S01 EP01 - Policy and Reality
Preamble
This was originally written before the election and in it I was pretty hard on Labour. Given National is now in charge, I’ve changed it so criticism is anchored to them. Both parties say and do some pretty stupid stuff but it is the government itself that is the focus of this show.
Script
This is the introduction to the Aotearoa Tomorrow YouTube channel and podcast. This first run will be a short pilot series. I’m giving a spoken introduction to explain a bit about the overall idea and what we will hopefully cover but the episodes will mainly be interviews. Because -
It was hard to know who to vote for this election. In their 2 terms Labour hadn’t achieved what many of us expected them to. National was a mess. The greens seemed more like the party of wokeism that environmentalism, and Act had so many super complex solutions to everything that ails New Zealand that you had to wonder who had the time to come up with all their wacky schemes. New Zealand First didn’t seem to have any policy at all apart from slowing immigration, which admittedly is probably pretty on point. And also a bit of overt anti-Māori racism, which was less necessary.
TOP and the Maori Party both had some reasonable policy but can’t seem to break through to the mainstream. And then you have Freedom, NZ Loyal, and the rest. Which may seem a bit irrelevant, but some of these more eccentric political projects do actually speak for genuinely disenfranchised groups, and often raise serious issues that other parties don’t. So it’s not really fair to write them off as irrelevant socially, even if they aren’t currently politically relevant.
But, No matter what your political leaning, this country is lacking a credible political voice and vision. And there is a reason for this. And that’s Career politicians. When I hear people talk about politicians and political parties, they say things like “at least we don’t have another term of Labour” or “Act will be great for the economy”. This is language used to describe managerial politics, not politics of change – no matter what the slogans say. Our politicians are like caretakes, or business managers, only without the selection pressure for performance that you would expect in the world of traditional work.
This lack of vision showed in the policies proposed in advance of the election. Many were unrealistic and detached from a clear political project but at the same time the criticism of these policies was often weak and spurious. National’s plan offers a great example of this wishy-washy posturing:
Stop Labour’s wasteful spending that you’re paying for and get the books in order
Encourage work, reward effort and let you keep more of what you earn with tax relief
Cut red tape
Build infrastructure for growth like roads and public transport
Drive technology and innovation
Support trade and investment
Grow skills and keep talent in New Zealand.
Slogans that could have just about as easily been used by Labour who instead went about trying to pork-barrel the election with cheap fruit and veg and free dental care.
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nzlabour/pages/21139/attachments/original/1695243576/Factsheet_Justice.pdf?1695243576
As a nation we have some serious issues to deal with and some major opportunities ahead of us, but no party is talking about addressing these in a plausible way.
And this is a pity because while working on this project It’s surprised me to learn that this country has a wealth of institutions and researchers outside of government working on policy. Some of these people act as individuals, others are employed by universities, business associations and thinktanks. I don’t understand then, why, come election, these experts who work without political affiliation, aren’t given more media airtime.
This series is about using all this free-floating expertise to look at public policy critically. It’s not supposed to be persuasive but there will be a natural bias. As with all biases you’ll notice it in the things that aren’t said – so please call out any omissions.
Before we begin though, to make the point about why we need to look for policy outside of politics I think it’s important to briefly examine a few issues, how they were discussed politically, and how they actually are.
1. Crime
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/new-zealand
https://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/statistics/quarterly_prison_statistics/prison_stats_september_2019
For example, across the board, parties had a bunch to say about crime.
Labour: Backing our Police, Keeping our streets safe, Going after organised crime, Preventing youth crime, Accountability for youth offending
National: Exactly the same thing
Act was a bit more firebrand, with its anti-cuddling policy and calls for tougher sentences and adult justice.
The Greens were support and prevention focused
These policies and perspectives are pretty say-what-you-see, and unstrategic. National and Act have blamed Labour for being soft on crime and trying to reduce the prison population but that’s a bit rich when our prisons are at 94% capacity.
This isn’t to say that Labour is not too soft on crime, but the connection between harsh sentencing, which National and Act advocate for in public, and reduced crime rates is complex. The US loves to put people in jail and A 2014 National Academies paper on what has happened there could foreshadow New Zealand’s upcoming experience:
“growth in U.S. incarceration rates over the past 40 years was propelled by changes in sentencing and penal policies that were intended, in part, to improve public safety and reduce crime.
