Column for Richmond News, December 2009
After clinching a deal with the Maori Party 18 minutes before its announcement, the National Government has pushed through under urgency emissions trading laws that will over the years ahead cost Christchurch families the thick end of $100,000.
That’s not Labour’s figure but Treasury’s estimate. Part of the cost is the horse-trading done by the Maori Party which hits Maori and Pakeha families alike.
My colleague Shane Jones summarised it well as “pork bone politics.”
It does virtually nothing to end the emissions of carbon which threaten our very planet’s future. Instead, the big emitters are given tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, paid for by us as taxpayers for a generation and more. The National/Maori Party deal provides no real incentive to polluters to stop harmful emissions entering out atmosphere. As the recent film on climate change would attest, it is The Wage of Stupid.
That’s agreed by Labour, Green, Progressive and even ACT’s deflowered Perkbuster Rodney Hide.
Little wonder The Press branded the government’s bill as “Farcical” as have many commentators. Former National Party’s chief of staff Richard Long described the bill as a ‘dog.”
Unfortunately it is a dog which bites Richmond households and families at the very time when they are struggling. It’s been a year of nil wage rounds and ongoing price increases; of rising unemployment and soaring costs such as ACC levies; of paying more and getting less.
One can only hope the dog will somehow be put down and that an age of sense rather than stupidity prevails.
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