Ah the lament.

Poor, old RNZ's obituary of the climate-related disclosures (CRD) makes you weep.

"New Zealand guts climate policy it bragged about to the world".

That's their headline.

What's misleading about the headline is the Government who “gutted” it isn't the Government who bragged about it.

As for the gutting and the world leading - "world leading" in what sense? We were simply the first to the line with a pointless idea.

The first country, if you believe it, was the previous Government that made it increasingly hard to get foreign money invested in the country because they had just produced another hurdle.

It included all banks, insurers and listed companies - what for?

It's very labour to just rope everyone in whether its relevant or not.

Why didn’t they make us all write climate reports? We all have a footprint.

Airlines? Sure, they have a lot of emissions. Tell us about them in your annual report.

Issues for insurance companies? Surely they would have done it anyway, given that’s their business?

But Turners, as in cars and Tina, raised relevant issues;

1) It wasn’t similar to Australia,

2) They opened themselves up to prosecution,

3) It cost a fortune to get someone to write all the mumbo jumbo that for many companies wasn’t remotely necessary.

Even MBIE wrote a report saying the costs of all this nonsense were prohibitive. But don't worry - as long as we are "world leading"!

What Labour never understood, and I doubt they do now, is putting the cost of business up is counter productive. Having our competitors outpace us because we are bogged down is counter productive.

Even if we all wrote glorious page after page after page about our footprints and climate intent, what difference did any of it make to the environment?

What got changed? Or saved? Or solved?

The tragedy was too much of the media got sucked in, and clearly still does, to the “feels”.

All you had to say was "look, it's a world first! A climate world first!"

And you had them hook, line and sinker.

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Mike's Minute: The CRD was always counter-productive

The Mike Hosking Breakfast