As New Zealanders marvelled at Britain’s daring and rapidly doomed experiment with tax cuts this month, few dreamt this country was about to try something comparably jaw-dropping.
The government’s proposed farm-gate emissions charging regime is the sort of policy Yes, Minister’s Sir Humphrey was wont to lament as being “courageous”.
It will certainly make New Zealand look a principled, self-sacrificing paragon of climate-change leadership. It could also make the country poorer and have the net effect of pushing up global emissions even as politicians here get to preen at meeting their domestic targets.
Two years after starting work on the farmer-government partnership proposal He Waka Eke