In recent years, policy initiatives to reduce state prison populations often have met objections that public safety would be reduced. . .
. . .Violent crime rates have been declining steadily over the past two decades, which suggests a crime prevention effect of rising incarceration rates. For the first two decades of rising incarceration rates, however, there was no clear trend in the violent crime rate—it rose, then fell, and then rose again.”
Crime has indeed increased in New Zealand over the past few years but especially over the last year. This increase was overwhelmingly in property related crimes – theft and burglary. And that increase coincides with the increased inflation, particularly in food prices, which has caused the cost-of-living crisis.
If we don’t solve the cost of living crisis but insist that the solution to crime is more police and prisons the government is going to create a social class of criminals. As it stands the only developed nations with higher incarceration rates than New Zealand are the US, Taiwan, and Australia.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country
On their website, the NZ police have a crime snapshot dashboard. According to that, over the last 2 years crime went up by about 15%. Pretty much all of that was theft. The numbers I’m using for comparison here are a bit fuzzy, but this 2 year period experienced the highest inflation since 1990.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-inflation-6-7-percent/
It’s worth pointing out as well that There are almost 9000 people on the National Gang List double what it was in 2016. So we are already developing a criminal society in this country. Personally I haven’t heard anyone discuss the reason for this growth in gang membership in a way that sounds plausible. Deportation of Australian gang members has been significant but can only account for part of the growth.
2. Debt & Government Spending
Another poorly discussed issue is public debt. There are two numbers being reported for NZ government debt. One includes our superannuation fund and one doesn’t. Most countries would include a fund like this when they calculate net debt. But until recently New Zealand hasn’t. So in 2022 New Zealand could be said to have 35% debt to GDP ratio or 17%. The former is the number National campaigned on, the latter of the two numbers is the more internationally recognized. It’s like New Zealand earns 50 grand a year, has a bunch of money in the bank but owes $8,500 more than it has saving.
This is after COVID. For comparison, Australia’s debt is 42% of GDP. Most countries are pretty close to 100%. At the end of 2023 NZ is expected to owe the equivalent of 22% of GDP. Labour planed to bring it down over time from there and so does National. This is all to say that our national debt is low and both major parties are committed to keeping it that way. This is basically the same policy.
And it’s a policy that doesn’t make any sense. The Infrastructure Commission says that NZ has a infrastructure deficit worth $104 Billion. The industry group Infrastructure New Zealand puts that number at at over $200 Billion. That said, they are an infrastructure industry membership organisation so we should take their opinion with a grain of salt.
New Zealand’s GDP is a bit over 250 Billion dollars, so by the numbers, we could drop a hundred billion on roads, rail, shipping, internet, health, education, public transport, and water infrastructure over the next few years and still keep our debt under 50% of GDP. The country would be completely transformed and speed limits could go up to 120 on all the main highways.
This is actually unrealistic. You can’t just throw money at the infrastructure problem. Because we have spent so little on it for so many years we don’t have an established industry that could deliver on such a scale. We need more equipment and more highly skilled, tradies and engineers.
But that’s an entirely different conversation. We have pathologically low public debt and anyone who is making a big deal out of it is straight up full of shit. It’s political misdirection. Think about all the other things these people could be talking about. We had a once in a century storm this year. An entire town was washed away. Look at Hawkes Bay from the air. It’s totally wasted. Gabrielle caused 14 Billion dollars in damage. The most expensive natural disaster to ever hit the southern hemisphere. There are hundreds of major issues that outrank public debt. Especially when both the major parties agree that they will reduce it.
3. The Economy & Employment
Every time there is an election, the health of the economy becomes a hotly debated issue. It is true that the New Zealand economy is not working well for most people participating in it. But the economy itself is strong and has been for the last 25 years. We are experiencing some turbulence in the aftermath of COVID but much less than the rest of the world. Annual growth in GDPwas 3.2% as of June which is in line with the past 2 decades. It was up 0.9 for the quarter which is better than all our economic peers with Japan the one exception.
