We all know that Simeon Brown is the Minister for More People Dying On Roads, his insane position to manipulate our impatience by lifting speed limits and user pays on our groaning gridlock due to mass immigration policies are damaging enough, but his extraordinary capitulation to the car industry to weaken emissions is just jaw dropping…
Transport minister pushed ahead with weaker tailpipe standards to meet car industry’s deadline
Transport Minister Simeon Brown pushed through weaker carbon emissions standards in time to meet the car industry’s preferred deadline, documents show.
His own officials wanted to give Cabinet another month to decide, to allow more consideration of options.
Other emails released by the Ministry of Transport showed environment officials tried at the last minute to warn Cabinet the move risked blowing the country’s climate targets.
However, they were told they were too late to get the advice in a Cabinet paper.
Importers bring in hundreds of thousands of new and used vehicles every year.
According to the Productivity Commission, New Zealand and Australia were the last developed countries to introduce tailpipe emissions standards on imports, aside from Russia.
The rules were designed to stop New Zealand becoming a dumping ground for high-emitting gas guzzlers that other countries no longer wanted, by requiring importers to bring in a mix of utes and heavy high-emitting cars along with smaller models, electrics and hybrids.
A benefit/cost analysis in 2019 estimated the standards would save New Zealanders $1.2 to $4.7 billion over 20 years, including about $7000 a year per vehicle in fuel savings.
The rules were designed to get stricter over time, eventually catching up with leading jurisdictions in Europe and elsewhere.
A concerted lobbying effort by major car industry groups failed to stop the standards being brought in, but the industry succeeded in getting them weakened this year after National promised to “recalibrate” them.
New Zealand’s standards will now lag Europe by about five years and the United States by about two years. They will align with Australia, where incoming rules were also weakened after car industry pushback.
…oncer again it’s the polluters interests that are protected.
One again it’s the powerful and the rich who get what they want at the expense of the common good.
Once again it’s National who are eroding our rights as consumers and citizens while polluting the environment.
Simeon Brown will enable more Kiwis dying on more NZ roads WHILE polluting our environment.
Take a long hard look at yourselves in the mirror Kiwis.
Was your misplaced and manipulated anger at Jacinda saving 20 000 lives from a once in a century pandemic worth this racist, climate denying, beneficiary bashing, disabled abused Government?
A roading Minister who will see more lives lost at the expense of our climate?
This is what we have mutated into, this is the obscenity we have become.
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Removing the clean car discount was stupid, removing Aucklands fuel tax was stupid, and being a fan of congestion charges while not boosting public transport just shows he doesn’t give a shit about the people who actually work.
Well the evidence is right in front of us–this CoC lot support (with taxpayer money) the most destructive capitalists around–Arms industry, Fossil Fuel industry, Tobacco industry, ICE Auto industry, PPP Road Builders and Tollers, for profit Education and Health…and of course the rentier class of parasitic landlords.
All that shower of shit could have funded a lot more renewable energy, public transport, health workers and public housing. Did you know that a number of approved and underway public house builds have been halted for “review”? The dirty CoC are ideologically opposed to state housing. Don’t feed the kids, and don’t house the people is their banner.
I note multiple specialists and experts that provide the evidence and science behind increased speed resulting in more deaths were dismissed by Simeon Brown. Browns evidence was that he simply disagreed with them. That’s all, that he disagreed with them.
Death? what does Simian care? he’s delivering souls to baby jesus.
Climate change? it’s baloney, Simian knows that it’s all in sky daddy’s hands.
Charles evidently speeding increases productivity.
The vehicle importers will be able to pay less for vehicle’s in Japan but still sell them for high prices here so another government decision that favours the already wealthy. The wholesale rejection of safety and environment laws can only lead to disaster as the original rejecter of law lead to disaster world wide.
Apparently Simeon Brown is a regular attender at his local Baptist Church.
One really wonders what ‘gospel’ is taught there; are they the life values taught by its founder?
Don’t think so.
I had red neck former national party supporters staying over the weekend .Once staunch National voters they did not vote national this last election and are wishing other staunch National voters did the same .They are appalled at the shit they are inflicting on everyday Kiwis and now dispair for the future of their grand kids .However they still believe the lies about Jacinda owning many houses and two farms even when I produced the 2023 register of all MPs and what they owned ,which in fact shows she owns one house .
Brown says he has a mandate from voters to do what ever he wants .I would doubt any voter was giving him the mandate to kill people .
Despite what the Po-Po tell you, speed isn’t a major factor in fatalities. I have this on good authority from a road traffic scientist. A head-on impact anything above 80kph is going to kill someone.
What does save lives is dual carriageways lined by Armco barriers, and not those ‘No8 wire’ cheese cutters Labour invested in. As evidenced by the recent multiple fatality on the M1 south when a truck went straight through them killing people in the opposing carriageway.
The way to reduce fatal accidents is:
>More dual carriageways and Armco barriers
>Continuous driver education and training via media and retraining for offenders.
>Police to focus on moving violations such as tailgating and unsafe lane changes rather than revenue gathering.
Andrew, you contradict yourself in your first paragraph. A traffic scientist tells you speed doesn’t kill but a head on at 80k will?.
Then you go on to advocate for safety measures which sound fine and sensible.
However you seem to advocate for this in the face of simple economic reality.
How many of our state highways do you think you could bring up to the standard you advocate over the next 5 years while Simian and the other monkeys are spending billions on planning their RONs.
In 5 years there will be nothing of what you advocate or any RONs started.
In my simple mind we can make roads safer through reducing speed limits, education and improvement to the most dangerous areas of our transport network.
Long term we will save lives and cost by upgrading rail and forcing those killer trucks off the road. They may not be involved in lots of fatal accidents directly but there is no doubt they make roads less safe by their very presence and the damage to the roads. Imagine the number of barriers you could build with the money saved by not having to repair the damage they cause. And as a bonus Simian and the monkeys would not need to increase speed limits because workers would not be held up getting to work by slow trucks. He would then get all the workers on the job 51 seconds earlier, imagine what that will do to productivity.
To use a Simeon Brown analogy, I disagree with your road traffic scientist and can tell you that on good authority that a leading trauma surgeon Christopher Wakeman along with numerous health and safety specialists are quoted as saying “there is little doubt that increasing maximum speeds will lead to more lives being lost on the roads”.
Can you post the name of the road traffic scientist to back up your claim?
Sir Simeon was supposedly a very sharp Bank Teller b4 his career in Politics.
More like boy Simeon.
I’m concerned those images of Simeon riding his wrecking ball will lead to even more of his masters appearing before the courts with name suppression.
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