Climate change and tax on the agenda: 'We probably don’t have enough tax'
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will this week confront two near impossible problems, tax and climate change. Damien OConnor, a senior minister at the centre of the climate change issue, started the week with a blunt assessment of the tax-climate issue. He told the red meat sector: We probably dont have enough tax in this country. During a Sunday night debate at the Red Meat Sector Conference, OConnor said the Government was hard-pressed trying to find funds to respond to Cyclone Gabrielle. With climate change expected to bring more regular and more severe extreme weather events , he told the crowd he thought more taxes would be needed to fix infrastructure. Weve put a bit more into [road] maintenance, but we still actually have to catch up. If we want to continue to run our economy the way we have run it in the past, we are going to have to contribute more, he said. His comments followed a question from the conference floor about the Green and Te Pati Maori proposals for wealth taxes . OConnor said, if the Government needed more taxes, it would be fairer to target capital gains or wealth rather than increase GST. He took a hit at National for increasing GST when it was last in Government, but then also backtracked when asked if he supported the Green and Maori parties tax plans. No, thats not our policy. We got our policy, he told debate moderator and Stuff correspondent Tova O'Brien. But its still not clear what Labours tax policy is. Although, Hipkins said he would soon release his much-anticipated tax policy. Asked when it would be released, Hipkins replied: I said a few weeks ago that it would be in the next few weeks, and I stand by that statement. So far, the only comment Hipkins has made on tax has been to rule out a wealth tax or capital gains tax. While Hipkins bides his time on tax, the Government has lined up a series of environmental and climate change announcements for this week. During his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, Hipkins announced the latest beneficiaries of the so-called Covid-19 fast track. This unique power, brought in to help the economy during pandemic times, continues to be used to speed up the resource consenting process for projects the Government supports. Environment Minister David Parker approved nine solar panel projects and three wind farms for the fast-track treatment. All up, the Government estimated these projects could see about 2 million solar panels installed and 82 wind turbines which would be a major boost for renewable energy. Hipkins has further climate and environment focused announcements in store this week. Hes expected to release policies on climate change and marine biodiversity later in the days ahead. Central to any climate change discussion, however, will be agricultural emissions. At the red meat conference, OConnor, the agriculture minister, said the Government was committed to having an emissions pricing scheme in place by its 2025 deadline. If a solution isnt reached for how to price agricultural emissions outside the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), then a deadline has been set for the sector to enter the ETS in 2025. We are still on target by 2025, by the end of it, hopefully, to have a price, the lowest possible price, money that is reinvested back into technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of our whole economy including agriculture, OConnor said on Sunday. Last week, Hipkins said pricing agricultural emissions would be an issue for future governments. He raised concerns about equity issues in the climate response, saying he didnt want to see the cost of food increase. But he also criticised National for promising to delay agricultural emissions pricing until at least 2030.