The IRD publishes a lot of stuff online and I found a spreadsheet that listed wage and salary distribution of New Zealanders. This excludes money earned from investing in shares or selling houses. According to the IRD numbers, 27% of wage earners earn less $26,000 a year. That’s half of what they call the living wage. 42% of the workforce is earning less than minimum wage on an annualized basis. They say the unemployment rate is under 4% but nearly half of the workforce is obviously working part time. It’s hard then to say that we really have a low unemployment rate.
The living wage, which is higher than the minimum wage is defined as a level of income that “allows individuals or families to afford adequate shelter, food, and other necessities”. It’s $52,000 here and only 47% of NZ workers earn that much. In the presence of such a low unemployment number, there are two obvious causes for these grim numbers, both of which are probably sides of the same coin:
1. The labour market is not effectively distributing money across the wage base
2. People would rather live in destitution than work for what they are able to be paid.
This is a picture of a wage economy that is not functioning.
The lower quartile of rents for a 2 bedroom flat in Stokes Valley, Lower Hutt, which is not a high income area, is $450 a week. Take home pay for living wage earners is $42,658. That means that 2 living wage earners living in that flat would be spending 27% of their income on rent. That sounds Okay, except when you realise that to get that low rent, they need to be living 10 kilometers away from both Hutt Central and Lower Hutt, the two closest places they are likely to be working. Fuel consumption for a 2006 Toyota Corolla is 7.4 liters per 100kms so that’s an extra $22 per week on fuel. Tyres, repairs, & maintenance are about $800 a year, Insurance maybe $300, warrant and rego an extra $100. So just to get to work in a car, that’s about an extra $2500 per year if you want that cheap rent. Public transport costs the same.
https://www.carsguide.com.au/toyota/corolla/2006
Take Home Pay: $42,658
Rent : $11,700
Transport to work: $2,344
Comparable rents in Hutt Central and Upper Hutt are about $550 – which works out the same but if you live there you are going to have a harder time affording a car. Either way, only going to have about 28 grand left over to live off. 23 if you spend $100 a week on food. $20 grand of you spend $240 a month for utilities and phone.
So just being operational leaves only 20k left over out of the living wage for clothes, recreation, buying that car, saving. And if you have kids things get even tighter. Obviously there is no possibility of buying a house or making any significant financial investment on this level of income.
What I’ve described is the scenario for someone from the 47th income percentile living in the cheapest realistic rent. But 27% of workers earn half that. So my question is where are all these people living?
Cars, vans, sheds, lots of people packed into small houses, squatting. According to the 2018 census over 100,000 people were considered to live in “Severe Housing deprivation”. I can’t find a more recent number than that but its hard to believe it’s gotten any better.
The reason I want to go through all this is to show that there seems to be a large proportion of New Zealanders who are not effectively supported by the wage economy. Employers say it’s really hard to find workers but many struggle to pay minimum wage, let alone a living wage.
I’m not ripping on employers. Lot’s of them have it pretty rough too. Just because someone runs a business doesn’t mean they don’t live in some kind of precarity themselves. Many small business owners are just wage earners trying to climb out of the low wage economy that so much of the country is trapped in. What I find weird is that with the economy pumping so hard, why do employers not have enough money to pay workers well. Where is all the money going?
This is the big question we need to answer about the economy and this is what politicians need to be speaking to. Instead they dance around the issue.
National says they will get the economy working for all new Zealanders
But what they are saying they will do is:
· Cut wasteful government spending
· Cutting red tape
· Building more roads and public transport
· Driving technology and innovation
· Supporting trade and investment
· Growing new Zealand’s skill base
There is a degree to which this is on point. We do need to build high value industry in New Zealand so that there are more high paying jobs. These high paying jobs require the skill base of the labour force to grow, but 73% of our workforce works in the service sector. The bulk of these jobs are on the lower paying end of the curve. We might add a few high paying jobs by growing the advanced industry sector but that’s not going to make a dent in the million and a half people on less than the living wage.
None of National’s policies directly acknowledge the reality on the ground. And none of them will make a meaningful positive difference for half of the workforce.
National talks about incentivizing people to work. This is politician speak for cutting benefits. The rational is fair – if you pay people who don’t work, you are paying them not to work. But that is only true because half of wage earners are on the breadline and the dole is also the breadline.
Capitalism is the core ethos of New Zealand society. The market is supposed to value all commodities including human time. For those whose time is not valuable enough to sell for the basic necessities we have the welfare state. If the welfare state, which supports people on the breadline, is competing with the labour market, then the labour market is where we need to focus our attention.
