Source: Radio New Zealand
The coalition government is set to slash the Clean Car Standard. RNZ/Nicky Park
The coalition is being warned New Zealand will become a dumping ground for high-emission vehicles as it slashes the Clean Car Standard.
The standard – an effective penalty set up to incentivise the uptake of low or no emission vehicles – will drop by nearly 80 percent at the end of this week.
Importers will be charged $15 per gram of CO₂ for new imports instead of $67.50, and $7.50 per gram of CO₂ for used imports instead of $33.75.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop has made a strong case for urgent change to save consumers hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars when buying a new car.
“If we don’t act there will be $264 million in net charges that could have and likely will be passed on to New Zealanders through higher vehicle prices,” he said.
It’s come as a relief to sector groups like the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association, whose chair Greig Epps said importers were doing it tough.
“This is really good for for our business. We had people closing up shop this year. We’ve lost several members this year. Businesses have just decided that it’s too hard to keep going and next year the penalties would have increased, the targets tightened, so that was just not looking good for the industry.”
Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association chair Greig Epps. Supplied
Drive Electric’s board chair Kirsten Corson described the change as “really disappointing” and “embarassing”.
“If you look at us compared to Australia, in Australia you’re paying $100 as a penalty and now we’ve just slashed that to $15 in New Zealand.
“So we are going to become a dumping ground for high emission vehicles.”
Corson also questioned Bishop’s statement that “the impact is so negligible this didn’t get a climate impact assessment”.
“I’m not sure which data he’s looking at but it’s far from negligible when you think our transport emissions [are] our best hope of hitting our Paris Agreement targets,” Corson said.
“We keep our vehicles on our road for two decades. The average car is 15 years old in New Zealand so the decisions they’re making today is going to impact our transport emissions for the next three decades.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the coalition was responding to a problem of its own making, having scrapped the Clean Car Discount.
“It was ironic to see Chris Bishop and the Prime Minister complaining that there aren’t enough electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles on the used car market.
“That’s because they collapsed the importation of electric vehicles when they canceled the Clean Car Discount.
“They made it much more expensive for New Zealanders to buy electric vehicles and to buy low emissions hybrid vehicles and now they’re complaining there aren’t enough used versions of those on the market.”
The government is reviewing the Clean Car Standard with a plan to report recommendations back to Cabinet in June next year.
The ACT party is already advocating – as it has for some time – for the entire scheme to be scrapped.
The slashed standard will be passed into law by the end of the week.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
