In the middle of the global climate emergency, with the 2025 budget, the New Zealand government is proposing to spend $200m of taxpayer money investing in new fossil gas production. Not renewable energy, not energy efficiency, not solar-on-your-rooftop-to-save-hydro-for-when-we-need-it.
No, they plan to give it to fossil fuel companies. Companies like Tamarind Oil, which taxpayers had to spend $440m to clean up after they went bankrupt.
And guess who is paying for the government to give money to fossil fuel companies – working women.
Luxon cancelled pay equity claims so he could invest in fossil fuels. Just roll that around in your 21st-century mind for a moment.
It’s The Handmaid’s Tale meets Don’t Look Up.
Your insurance premiums are rising because of climate change.
Your council rates are rising, because the council is being sued by insurance companies for how councils dealt with the last climate-charged flooding events.
It’s an expensive climate-enhanced shambles, which the Budget plans to make worse.
The last Emission Trading Scheme auction received no bids for carbon credits, so no income for the government. And relatedly, the government doubled the ETS subsidies to RioTinto to $75m per year while agribusiness is not even required to buy carbon credits.
And then there is the multi-billion dollar liability for all those offshore carbon credits we are supposed to buy because the Government is not cutting emissions.
And your power bills are going up, while two wind power companies recently withdrew from New Zealand because the government fast-tracked seabed mining right where they wanted to build offshore wind farms, farms that would employ thousands of people generating cheap baseload renewable power?
And Luxon is taking money from working women to give to fossil fuel companies.
From War on Nature, to War on Māori, to War on Women, and round again.
A kind of recycling I suppose.
