David Seymour floats pulling out of Paris Agreement after 2026 election

David Seymour has floated fighting an election on leaving the Paris Climate Agreement. Photo / Alex Burton

Act leader and senior minister David Seymour has floated taking a policy of pulling New Zealand out of the Paris climate agreement to the next election, potentially making Paris withdrawal an Act election promise.

Labour’s Climate Change spokeswoman Megan Woods has called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to recommit to the deal and not allow Seymour to pull New Zealand out of it. Luxon has been approached for comment.

Last week, the Government published its target for the second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) — the name given to a target under the Paris Agreement. The new NDC will commit New Zealand to reducing emissions by 51% to 55% below 2005 levels by 2035. The current NDC is for a 50% cut by 2030.

The call disappointed observers on both sides. Energy and climate expert Christina Hood described the target as “shockingly unambitious” in a post to LinkedIn, while Federated Farmers meat and wool chairman Toby Williams said the new target signed New Zealand up to a decade of planting pine trees on productive farmland.

Seymour told The Country his party, as a member of the Government, supported the new target, however that support came with a catch.

“There is a wider question of whether the Government of New Zealand should be committed to the Paris Accord when half of the world appears to be pulling out of it anyway — and that is a discussion for another time and perhaps another election,” Seymour said.

Seymour noted Act’s longstanding scepticism of some climate policies. The opposition stretches back to at least 2008, when Act campaigned on pulling New Zealand out of the Kyoto Protocol, a predecessor to the Paris Agreement .

He detailed his opposition in a separate interview with the Herald, stressing again that as a member of the Government, he supported the most-recent targets, however as Act leader, he wondered about New Zealand’s future in the agreement.

“I think in the future we’re going to have to ask ourselves with such major polluters pulling out, especially the United States, is it worthwhile for New Zealand to stay in and find itself sending New Zealanders’ money overseas?” he said.

New Zealand’s 2030 target is so ambitious that there is no way for the Government to meet it domestically, meaning the Government will have to send money offshore to other countries to reduce emissions on its behalf. Treasury does not know the exact cost of this, but estimates it to be somewhere between $3 billion and $23b.

Seymour said the Government’s most recent target had “done a good job of minimising the cost to families and households within the framework that previous Governments committed [the Government to] to”.

However, he added that “in the long term, New Zealand’s going have to have a serious question: can we achieve economic growth with the handbrake jammed up so hard?”

US President Donald Trump ordered his country’s exit from Paris in January. Since then, other leaders have floated weakening their commitment to the deal. One of the world’s largest polluters, Indonesia, has also floated quitting. The country’s climate and energy envoy Hashim Djojohadikusumo told a conference last week, “If the US, which is currently the second-biggest polluter after China, refuses to comply with the international agreement, why should countries like Indonesia comply?”

Seymour said that in the past, Act had not floated leaving the agreement because once New Zealand was in an agreement like Paris it was very difficult to withdraw without facing some form of international reprisal.

“We haven’t actively campaigned on pulling out of [Paris] simply because so many of our trading partners are committed, but we have elections in Canada and Australia, which may well end up with those countries changing their position and at that point it becomes a live debate,” he said.

Labour's Climate Change Spokeswoman Megan Woods. Photo / Alex Cairns

Woods said that Seymour did not have the privilege of taking off his ministerial hat and speaking as Act leader.

“David Seymour does not get to just speak as David Seymour — this is New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister in only a matter of months.

“Christopher Luxon needs to say whether or not he agrees with his incoming Deputy Prime Minister on this,” she said.

Woods also wanted to know whether the Government had done any work on pulling out of Paris.

Woods noted New Zealand’s European Union and United Kingdom free trade agreements included clauses effectively wedding New Zealand to Paris and the commitments made under the deal.

“There’s very real trade implications for New Zealand. Both our EU and UK FTAs are dependent on our action on climate. [Leaving Paris] could result in the loss of billions of dollars of export for New Zealand,” she said.

“As Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour will be on the world stage talking about this in only a matter of months,” Woods said.

Seymour is not the only member of the Government to sound a note of scepticism. NZ First leader and current Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters told The Platform in January that had questions too.

When asked whether New Zealand should leave the Paris Agreement, Peters said that was the a question one passes by one’s colleagues before answering.

However, he did say, “[i]f China, if India, if Russia and the United States are not a part of it, I have got to ask this question. New Zealanders need to be asking this question no matter what you think of this issue. Do you think we are going to make a difference? And we need to ask that question very soon.”

China, India, and Russia are all parties to the Paris Agreement.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.