Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Smart Green

Politics

Emissions Trading Scheme

One of ACT’s centrepiece policies of this election pledges to repeal the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). As I understand it, the ETS will require businesses to purchase “credits” for carbon they wish to emit from other companies which have a surplus (e.g. foresters). There is an official diagram which explains this further. The ETS enjoys support from both Labour and National. But ACT opposes it. My concern here is not so much the workings of the ETS, but the way ACT has promoted its opposition to it. There is no question that the party sees it as a key policy...

Politics

Hide answering “your questions”

ACT leader Rodney Hide has featured in the “Interview the Leaders” series on left-wing blog The Standard. It’s a fairly useless interview in terms of substance and is indeed so short that I strongly suspect Hide responded via his Blackberry. However, Hide did respond with some more detail on what exactly constitutes ACT’s “Smart Green” policy and we now know that it will include the end of the current Emissions Trading Scheme (i.e. the “cap and trade” model).

Politics

Summer theatre

Bad news. My “prediction” of just a couple of weeks back about John Key announcing a National-ACT deal in his Burnside speech has been dealt a bitter blow (to keep it in TV speak). There won’t be any Burnside speech. According to a report in today’s Dominion-Post, Key will in fact be giving his New Year speech at Ellerslie, with Helen Clark snapping on his heels the next day. Now if it had been Epsom, not Ellerslie, we might have been cooking. But while National and Labour will soon be full of oratory, ACT won’t be. As far as I...

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