Party Policies

Want to see how the parties stack up at a glance? Check out this party scorecard showing how strong we think their policies are in the areas most important to climate change and sustainable energy. This scorecard is the result of a detailed, objective analysis of the parties’ policies and positions. We aimed to be as fair as possible and give credit where credit is due. You can click on each entry in the scorecard to read a summary of important points and find links to more information. For more information about our assessment, and links to other party comparisons, see below. Get informed!

Policy topics	Political parties
Targets
Emissions Trading Scheme or other carbon pricing
Fossil fuel extraction
Transport
Energy efficiency and renewable energy
R&D for low carbon technology

Key

	Fossil foolery	A climate accident waiting to happen.
	Business as usual	Pretty much continues as if climate change and peak oil don’t exist.
	Baby steps	A minor improvement on the status quo, nothing to write home about.
	Future-friendly	Good move in the right direction, but not far enough.
	Tumeke!	Bold, visionary, and about as good as we could wish for.
	Huh?	Insufficient informationto make a fair assessment.

About our assessment

The climate and energy challenges we face will affect, and be affected by, virtually every aspect of our society. Many different policy areas are related, directly and indirectly, to efforts to address these challenges. For simplicity’s sake, we have chosen to focus on a small selection of policy topics that we believe are the most important for New Zealand today: targets; the Emissions Trading Scheme or other carbon pricing; fossil fuel extraction; transport; energy efficiency and renewable energy; and research and development for low carbon technology.

We did not approach political parties for responses to questions; the assessment is made based on what we could confirm or reasonably infer from policies and information available in the public domain. As much as possible we have used information direct from the parties’ official policy statements on their websites, and tried to look past spin to the real content. Where there were no such policy statements currently available, we investigated other sources and made inferences from current government actions. The information will be updated as new policies are released.

Our ratings are based on climate science and how effective we predict the policies would be at combating climate change and reducing New Zealand’s dependence on fossil fuels. These are intended to give a simple snapshot of the relative strength of different parties’ policies on climate change and energy for those who do not wish to look further. We do encourage viewers to read the more detailed policy descriptions and see for themselves. Note that a positive rating does not necessarily mean that Generation Zero endorses all of the proposed mechanisms and outcomes.

Have we missed something important or got something wrong? Disagree with our ratings? Drop us a line at contact@generationzero.org.nz — we welcome your feedback.

Last updated 23/11/2011

Other policy comparisons

Don’t want to take our word for it? Want to know about other policy topics? There are several other sites with comparison of party policies  – check them out:

Kiwi Voter 101 (Simplified summaries of the six main parties’ policies in six broad areas)

Radio New Zealand party policy Q&As (Huge list of topics – National declined to answer any questions)

Interest.co.nz’s party policies list (Huge list of topics with summaries from party websites)

Smart Transport party scorecard (A comparison of parties positions on a host of transport issues)

Forest and Bird’s Vote for Nature Ecopoll (Questions on environment and conservation – responses only received from the Greens, United Future and Mana)

The Science Media Centre’s Election and Science Q&As (Responses from ACT, Green, Labour and National)

Any other good ones that we’ve missed? Let us know at contact@generationzero.org.nz.

Authorised by Paul Young, 27A Shannon Street, Wellington.