“UNCERTAINTY”<\/p>\n
Justice minister Paul Goldsmith said the legislation would give certainty to businesses around their climate obligations.<\/p>\n
“Ongoing litigation in the High Court, where an applicant has brought civil claims against six major businesses for their greenhouse gas emissions, risks developing a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted,” Goldsmith said.<\/p>\n
“It’s creating uncertainty in business confidence and investment,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The courts were not the right place to resolve claims of harm from climate change, he said, arguing that the issue involved a “range of complex environmental, economic and social factors”.<\/p>\n
“Our response to climate change is best managed by the Government at a national level and not through piecemeal litigation in the courts.”<\/p>\n
An independent climate advisory body warned last month that government policies could lead to New Zealand missing its emissions reduction targets.<\/p>\n
The report by the Climate Change Commission – an entity established by law in 2019 – said Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government had ignored its emissions-cutting advice in 2025.<\/p>\n
“The time available to correct course is now short,” it said in a report.<\/p>\n
Government policies that exclude agriculture from emissions pricing, changes to clean vehicle rules, a reduction in reporting requirements for businesses and plans for a liquefied natural gas import facility would raise emissions beyond any savings made elsewhere, it warned.<\/p>\n
Jo Hendy, chief executive of the commission, said the findings were a “clear warning sign”.<\/p>\n
“Emissions are gradually falling, but progress stalled in 2024, and current policy settings are not delivering at the pace needed,” Hendy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“UNCERTAINTY” Justice minister Paul Goldsmith said the legislation would give certainty to businesses around their climate obligations. “Ongoing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[390,273,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-573361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}