Isra-Mart srl: Proposal to include agriculture in ETS reflects `policy of envy'

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Labour's proposal to bring agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in 2013 is an example of the Opposition's politics of envy, Agriculture Minister David Carter says.

The policy was economic suicide, he told farmers at Federated Farmers' High Country Conference in Christchurch.

To gouge $800 million from farmers when all of the primary sectors were showing good prospects would tax around $33,000 on average from every sheep, beef and dairy farmer in New Zealand.

National was reviewing the legislated 2015.

Prime Minister John Key would only bring agriculture into the ETS if other countries were adopting similar policies, he said.

Balmoral Station owner Andrew Simpson asked Mr Carter his thoughts on soil carbon sequestration, and its inclusion into the Emissions Trading Scheme.

"We would be turning a tax liability for farmers into a tax gain," Mr Simpson said.

While he agreed with him, Mr Carter said soil carbon was not recognised under the Kyoto Agreement that New Zealand had signed up to, and it was not included in the ETS.

"Those rules will continue to be revised at international discussions," he said.

Progress was also been made on the use of animal genetics for mitigating methane emissions.

The Greenhouse Research Centre in Palmerston North had found a 20-50 per cent difference in the methane emissions from sheep and cows.

The research was still incomplete. But it might be possible to breed sheep and cattle which generated lower methane emissions.

Mt Aspiring farmer John Aspinall told the Minister that planting trees for carbon sequestration was only a stop-gap measure in fighting carbon emissions, because more trees would have to be planted in 20 to 30 years.

Mr Carter said he was confident that solutions to animal emissions would be found by science over the next 20 to 30 years, if properly funded.

"That 30 years ... is buying New Zealand and the world time to invest in science and find solutions."

Mr Carter also defended the proposed Government Industry Agreements in the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill currently before Parliament.

The Bill would see the Government meeting a minimum cost share of 50 per cent for biosecurity priority readiness and response programmes.

They would ensure New Zealand was better prepared by working with industry prior to an incursion, rather than dealing with it after the event, he said.

"What I have found with incursions that have occurred in my time is that as soon as it happened, the industry affected comes rushing in and says, `this will destroy us.'
"We can't afford to eliminate everything. What we need to do is find out what is what is important, and the only way to find out what is important is to engage constructively with industry and really work out which ones have an economic impact."

He wanted the country to be better prepared for biosecurity incursions than had occurred in the past.

Discussions about incursions needed to take place before it happened rather than afterwards, because such discussions took time.

"Looking back at varroa, it was 13 weeks of discussion that eliminated any chance of containing that disease," he said.