Circling back to crime. A quarter of workers earn less than half of what is considered to be a living wage. This country is experiencing a massive increase in incidents of theft. And that rise in theft coincides with a huge recent increase in the cost of living. Crime and the weak labour market are very closely related problems.
6. Rescuing Universities
In its economic plan, National talks about driving technology and innovation, two areas usually associated with tertiary education. However, there is no mention of providing additional funding to universities in their Education policy document.
We have a massive tertiary education system subsidized by both government financial support of local students and foreign students who paid full fees. Unfortunately COVID shut down the foreign education industry and that led to a massive drop in funding and corresponding university staff layoffs.
In spite of the foreign student flow recovering, and some rescue funding provided by Labour, universities continue to layoff staff. This damage is going to take many years to recover from. During that time we are going to lose opportunities for research, both in the STEM subjects which provides fuel for the innovation National so badly wants, and in the social sciences which provide valuable research for policy development.
Universities run studies like growing up in New Zealand, which follows the lives of about 7000 children born between 2009 and 2010, and the Dunedin study, which did something similar for children of the 70s, enable us to understand our population. Without more of this research, and the education that is produced alongside it, not only will the competence of our governing institutions suffer, but we won’t grow the talent we need to advance our economy.
Co-Governance
The lack of cross-societal understanding is a big part of the backlash against Co-Governance or Tino Rangitiratanga. This is, from my limited understanding, basically the whole point of the Treaty of Waitangi. The history of the treaty is muddy, but it seems to be a document signed in mutual good faith but that was ultimately dishonoured by the crown. That seems to be the mainstream view. I don’t want to litigate the treaty. But I do suggest reading it. It’s very short, and it does guarantee separate governance for Maori.
Co-governance is not about racial segregation or creating a divided nation. It is first and foremost about honoring the treaty. The reason it makes sense as a policy option is that currently, Maori are not treated equally by the providers of core government services.
A clear cut example of European established systems failing Māori is the healthcare system. Maori have worse health outcomes than Europeans for the same medical issues even after going to the doctor. They also have a greater rates of health issues like diabetes and there tends to be poorer medical service in predominantly Maori communities. It is reasonable to say that there should be a separate health authority. The current one certainly isn’t working in Maori interests.
I’m not citing statistics because I haven’t found any that illustrate the point as cleanly as I’d like. They would take quite a bit of analysis and a fair treatment of the subject is beyond what I’m qualified to give. But as the ministry of health’s anti-racism policy states “
Is a separate health authority the best solution to unequal health outcomes for Maori? I don’t know. Probably not to my conservative European eye. But on the one hand, you can’t say it’s a bad idea if you are not prepared to propose a serious alternative. On the other, who is one culture to say what is good for another. Especially when that culture dishonours treaties and has to have an anti-racism policy for its healthcare system that is supposed to be guided by the Hippocratic oath.
Societies are supposed to be founded on the idea of a contract between the government and the governed. The government provides the services, the governed obey the law and pay taxes. That’s the social contract. But governing multiple cultures under a single system is hard. And in the case of our nation, it’s not working. And strangely enough, this state of affairs was both anticipated by, and provided for in the Treaty of Waitangi.
It’s fine to disagree with co-governance. There are many variations of it, some more strict than others, there are different stated aims, some potentially conflicting. And there are risks in all implementations. However, whether someone agrees or not with the idea, their opinion should always be seated a recognition of the European government’s responsibility to all people who live in this country, the broken contract that is the treaty of Waitangi, the poor services provided to regions where Māori predominantly live, and the poor service Maori receive from public entities.
There should also be an acknowledgement of the different areas where co-governance can be applied and what that looks like. The co-management of the Waikato river is an obvious one that has resulted in an improvement in the health of the resource.
Before we move on I want to recognize a few things. People of Pacifica and Asian ethnicities also experience substandard health treatment. Given we are a nation that is supposed to be “super diverse” it’s pretty weird that non-Europeans have such a hard time of it.
