It sailed through the House on Thursday afternoon, but only after a spirited debate which had two of our southern MPs front and centre.
The Bill — which assuming the Governor-General has signed it, is by now an Act — does just what it says on the tin, and amends the CCRA. Crucially it does so in a way which opens wide the philosophical divide in the House; it removes agriculture from the emissions trading scheme.
Mark Patterson, Taieri New Zealand First list MP and also a farmer, is unsurprisingly and unapologetically in camp A. Sporting an incredibly impressive Movember ’tache, Mr Patterson called the ETS "the sword of Damocles" which was about to no longer be hanging over agriculture and rural New Zealand.
"The emissions trading scheme is in carbon dioxide equivalents; we are dealing mainly with methane here, which is a short-lived gas. So it was never fit for purpose."
The government’s argument is that pricing of agricultural emissions were to be a set cost for farmers, and one which did not take any account of the individual carbon footprint-reducing activities of individual farmers — many of whom are careful stewards of their land and have already moved to more climate-friendly farming methods on their own initiative.
"It was just a blunt tax with high compliance that would have not achieved anything," Mr Patterson said.
"It would have put extra cost on an industry, particularly the red meat sector and the sheep and beef sector, that is already struggling with low profitability and has been for some time."
He went on to say that the average sheep and beef farm had made about $60,000 last year, before interest, tax and drawings, that the additional cost of the ETS would have been catastrophic, and would have resulted in more farms being turned into pine plantations by carbon farmers.
"We are not climate change denialists," Mr Patterson said.
"It’s one of the easiest of the challenges, it’s the stuff that farmers try and do all the time, increasing their efficiency by default is actually dropping greenhouse gas emissions."
But over the Green corner Dunedin list MP Francisco Hernandez — who is sporting his own impressive facial hair these days — was far from impressed.
A former climate change adviser, this field is as much his as it is that of a farmer, and while he was prepared to agree with Mr Patterson that this was a minor change, "the issue is that, in the broader context of the coalition government’s climate policy, this is yet another slash-and-burn cut to climate policy that they’ve implemented."
Mr Hernandez said that the government was already off track on meeting its 2050 emissions reduction target and this law change was piling another measure which would have helped the climate on to an already sizable scrapheap of now-repealed environmental initiatives.
Furthermore, what green initiatives it had cut the ribbon on, such as recently opened wind farming operations, were schemes which had been approved and funded by the previous government, he said.
"What does this Bill actually do? It’s another thing that’s in line with a programme of cuts.
"It removes backstop pricing for agricultural emissions, which were a last resort anyway ... it removes the ability to independently monitor progress for agricultural emissions pricing; and it removes measurement requirements under regulations — regulations, by the way, that were passed under the Key government."
While that National administration was hardly stacked with climate warriors, "it at least made a show of caring about climate change and climate issues, which this government isn’t even pretending to do", Mr Hernandez said.
"These are people who have got into bed with people who don’t fundamentally believe in the science of climate change, who would seek to water down targets through bogus reviews, rather than actually dealing with the reality behind us today."
But the reality was that the government has the votes, so either common sense prevailed or the planet kept on boiling, take your pick.
