The rhetoric and reality gap: MPs talking crap

We learn to expect a certain standard of behaviour from our politicians—but that doesn’t excuse it

If you give someone the wrong information, they’re bound to get the wrong answer, and so it was in Parliament on Wednesday night.

It was members’ day. Russel Norman’s Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill, which would have required the state sector to purchase or lease passenger vehicles that have a better than average emissions performance of 170g/km of CO2 (around 7 l/100km), was having its first reading.

There were culprits on both sides of the House. There was nothing I haven’t seen a hundred other times, in question time and debate. The prevalence is why it matters.

Politics is best served with a good helping of cynicism, to accompany the spin. But the members in the House on Wednesday night should be thoroughly ashamed: they get paid a lot of money to represent the public interest, not to prat about.

Labour members were supporting Norman’s Bill. They also spent quite a lot of their speaking time purveying misinformation.

Chris Hipkins, new young Labour MP for Rimutaka, was puppyishly eager to please. He talked about Labour’s biofuel obligation, repealed by National in its first 100 days, which would have required all companies selling engine fuel to include a small proportion of biofuel. He said Labour would have made oil companies bear the costs themselves; instead, this government prefers to use scarce taxpayer dollars subsidising them with its biodiesel grants scheme.

It makes a great story—a plausible story, too. It resonates with the modifications to emissions trading. However, while National may be responsible for plenty of philosophical faux pas, this is not one of them.

The policy given effect by the biodiesel grants scheme would, in all likelihood, have proceeded under the previous government. It levels the biofuel playing field: biodiesel is currently excise-taxed (42 cents, the amount of the grant scheme subsidy); ethanol is not. As the select committee noted, reporting back on Labour’s legislation:

“We remain concerned that the bill maintains the existing excise regime for biodiesel and fuel ethanol, and thus provides an advantage to the latter … submitters told us that this is likely to undermine support for biodiesel, which is currently the most commercially available biofuel produced in New Zealand. We considered various options for levelling the comparative advantage … We believe that there is merit in each of these options but accept that they have implications beyond this bill and should be the subject of further policy development and consultation. We note that the Government intends to examine the relative tax treatments of biodiesel and ethanol in its 2010 review of the biofuels obligation policy.”

Labour energy spokesperson Charles Chauvel recounted how energy minister Gerry Brownlee woke up one day and decided to scrap the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy.

In fact, under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2000, Brownlee must ensure that at all times there is a strategy in force. Unless he repeals the Act (which may yet happen), his only option is to replace the strategy, and that is what he has notified his intention to do. Perhaps his new version will gut the strategy, but that hasn’t happened yet. These are politically inconvenient subtleties, but Chauvel is too savvy not to have grasped them.

On the other side of the House, opposing the Bill, National’s Shane Ardern—tractor driver, man of the land—told us how, back in the day, they employed as a farm vehicle a big old Holden ute. As the oil shocks of the 1970s took their toll, a lighter vehicle was purchased. Unfit for the heavy work, it ended up using more fuel than the Holden. Ardern’s speech was an impassioned plea against “one size fits all” in the government sector: Landcorp, for example, has different needs from the Housing Corporation.

As Jeanette Fitzsimons noted, pulling on her velvet glove, Parliament suffers the perennial problem of members coming down to the House to debate Bills, without the benefit of having read them. Norman’s Bill deals with fuel efficiency, and relative efficiency (requiring government vehicles to be in the top 10% of their class for efficiency), not engine size.

Nicky Wagner, for National, thought that private citizens and businesses are, in general, smart and well-intentioned: they will make the right choices. She visited Progressive Enterprises recently, and found that they were … progressive.

Arguably, actual evidence suggests that people don’t, in fact, make the smartest and best choices. New Zealand’s average fuel efficiency is currently around 10.2l/100km, or 210g of CO2 emissions, which is poor by international standards; recent analysis of government sector vehicle procurement concluded that there was lots of room to improve. This is the kind of contest of ideas that select committees are for: to hear the evidence, debate its merits, and ask the public what they think.

In a way, I commend Wagner for her honesty in admitting that it would have been a waste of time for this Bill to go to a select committee, given the apparent strength of National’s ideological bent. And yet, how nice it would be to think that members were open to just exploring what works.

I didn't see Gerry Brownlee in the House. Acknowledging that it might have been embarrassing for him to show his face—he was bound to have been asked to take a call and explain what this government is actually doing about energy efficiency—it was another example of apparent disdain for a subject squarely within his portfolio, or the Greens’ contributions to it.

So, in the end, Green, Labour, Progressive and Maori parties supported the Bill to select committee. National, Act and United Future voted it down. The Bill will not proceed. Whether or not you think it was smart legislation, our democracy is poorer, because of the cavalier way it was dealt with.