Also grouping Maori as a single people is an idea that many consider to be of European origin and I don’t mean to downplay the identity of individual Iwi. I understand the co-governance discussion as based on the concept of Tino Rangitiratanga as it appears in the Treaty of Waitangi which doesn’t make provisions for individual Iwi.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-Treaty/differences-between-the-texts
This an uncomfortable subject to talk about as a layman, especially as a European, but to move forward as a society it’s a conversation we need to have and some treatments of the subject, like this one, are going to be naive and incomplete. We need to work toward resolution and that means not sticking our heads in the sand or handwaving it away and saying the past should be left in the past. For a lot of people, it’s not the past. The financial, social, cultural, health, and emotional consequences of the breaches of the treaty continue to this day.
Emissions Trading Scheme
In 2008 we instituted the Emission Trading scheme, also known as the ETS, in order to meet our obligations under the Kyoto Climate Protocol. The idea was that a carbon tax was a bit heavy handed and by creating a scheme that brought market forces to bear on reducing greenhouse gas emissions we could create an industry to solve the problem.
Great market-driven idea. Love it. But the problem is, to build an industry around solving greenhouse gas emissions we need a somewhat predictable future price for carbon credits or NZUs – the way we measure emissions and value their reduction. But the government has undermined this predictability, through repeated interventions.
At the outset, the government set an emissions target of 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. Industries were going to be gradually included in the scheme with forestry first – to create an initial supply of carbon credits, and emitters over time with agriculture entering the scheme in 2013. This meant that someone planning to enter the NZU production market would be able to draw on the entirety of the New Zealand industrial base as a market. Greenhouse gas emitters which operated in export industries were to be allocated some free credits bases on their expected production, so that they could remain competitive.
A bunch of stuff got changed by the National government in 2009 which makes it hard for a non-expert to understand. All participants were able to purchase an unlimited number of units from overseas, and the government would offer an unlimited number of units for purchase at the price of $25, which created a price cap. One emissions credit would have to be paid to the government for every 2 tons of carbon produced – a kind of 50% discount. Export industry emitters would be allocated NZUs to cover between 60% and 90% of their emissions, to be phased out by 1.3% per year starting 2013, and agriculture inclusion was pushed out to 2015.
In March of 2011, an NZU on the open market was worth $21. Unfortunately, due to European mismanagement, in 2012 the market for foreign carbon credits crashed to 28 cents. This destroyed the NZU market.
To quote an unnamed 2012 market participant: "I'm surprised people are not filling their boots. People seem to be having a tough time believing the market is credible."
Against this backdrop, in 2012, new amendments were made to the ETS. Well, actually, a bit earlier it had been decided to push back the inclusion of the agricultural sector until 2015. But in 2012 this was made indefinite, as was the 50% free credits.
In 2015 foreign credits were no longer accepted and NZUs were no longer sold overseas.
In 2019 a few changes were made in an amendment that included agricultural emissions in the scheme in 2030.
This whole story is very complicated and I definitely got some of it wrong, in spite of a ton of research. So how then is someone supposed to build a business in this mess of a scheme? In June of this year the climate change commission said in 2023 that it wasn’t really working. Basically an admission that we don’t have an effective greenhouse gas emissions reduction policy.
The most important takeaway came from that quote from 2012. The market is not credible. Entrepreneurs expect the government to undermine it. This reality is beginning to rear its head again as the ETS has recently been reviewed, and the National government is planning to make amendments that many expect to damage NZU producers and lower the cost of emitting greenhouse gases.
In addition to the debacle of the scheme itself, there have been some unintended consequences Like the use of agricultural pasture for the planting of permanent stands of radiata pine. This takes productive land and turns it into a monoculture of exotic forest. It vandalizes the country.
So that’s our climate policy.
-break-
https://www.mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/55933-2022-report-on-the-status-of-New-Zealands-fish-stocks
I don’t mean to only focus on grim stuff. according to the 2021 General Social Survey 78% of new Zealanders rated their happiness at better than 7/10 and 37% said it was better than 9/10. Which is pretty awesome. We’re a happy country. For many, things are going Okay.
Fish stocks are doing well! About 3 quarters are beating their population management targets.
Aotearoa, New Zealand is a wealthy country with very low debt and a healthy economy. Money can’t solve everything but can solve a lot. Especially if it is used efficiently.
To reiterate. The reason I’m raising these issues is that I feel that politicians are not discussing them in productive terms or effectively addressing them. They are framing problems in ways that will get them elected but not in ways that will help us understand what we are electing them to solve.
