Jane Smith talks to Jamie Mackay, on the Country
There’s never been a better time for New Zealand to come out of the “Climate Change closet”.
Extract: It isn't should we exit from the Paris Agreement. The real question is when should we? And we need to show some leadership and the global livestock sector is actually looking to New Zealand to do that. So we either exit now or in two to three years when the whole thing collapses and we've wasted time, money, focus and resources that we don't actually have.
And you know, again we seem to be spending all of this money. We've got potentially 24 billion dollars in the next five years for net zero. That's twelve thousand household and a country that can't afford its own healthcare.
And you know, Jamie, on Anzac Day on I was standing at the dawn service and it hit me, and it has done it before on Anzac Day, that we've really let down our forebearers. You know, they fought for the rights of an innovative, independent thinking country and now we seem to be scared to say the wrong thing and be sanitized with everything that we say. So you know, we've got a real leadership role to play here. And actually we shouldn't be apologising for the fact that our admission's profile, our gross emissions do have a high proportion of natural biogenic emmissions. Actually we should be really proud of that, and you know our sector has a peace and apologise for that. We actually what we should be saying is goodness, mate, this is actually really great news. We can forge ahead and forge a different pathway and because I guess the thing is Jamie I called it a fiscal folly before, but it's actually economic espionage if we carry on the same pathway.