and gas exploration. They want to ban seabed mining. They want to phase out coal by 2030, which I don't see any other party mentioning, interestingly, although I suppose when they talk about renewable energy, they're effectively saying the same thing. That is a bold commitment by 2030, because again, we're talking about Fonterra. They want to extend the ban on mining conservation land to include reserves in significant natural areas and the R&A, so again, restricting more of that mining.
They would also ban synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, which I've already talked about. They want to acknowledge Māori proprietary, customary and decision-making rights and interests in fresh water. So they would stop any new consents for water bottling until a new system could be developed. And this could be interesting.
So did you know that we allow commercial entities to bottle water, then sell it back to us without any requirement they remedy any damage they cause? And you, little old residents of Aotearoa, pay 500 times more for water than those who are profiting from it. Yep, there's some nuts up there. Te Pāti Māori has some strong environmental policies. They want to ban a lot of mining and exploration, they want to phase out coal, and they also want to ensure that Māori rights and interests are considered and retained.
Let's go to the opposite side of the spectrum, to ACT. They want to approach climate change in a totally different way. They want to reduce the number of weeks that politicians sit in Parliament. So instead of having three-day weeks, they would have four-day weeks and they would have fewer of them, and they believe that that would reduce their travel emissions by about 25%. I'm not sure it would, but I don't imagine that the majority of Aotearoa's emissions are politicians' travel. They believe that there is currently a large data and knowledge gaps in the way New Zealand's natural environment is monitored. And they think this makes it difficult to properly grasp the true state of the environment and therefore prevents effective stewardship of it.
So they want to develop a nationally coordinated monitoring system. They want to create a Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to amend the Environmental Reporting Act and establish a scientific advisory panel to respond to long-term and emerging issues. Interesting. Don't disagree with that on the face of it. They oppose He Waka Eke Noa, which is an initiative to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and build the agricultural sector's resilience to climate change. Because, and true, this is true, New Zealand farmers are already among the most emissions efficient in the world. Does that mean they don't need to do BETA? They want to abolish the Climate Change Commission.
Yeah, so the Climate Change Commission is the independent agency that advises the government on climate change policy and monitors the government's progress towards New Zealand's emission goals. They want to repeal the Zero Carbon Act. They want to abolish the Climate Change Chief Executive Board. On the plus side, they want to remove any regulatory barriers that may be stalling the uptake of emissions-reducing technologies. That's great, get rid of the red tape. But special shout out to their truly appalling idea of incinerating our trash. It is a terrible idea.
Not to mention it's astonishingly expensive. NZ First actually like this idea too. But instead of investing in recycling infrastructure or collecting more things at landfill, instead, they just think, you know what, we'll burn it. Yes, you can generate some energy that way, but the air pollution is significant and it's just all about the linear economy of take-make-waste.
I know a few countries do this already. I really just hope Altairo does not go into this. The worst one for me though from ACT is they want to reverse the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration. Look, I said this podcast would be unbiased and it is, I hope, as much as one single person's opinion can be unbiased. But that is absolute bullshit. Anyway, we have already got reserves that will blow through our carbon budget. We simply cannot afford to mine and extract more fossil fuels.
It is astonishing to me that this is even a consideration. I mean, at least they think climate change is real. That's a change in the previous few decades. In summary, ACT has a unique approach to environmental policy, but they have a few of them, which is interesting. The plan to reduce politicians' travel emissions, I mean I haven't seen any numbers for how much that would actually reduce in terms of tonnage.
They want to develop a nationally coordinated environmental monitoring system, but their plan to abolish certain acts and commissions is, yeah. You can see first, now they don't have a lot of policies, so this is going to be nice, short and sweet. So these guys want to oppose the introduction of emissions pricing for agriculture unless it's also introduced by key trading partners. Now this is their stance, I assume, because they don't want New Zealand to be unfairly penalised for doing the right thing. But if we all had this attitude in life, then we wouldn't get far, would we?
So I understand why they're saying it. I don't think it's the right thing to do. They also want to go the route of burning waste rather than doing anything about producing less approach. Now new Conservatives, I'm not going to talk about these guys because they state there is no climate crisis, so that really sums up their environmental policies for me. So that's your major parties in a major rundown, but I do encourage you again to go to policy.nz or voteforclimate.org.nz who have done the analysis, have gathered the policies, and will be able to help you understand what these parties are committing to or promising. I hope it has helped a little bit. Now to reiterate before people start getting mad with me, I am only talking environmental policies and I appreciate you cannot separate people from planet, but this podcast should really only be 20 minutes long. So I hope this has helped a little bit. But above everything else, you must remember to vote.
If you don't resonate with any party entirely, I give, I don't either. Maybe the next election we'll band together and create a party that is awesome. But until then, please vote. And if you don't know who to vote for, vote for the people in society that need the greatest protection. Vote for the people who are not doing well. Vote for the people who are more likely to be marginalised and discriminated against. Next week we'll be returning to our more regularly scheduled program and I'll be talking all things backyard biodiversity. In other words, how you can do what I did and turn your backyard into a place where wildlife thrives.
And yes, that will include insects, and yes, we'll talk about why they're madder next week. Because I love insects. Not all of them. I don't want spiders on me, for instance. But anyway, I hope you've gathered some valuable insights that you can use to make your voting decision. It's all about making those informed choices and progress, not perfection. Remember, to the person who lectured me on TikTok for saying why I shouldn't talk about climate change because I created a company that therefore has a big carbon footprint because it's, well, a company.
I'm baffled because surely a company that displaces a wasteful product and does things as ethically and environmentally friendly as possible is better than just allowing, you know, the big CPG companies to have at it. Anyway, not everyone will see everything eye to eye. Progress, not perfection. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you next week for another episode where we will continue to cultivate a deeper understanding of sustainability without the nonsense. And until then, this has been, Now, That's What I Call Green.
