Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has spent the morning meeting farmers and others in the sector at Fieldays in Hamilton, one day after announcing agriculture would be excluded from Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). 

Luxon will make a speech and field questions from reporters. It will be live-streamed from the top of this article. 

On Tuesday, the Government announced agriculture would not be included in the ETS and the climate change initiative He Waka Eke Noa would be disestablished. 

The ETS was introduced in 2008 under the Labour government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions emitted by certain industries. The scheme puts a price on emissions, meaning certain sectors of the economy are charged for the greenhouse gases they emit. 

The most recent Labour government legislated to include agriculture in the scheme by 2025, but today’s announcement from the coalition Government stops that. 

The Government also announced He Waka Eke Noa - a partnership between government, the industry and iwi – would be disbanded, saying the initiative was “no longer tenable”. 

Mike King and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon meet at Fieldays in Hamilton. Photo / Mike Scott 

A new initiative, the Pastor Sector Group, would be established. Terms of reference for the group would be developed and agreed on by groups representing the sector, such as DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb New Zealand, Deer Industry New Zealand and Federated Farmers. 

Labour was concerned the changes meant previous work on agricultural emissions was now redundant, meaning it was starting afresh and ultimately delaying decarbonising the economy. 

“The longer we wait to decarbonise our economy, the more expensive it becomes and the bigger the damage to our industries and farming sectors in the long run,” Labour agriculture spokesperson Jo Luxton said. 

Director of the Climate and Energy Finance Group at the University of Otago Dr Sebastian Gehricke said “starting fresh after so many years of delay is preposterous”. 

“He Waka Eke Noa proposals were inadequate and far from ambitious, so disestablishing that makes sense, but not if agricultural emissions are to not be priced at all,” he said. 

“Is it more R&D we need or actual changes and incentives?”