But things are happening. Behind the scenes we have a good government, in spite of what politicians say about one another. It’s up to us, the voters, to set the agenda, and put that government to work.
A bit of housekeeping. This is a short pilot series, or season. Just 4 or 5 interviews. Subsequent series will be longer and more focused but I’m just trying to get this off the ground and without live content it’s hard to get people to actually commit to interviews. The interviews aim to be policy focused but in some cases are subject focused. At the end of the series I’ll produce a wrap-up episode that contains key takeaways.
I endeavour to make these interviews flow well but I also edit quite aggressively so there is a tradeoff between flowing conversation and density of information.
Some friends have asked why this is called Aotearoa Tomorrow and not New Zealand tomorrow or something similar.
New Zealand is a cool country name because it has 2 words and a Z in it. But it was given to this country by an anonymous Dutch cartographer on the other side of the world.
We are a nation of social innovators with our own culture and a potentially bright future that is ours to define. But if we want to prosper, we have to break from old ways of thinking and forge a new path that looks very different from the past 40 years. New Zealand is stagnant, and for me, the name Aotearoa has always held a connotation of progress. I’m not saying we should change the country’s name but if it has 2 names that’s fine by me.
Our first episode features sociologist Paul Spoonley of the center for informed futures. Paul has had a pretty illustrious career, he’s a professor at Massey university and has published a ton of books. I got in touch to ask him about his work on social cohesion. A subject especially relevant to a country with 2 names. Look out for that next week.
Links:
https://www.national.org.nz/plan
https://www.labour.org.nz/labourplan2023
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/new-zealand
https://www.labour.org.nz/news-labour_manifesto_2023
https://www.act.org.nz/law-and-order
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/07/10/consequences-v-support-act-greens-on-youth-offending/
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18613/chapter/7
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country
https://www.police.govt.nz/crime-snapshot https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-inflation-6-7-percent/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300896896/gang-numbers-up-by-400-new-members-since-christmas
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/library-research-papers/research-papers/new-zealand-gang-membership-a-snapshot-of-recent-trends/
https://www.redcross.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Files/About-Us/News/Reports-and-publications/RC-Migration-Scoping-Report-2022-v10_final.pdf
https://budget.govt.nz/budget/2023/wellbeing/fiscal-strategy/debt-measure.htm
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/australia/government-debt--of-nominal-gdp
https://www.budget.govt.nz/budget/2023/bps/living-standards-financial-infrastructure.htm
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/infrastructure-report-finding-a-new-funding-path/OHFKTNWZPBBANCXBARFKIFARGE/
http://webrear.mbie.govt.nz/theme/gdp-per-capita/map/timeseries/2022/
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/gross-domestic-product-june-2023-quarter/
https://www.ird.govt.nz/about-us/tax-statistics/revenue-refunds/wage-salary-distributions/wage-and-salary-statistics-datasets https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/living_wage.asp
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nzlivingwage/pages/2735/attachments/original/1683235398/Living_Wage_review_summary_FCSPRU_27_3_23.pdf
https://nz.talent.com/tax-calculator/New+Zealand-52000
https://www.aa.co.nz/cars/motoring-blog/vehicle-ownership-costs-more-than-just-the-purchase-price/
https://www.carsguide.com.au/toyota/corolla/2006
https://www.statista.com/statistics/436457/employment-by-economic-sector-in-new-zealand/
https://monitor.icef.com/2023/05/international-student-visa-holders-up-98-in-new-zealand-since-the-border-reopening/
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/populations/maori-health/ao-mai-te-ra-anti-racism-kaupapa
https://www.motu.nz/our-research/environment-and-resources/emission-mitigation/shaping-new-zealands-low-emissions-future/major-milestones-of-the-new-zealand-emissions-trading-scheme/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120609133802/
http:/www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/new-zealand-emissions-trading-scheme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NZU-NZ-emission-unit-720by540.svg
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/7873918/New-Zealand-may-quit-Kyoto
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2019/0061/latest/LMS183848.html
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/492256/new-additional-ets-scheme-floated-in-review-of-carbon-market
https://www.climatecommission.govt.nz/news/insight-ets https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-measures-show-happiness-of-new-zealanders/
https://www.mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/55933-2022-report-on-the-status-of-New-Zealands-fish-stocks