Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on the Government changing climate disclosure rules for big companies

The Government is more than halving the number of entities that need to make climate-related disclosures.

It has proposed to only require listed issuers with market capitalisations of more than $1 billion to make disclosures.

Currently, the threshold is $60 million.

NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explains the changes further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But now the number of companies that will be required
to make climate related disclosures will be significantly slashed. The
government will now only require listed issuers with a market
cap of more than a billion dollars to make disclosures.
Currently the threshold of sixty million dollars. Gene TIBs Trainy
is The Herald's Wellington Business editor and with US hygieneh HI,
he is a complete radio silence from the Greens today.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well I was a bit surprise. This is a fairly
big announcement the government made. We published news of it
at five am. This was a climate reporting regime that
James Shaw introduced. Basically, James Shaw's thinking was, if we
get the country's biggest companies, banks, insurers, fund managers, you know,

(00:42):
the people who run our key we savers, if we
get them to disclose what their emissions are, you know,
that's a good bit of sunlight and that might prompt
them to try to do business in a way that's
more environmentally friendly. And you know that reporting is also
good because that can you know, if companies are looking

(01:04):
at investing in climate friendly things, they can see what
the emissions are and you know, make investment decisions accordingly.
You know, banks can also do that, they can lend
to people who are trying to cut a mission. So
that was the thinking. James Shaw put a lot of
weight on this regime. You know, it's been years in
the making, it's only been up and running for a
short time. When the government announced this morning that it

(01:26):
was radically you know, well not radically but quite substantially
watering down that regime, I would have thought the Greens
would have been out there straight away, you know, pointing
this out. But the Greens did not release a press
release or statement on this today. So you know, I

(01:46):
asked them about I said, what went on? It sounds
like it might have just been logistics. They didn't have
the staff to do it. But you know, one does
have to question whether the Greens emphasis is where it
is compared to when James Shaw was at the Home
of the Bay.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, not focused enough on the green part of their name.
Now do you think the removal of this from the
smaller businesses will encourage listings on the zet X by
businesses that perhaps may have been put off by this.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Well, you know, I thought this was quite a big call.
So this is that the z X they said that actually,
because these disclosure rules are so onerous, you know to
try to calculate your missions, and also directors of companies
can be personally liable if rules are broken. Int X
is saying that that prevented companies from wanting to list.

(02:37):
I think that's a pretty big statement to make. I
haven't heard this evidence, but that there might be instances
like that. I suspect companies are not listening for a
raft of reasons, and I can't see that this is
the main one. But you know, no doubt, I think
this decision by the government is just one more little
bit of red tap or difficulty it's trying to remove

(02:59):
to try to stimulate growth, get businesses listing on the
enz X, which is not having a great time at
the moment.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Now you've had a couple of days to let the
Labor Future Fund really sink into your brain. What's your
Because I think you struck on something Janey earlier this
week that I think is very important, which is that
it's almost it feels like an attempt to kind of
cozy up to New Zealand first ahead of the coalition
potential coalition talks next election. There is that really do
you think the primary motivator here.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Oh, look, I think it was a political policy. I
thought that the main thing that really struck me was
that it puts the spotlight on asset sales, because there
are many ways governments can invest in businesses and lend
to businesses. Labor did that a lot when it was
in government. There are many ways to do it that

(03:48):
don't involve coming up with a complicated scheme involving our
state owned enterprises. The difference with this scheme is that
it links the SOEs to the fund and by doing that,
it's saying Labor wouldn't get rid of certain state owned enterprises.
So I think that then puts the spotlight on National

(04:09):
which is keen to do asset recycling, you know, which
is when we might celibate here to buy a bit
they're free out money. So I thought maybe from that
perspective they ticked the box in terms of politics, and
as you say here that in terms of you know,
coming up with something that aligns them with the New
Zealand first, which is a good strategy leading up to

(04:31):
the election. I think, you know, to party Maori and
the Green Party have drifted quite far from where they
were previously potentially in such a way that would put
off a lot of centrist voters and that labor would
be courting.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, I think you might be right, Jinny. Thanks very much,
really appreciate your times. Jenna tips Traney, who's the Wellington
Business Editors. For more from Heather Duplassy Allen Drive, Listen
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