Civil Liability For Climate Change

Well, it was really interesting. Parliament, of course, began with the speaker standing up and talking about he had two letters, uh, one from Chloe Swarbrick and the other from Chris Hipkins, uh, wanting a snap debate on this um uh that the government announced that it would amend climate change laws to prevent companies from being sued over damaged uh caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Now it was interesting because Chloe Swarbrick got the letter in first, so she got to uh lead off the snap debate. After it, Chris Hipkins was seen to be wasn't seen to be around the place. So I don't know what happened to him. He was obviously enthusiastic enough to write the letter, but um he he deferred to somebody else to uh take up his cudgel. But look, it's an interesting argument, this one, isn't it? That um uh climate change will prevent um uh this legislation, um, the liability and torts um, which basically means that civil cases where a person can claim damages won't be able to be taken to the courts as uh that uh activist Mike Smith did and was granted permission uh by the Supreme Court to sue Fonterra. Now the big argument here is um not uh not just Fonterror, but uh there are other companies involved as well. And uh they had written Zed was one, had written uh they say to the Prime Minister's office. Uh there were meetings they say, no doubt with officials, but uh Chris Luxon was absolutely unaware and he said it in Parliament this afternoon. He was totally unaware of any meetings going on, and they've tried to tighten up procedures, and you'd say good luck to that, because that's exactly uh what uh they should be doing. But uh Chloe Swar Swarbrick's demanding an inquiry into the issue. Um, but she didn't get much change out of that um from Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith on the issue, who's legislating, as I said, to counter the court ruling. Uh, here they are.