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Advocacy for business by the BusinessNZ Network

   
   

Farming out of ETS

BusinessNZ supports an amendment to the Climate Change Response Act taking farms and agricultural processors out of the Emissions Trading Scheme, saying the sector shouldn’t get emissions pricing until effective and affordable reduction technologies (e.g. methane inhibitors and vaccines) are available. BusinessNZ’s submission to the Primary Production select committee says agricultural businesses and communities would be at risk of collapse if agricultural emissions pricing was wrongly implemented.  A further risk is that agricultural production would be transferred overseas, with no reduction in global emissions.

   
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Investment needed

A significant part of NZ’s draft 2nd emissions reduction plan for 2026-2030 promotes more private sector investment in renewable energy including electricity generation and transmission and low-emission fuels. However, being able to afford more investment depends on increased demand for these sustainable fuel options, and more detail on how to achieve this is needed says Tina Schirr, executive director of the BusinessNZ Energy Council (BEC). BEC is currently compiling energy sectors businesses’ response to the draft plan.

   

Managed retreat decisions

Decisions around managed retreat should be made by those closest to the problem, with a high threshold for mandatory relocation, BusinessNZ economist John Pask told Parliament’s Inquiry into Climate Adaptation this week. Businesses and communities should manage their own risk as much as possible, using better information, and ideally could decide together what risks they would bear and what infrastructure they could fund to assist with climate adaptation. Any mandatory measures impacting property rights should entail compensation, he said.

   

Refining PPPs

NZ infrastructure could be better delivered by PPPs tailored to different sized projects with different risk profiles, Infrastructure NZ says. Past PPPs displayed inflexibility in allocating risk and were quite inaccessible for smaller local contractors; Infrastructure NZ recommends differentiating large projects (over $200m) from smaller ‘community partnership’ projects allowing more participation from local contractors. Refining the PPP model would help get the best out of the relationship between central and local govt and the private sector, Infrastructure NZ says.

   

Overregulation in NZ 

The quality of NZ’s regulation is found wanting in the OECD’s global survey of regulation. NZ came in last place for its administrative and regulatory burden and close to the bottom for requirements for obtaining licences and permits. NZ’s regime for foreign investment was found to be particularly overregulated. BusinessNZ says NZ’s new Ministry for Regulation will be critical for reducing the quantity and increasing the quality of regulations.

   
   
   

Recent submissions

   

Coming up in the Network

AdvocacyUpdate is an update on recent activity & advocacy by the BusinessNZ Network

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