Simon Watts: Climate Change Minister says there is improvement from the Emissions Trading Scheme

The Government says it's reinstating confidence in the Emissions Trading Scheme. 

It comes as the Climate Commission's calls for carbon credits to stay the same price, to maintain stability. 

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts told Mike Hosking while some carbon credit auctions haven't taken off, things are improving on other years. 

He says the previous Government was getting too involved and causing volatility, but he's turning things around. 

He says the Commission's told the Government its changes are working well, and it can keep its hand off the tiller. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Climate News as we're headed the long weekend, the Climate
Change Commission is recommending ETS prices should remain as they
are emissions trading scheme. Of course, their argument is consistently
leads to confidency. Their argument is that consistency leads to confidence, which,
if you follow the carbon market, is exactly what we
need given up take it. Auction time, of course, has
been a shamble as of late. Climate Change Minister Simon

(00:20):
Wattson's well us very good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Morning, might breaks beyond now?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Fewer credits are same price? Do we have a winning
formula now or not?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, look what the Climate Change Commission has said, and
for the first time in a long time, there's actually
the settings that we've put in place last year seem
to be working. Basically, make no further changes, hand off
the tiller, and you know that's a positive feedback. We're
obtually going to review their report where only got it yesterday,
and make sure we've gone through all the detail. But

(00:51):
the feedback at a headline level is the changes that
we did last year to try and stabilize a market
it was pretty volatile when we came into governminating months ago.
Seeing to be doing what it was meant to do,
and that's positive for the market.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
What is it meant to do given that none of
the auctions worked last year on the first auction this
year didn't work either.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, the reality in terms of whether auction clears or
not is a demand and supply conversation. We do know
at the moment that there is the market a happy
in terms of the amount of supply that they're able
to achieve, but in terms of the actual underpinning settings
of the market, we had government getting involved a lot
under the prior government that was causing a lot of

(01:30):
uncertainty and volatility. We've taken all of that away, and
now the Climate Change Commission is also saying, hey, just
keep your hands off it. It's where it needs to be.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
So, I mean, from a revenue generation point of view,
you're earning no revenue and you sell no credits, you
get no revenue. You're happy with that?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, I am happy with that. At the purpose of
the market is not to create revenue that is a
byproduct of it. The purpose of the market is to
reduce emissions and that's what it's primary purposes and that's
what it does.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
And to be fair, the numbers that came out what
a week, two weeks ago, whatever it was. We are
still reducing our emissions as a country, aren't we.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
We are? Yeah, the settings an inventory that came out
only in the last two weeks show that we're on
a downward trajectory. The government has a plan to achieve that,
it's got a clear strategy, and actually we're doing so
without throwing a whole lot of money at the problem
and you know, not massively impacting our economy. And that's
sensible policy, it's pragmatic, and it's also reducing emissions.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
What about the anks the other day that you want
a lot of planting to go on on public land
in terms of pine trees and that offsets carbon emissions
and all that sort of stuff, and all the anngstes
who got upset about that. Has that been settled? Is
that the way the future? And how much reliance is
there on trees to solve this problem?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah. Look, we've heard loud and clear from farmers that
they're concerned about, you know, part of forestry on productive farmland.
We're bringing in changes this year to restrict pine on
to productive farmland. We're going to place restrictions that that
doesn't exist today, and that's what this government's going to do,
and that's the sensible thing to do to protect protect

(02:59):
productive farmland. That'll go some way to deal with the
concerns that have been noted. But again you know that
the last government with forestries and forestries out that was
causing a huge amount of volatility, and forestry is a
long term investment horizon. Business people need certainty and our
objective is to make sure that they know exactly what
government policy is going to do so they can plan

(03:20):
for the future and invest appropriately.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
All right, go well this weekend, simon, what's the climate minister,
Mike is an early move in the ETS. Farmer Forester
Icee risk the ETS as a heavily regulated market which
is constantly being manipulated by the government for what is
essentially an inflationary consumption tax collected by entrepreneurs, many of
which are off sure they do not invest back into
climate initiatives and my experience they traveled yachts, et cetera.
When I consider the consumers in my small rural town,

(03:45):
I think the whole thing's insidious and there's no impact
whatsoever on climate change in terms of the quarterly government actions.
Their performance is a reflection of the idiocy of the
whole policy. Olie, I Like your style.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
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