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New Zealand government under fire for "two-faced" oil subsidy stance

Xinhua, November 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

The New Zealand government was accused of double standards Monday for calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies while offering tax breaks for oil exploration.

Opposition lawmakers and environment campaigners lined up to criticize a communiqué that New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is set to issue at the Paris climate talks this week.

The communique says that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would make a significant contribution to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions and calls for transparency around subsidies.

"By keeping prices artificially low, fossil-fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, disadvantage renewable energy, and depress investment in energy efficiency," it says.

However, the opposition Green Party said New Zealand risked being seen a "two-faced" while the government gave "massive tax breaks for oil exploration."

Key's government had subsidized the fossil fuel industry to the tune of 46 million NZ dollars (30.09 million U.S. dollars) annually in the form of tax deductions for petroleum-mining expenditures, Green Party energy spokesperson Gareth Hughes said in a statement.

The tax breaks "have no definite date of termination," according to an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) panel review issued in September.

"A New Zealand prime minister cannot stand on the world stage asking countries to do the right thing, while doing the exact opposite back home," said Hughes.

"Despite the government's communiqué calling on other nations to be more transparent about fossil fuel subsidies it has so far refused to release how much it subsidized the industry in 2014 and 2015."

The WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) campaign group said the New Zealand government was failing the key principles of the communique it was presenting to the United Nations conference.

"There is no transparency about their subsidies and there appears to be no ambition to remove them," WWF-New Zealand head of campaigns Peter Hardstaff said in a statement.

The New Zealand government has already come under fire for its relatively low emissions target and its proposal for non-binding targets. Endit