Election 2020: Act would repeal the Zero Carbon Act if it was in power

Act wants to repeal the Zero Carbon Act. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Act wants to repeal the Zero Carbon Act, scrap all subsidies for commercial forestry investment and is pushing for "common sense changes" in the three waters reforms.

It is also promising to allow regional councils to set their own freshwater management limits if voted into government this election.

Act leader David Seymour and rural spokesman Mark Cameron this morning unveiled their party's primary industries' policy, saying they wanted to see "the rural sector given the respect it deserves".

"Through Covid-19, the efforts of our farmers raised the level of respect rural New Zealanders get," said Seymour.

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"The rural sector has been given a short reprieve from the campaign of demonisation. It's time to put that change in rhetoric into action."

One of its biggest pledges was to repeal the Zero Carbon Act - after being the only party to vote against it.

Seymour said the act gave "massive power" over the economy to the Climate Change Minister.

He said the 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP100) overestimates the contribution of methane to rising temperatures and instead wants the GWP measurement used.

Act Party leader David Seymour. Photo / Mark Mitchell

GWP100, or Global Warming Potential 100, is a measure that has been long used globally to calculate how much heat a particular greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere over a century.

But in recent times, climate scientists like Victoria University's Professor Dave Frame have contended GWP over-estimates the level of warming associated with methane emissions when they're stable or falling.

Instead, they've argued for a different way of accounting for methane to separate the short-lived gas from carbon dioxide, which has a weaker yet near-permanent effect on temperatures.

As well, Act wants:

• to tie the price of carbon to prices paid by New Zealand's top five trading partners.

• an end to "preferential treatment" for forestry.

• to remove all subsidies for commercial forestry investment and change Overseas Investment Office rule "so that the sale of all farmland to overseas purchasers is on a level playing field, whether being purchased for forestry or not".

• to allow regional councils and communities to set their own freshwater management limits and "insist" on peer-reviewed scientific evidence and quality economic analysis of essential freshwater reforms.

• remove the requirement for fences 3 metres from waterways.