Business Council for Sustainable Development

It is very odd. Many, many members of the Business Council for Sustainable Development have been calling for an opportunity to have input into the revised ETS which the Government is finalising. You see it will be very different to the current one before select committee.

However the NZBCSD is against their own members having further input into the legislation and has attacked National’s call for another round of submissions on the revised scheme. The CEO, Peter Neilsen, is a former Labour Cabinet Minister.

It would be useful for someone to ask the members of the NZBCSD whether or not they agree with the press statement gone out. I daresay very few would. Many of their members have pleaded for input into the revised scheme that the Government and Select Committee are working on. Their members include:

BMW Group New Zealand
BP Oil New Zealand Limited
Contact Energy Limited
Deloitte
Fletcher Building Ltd
Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd
Honda New Zealand Limited
Meridian Energy Ltd
Mighty River Power Limited
Rio Tinto Aluminium (New Zealand) Limited
Shell New Zealand Limited
Solid Energy New Zealand Limited
Toyota New Zealand Limited
Transpower NZ Ltd
TrustPower Limited
Vector Limited

I would be amazed if many, if not all, of those firms do not want the ability to be able to do a submission on the revised scheme. Labour has delayed every sector bar forestry from coming in until 2011 anyway, so an extra three or four months is of minor consequence.

And I may be wrong, but I suspect many do not support the Government making a profit of $22 billion from the scheme, as would currently be the case.