Yesterday Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced that the Government would change the law to stop people suing companies for climate change damage or harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions in both current and future proceedings before the courts.

The legislation is intended to stop Smith v Fonterra, a live case against high emitting companies with a High Court trial date set for April 2027.

If the Government is prepared to undermine the judicial process in this way, the next step is retrospective legislation: A future Parliament might not only make high emitters liable for their ongoing emissions but also make them liable for past emissions, given they had full knowledge of the consequences of their actions.

Parliament is sovereign, it can make laws. But a Government makes laws through due process, not through press releases.

The coalition Government has used urgency to debase due process and change laws it had not campaigned on and were only urgent to protect and promote vested interests of selected stakeholders.

While they claim this law change is to give businesses certainty, this coalition Government has created uncertainty for households and businesses by its abrupt and disruptive changes in climate policy.

Its declared primary policy for dealing with climate change is the Emissions Trading Scheme, which covers only half our gross emissions, at a price that does not reward permanent emissions reductions but encourages temporary carbon storage in unmanaged exotic forests on productive land.

Rather than accelerating moving to domestically produced renewable energy sources, the government is doubling down on highly polluting, increasingly risky and expensive foreign-sourced fossil fuels.

Because of the Government’s failure to act, emissions will be higher for longer and the transition more abrupt when it comes. 

Any national interest test would call for a reduction in subsidies and protections for high emitting energy sources and business practices.

The myopic, reckless and selfish behaviours of high emitting businesses and households are not in the national interest.

The Government’s expressed intention to pre-empt the judicial outcome of a case before the courts should concern us all but should concern our law makers greatly.

The coalition Government's climate policy is inconsistent, incomplete and incoherent and increasingly looks like a mix driven by complacency, capture and corruption.

Rod Carr was the inaugural chair of the Climate Change Commission from 2019 until his term ended in late 2024.