The Government seems to have it in for taxpayers.

Not today's taxpayers so much as those who will be footing the bill in, say, the 2020s.

First there was superannuation.

Let's accept for the sake of argument that it no longer makes sense for the Government to borrow with one hand and make contributions to the Cullen Fund with the other.

But that still leaves the problem which the fund was set up to mitigate.

The cost of superannuation payments will rise from, in round numbers, 4 per cent of gross domestic product now to 8 per cent when the babyboomers have all retired.

By siphoning off and investing around another 1 per cent of GDP while the babyboomers are still in their peak earning and taxpaying years the intention of the fund was to reduce the burden on future taxpayers by around 1 per cent of GDP.

A 40 per cent increase from 5 to 7 per cent of GDP would be easier to handle than a 100 per cent increase from 4 to 8 per cent.

If that is no longer possible, it is clearly craven and irresponsible for the Government to refuse to even discuss a reduction in the entitlement parameters of the scheme, such as pushing xeback the age of eligibility. Instead it plans to just pass on the now much larger bill to future taxpayers.

It is the same story with the costs of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the cornerstone of the official response to the challenge of climate change: a multibillion-dollar post-dated cheque on future taxpayers.

The Sustainability Council's executive director Simon Terry and economist Geoff Bertram have analysed the Government's planned changes to the scheme which was enacted late last year in the dying days of the previous Government's ninth year in office.

The questions they ask are basic: Who pays the charges the ETS imposes? How big are the subsidies to the trade-exposed sectors? And who pays the ultimate bill, New Zealand's Kyoto liability?

The answers they come up with make it clear today's emitters are on the bludger's end of a transfer from future taxpayers.

They calculate that over the next three years the emission units which emitters have to go out and buy will cover only 16 per cent of the country's Kyoto liability, compared with 47 per cent under Labour's version of the scheme.

New Zealand's gross emissions in the first commitment period, which runs until the end of 2012, are forecast to be around 22 per cent over target, leaving an overshoot of 76 million tonnes the country (taxpayer) is liable for.