ACT revives push to scrap the Climate Change Commission

The ACT Party has brought back its 2023 election policy to disestablish the Climate Change Commission. Party spokesperson and list candidate Paul Henry released a media statement on 26 August 2026 titled "ACT to scrap costly climate bureaucracy, abolish the Climate Change Commission" (RNZ).

Henry, a former broadcaster who resigned from TVNZ to stand as an ACT candidate for the 2026 election, said the party would shift the Commission's monitoring and reporting work to existing government departments. He told RNZ the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT) already measures New Zealand's greenhouse gas inventory and runs the Emissions Trading Scheme, and would take on assessing progress towards emissions targets under ACT's plan (RNZ).

The Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS, is the government's main tool for cutting emissions. It puts a price on greenhouse gases by requiring polluters to buy carbon units for their emissions. The greenhouse gas inventory is the official tally of how much Aotearoa emits each year.

Henry's statement focused on the economic cost of the Commission's recommendations. He said the Commission's advice to increase New Zealand's 2050 emissions reduction commitment would lower GDP by 2.2 percent, wiping about $2 billion a year from the economy by 2035 and rising to about $12.5 billion every year by 2050. He also noted the Labour-led government had rejected a Commission recommendation to tighten ETS restrictions (RNZ).

The policy is not new. ACT's official policy page, originally published in September 2023, states the party would "get rid of costly bureaucracy such as the Zero Carbon Act and the Climate Change Commission" and tie emission reductions to a framework outside the Zero Carbon Act and Commission structure (ACT Party). In 2023, ACT leader David Seymour described the policy as "the best any political party has put forward" (RNZ). Seymour is MP for Epsom and currently serves as Deputy Prime Minister (ACT Party).

The Zero Carbon Act, passed in 2019, set legally binding emissions reduction targets and created the Climate Change Commission as an independent body to advise the government and track progress. The Commission sits at arm's length from ministers by design.

Henry's emergence as the party's climate spokesperson follows his candidacy announcement in Auckland in late July, when Seymour introduced him as an ACT candidate for the 2026 election. Henry resigned from TVNZ to contest the election; his resignation letter to the Media Minister was released publicly, including an apology for keeping his departure decision private. In a separate appearance, Henry brushed off past broadcasting controversies, telling 1News there is "not a racist bone" in his body (1News).

The wider ACT caucus includes Nicole McKee, ACT's Deputy Leader and Minister of Courts; Brooke van Velden, MP for Tāmaki and Minister of Internal Affairs; Andrew Hoggard, Minister for Biosecurity; Karen Chhour, Minister for Children; and Simon Court, Under Secretary for RMA Reform. List MPs Mark Cameron (Rural), Todd Stephenson (Justice), Parmjeet Parmar (Trade), Laura McClure (Education) and Cameron Luxton (Conservation) round out the parliamentary team. James Christmas is the party's candidate for Tāmaki (ACT Party).

The broader context here is that ACT is repackaging a policy that failed to gain traction during the 2023 campaign and putting a specific economic argument at the front of it. The GDP figures Henry cites are the party's own framing of the Commission's advice, not independent Treasury or Ministry analysis. The claim that MCERT already performs the inventory and ETS functions is factual, and moving monitoring into that ministry would reduce a standalone statutory body. But the Climate Change Commission was set up under the Zero Carbon Act to sit at arm's length from the government of the day. Transferring its work to a ministry answerable to a minister removes that independence, and that is the core question the policy raises, regardless of the cost figures.

Henry's argument that the Commission's 2050 recommendation was partly rejected by the Labour-led government cuts both ways. It suggests the Commission's advice is contestable within existing Cabinet processes, which could undercut the case for abolition. If a government can reject Commission advice under the current framework, the policy's stated reason for disestablishing the body rests more on cost avoidance than on institutional dysfunction.

The Treaty Principles Bill, another signature ACT initiative, was unsuccessful in Parliament. That track record is relevant here. Abolishing the Climate Change Commission would require either repealing or substantially amending the Zero Carbon Act, which passed with cross-party support. Whether ACT can secure the numbers for that in a future coalition is a separate question from the policy announcement itself.