Outgoing Green MP James Shaw says he got “really close” to resigning from his ministerial posts during the previous Labour government, over perceived inaction on climate and indigenous biodiversity.
Shaw will give his valedictory speech in Parliament on Wednesday after announcing his resignation earlier this year.
For six years under the previous government, he was climate change minister, later becoming associate environment minister, with responsibility for biodiversity, in Labour’s second term.
In past interviews, while he was minister, Shaw refused to be drawn on whether he’d ever threatened to resign. As Green Party co-leader, a position he left earlier this year, Shaw repeated public frustrations about the rate of progress with his coalition partner.
The outgoing Green MP reflects on his time in Parliament, and what it would take to strengthen New Zealand’s climate change commitments.
The MP was asked about how close he came to resigning during his ministerial terms in an interview with Q+A earlier this week. He replied, whilst laughing: “Really close.”
“There were a few times – the two most significant ones would’ve been, when we were debating increasing our Paris target [the 2030 target], prior to the Glasgow conference.
“New Zealand’s [interim] target had been set by the previous National government – it really, you know, wasn’t equal to our kind of position. That was a really hard-fought battle.
“There were days there where I thought, ‘I’m not sure that I can represent the country as climate change minister’, if we don’t have a target that is, at least on average, the equivalent of other OECD countries. That was one.
“The other one was the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity, which is currently getting unwound.
“But that got really difficult, and I ended up storming out of the Cabinet meeting that decided it. Three minutes later, [then-environment minister] David Parker materialised in my office to say, ‘look, we’re gonna work out a way to get this done.'”
Shaw continued: “I remember, that morning, talking to Megan Woods and I said: ‘Well, I’ve drafted my resignation letter – if this doesn’t go, then it’s been nice working with you.’
“That programme, indigenous biodiversity, something in absolute crisis. We’d gone 30 years without national direction on it – there had been a number of attempts.”
Shaw said he found himself in a “torturous” process over the issue.
“I was trying to land something that Nick Smith had started under John Key. The fact that it was so torturous … I’m like, ‘if the National Party could find themselves to fix this problem – surely we can, right?’ It just kind of outraged me, that it was that hard.”
Shaw said he believed the current coalition government had a greater assertiveness, perhaps inspired by what they could’ve perceived as “dithering” by Labour on policy.
She’s been weighing up the pros and cons of replacing James Shaw and spoke to deputy political editor Maiki Sherman.
While he was minister last year, he was asked about whether he’d considered resigning over policy disagreements. Shaw told Q+A at the time: “There are days when you wonder whether it’s worth it.”
Previous govt not ‘courageous’ enough on climate
As climate change minister, Shaw was an instrumental driver behind the previous government’s policy on the issue.
Shaw told Q+A he considered the Zero Carbon Act had passed its “first acid test” in surviving the change of government.
ACT pledged to repeal the legislation during the election campaign. But, Shaw said he was confident the National Party was committed to keeping it.
“It wasn’t up for negotiations and I’m very grateful for that.”
However, the former Greens co-leader has long admitted that he fell short in pushing through all of the policy changes he wanted, including agricultural emissions pricing.
Shaw was asked about his reflections on the process.
He responded: “First of all, I think we’ve got the way we organised ourselves, wrong. We needed single-point accountability inside the government.
“We should probably have parked the work with the Treasury, rather than with the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment, because the kind of tensions between those agencies was a big part of the problem.
“I think we had some responsibility for that. I think the other thing was that in choosing to work with a coalition of the levy organisations – the industry peak bodies – I’m not sure that we had that group right.
“If we’d worked directly with Fonterra, Silver Fern – the big processors – I think that we could have landed on something that was far more sensible.”
He said that the Labour government wasn’t “courageous” enough on climate.
On agricultural emissions, Shaw said he believed “industry was now way ahead” of Government.
“The fact that you’ve got organisations like Fonterra and Silver Fern, who have committed themselves to something like a 30% reduction by 2030 – five years away – is a very, very different position from where we were three, four, five, six or 10 years ago.
“They’re being led by the customers. I mean, at Fieldays last year, Cadbury had a tent where they were handing out leaflets saying, ‘we’re looking for a 30% reduction, and if you don’t do it, we’re going to stop buying from you’.
“They were literally kind of letting people know, this is what’s coming, so something is going to have to give,” Shaw said.
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air