Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

The Government has set clear climate change objectives. There are a number of issues the Climate Change Advisory Council and others have raised concerning the extent to which the Government has policies that would support reaching those objectives. A report published today suggested there were still some gaps in the policies required to meet the objectives.

Another challenge, and the one we would focus on the most as the fiscal council, is that there is no assessment of the economic and budgetary costs of that change. Much of the investment in the national development plan would go a long way towards meeting the Government’s objectives, so that is probably okay, but we have more concerns about ongoing current spending needs in climate change. The Government is also facing a potentially large loss of revenue. It raises a great deal of money from taxes on petrol and diesel. As people move towards electric cars, it will lose that money because electricity is taxed much more lightly.