Outgoing New Zealand Greens co-leader James Shaw has used his valedictory address to implore Kiwi MPs not to follow Australia into bruising battles over climate change.
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Mr Shaw, climate change minister for six years under Jacinda Ardern, gave a spirited goodbye to politics on Wednesday night to a packed parliament.
The 50-year-old is the architect of the landmark Zero Carbon Bill, which enshrined emissions targets into law and created the Climate Change Commission, which sets budgets so that New Zealand meets its targets.
Mr Shaw said he was grateful those institutions - as well as 2030 Paris Agreement targets and 2050 net-zero targets - had survived the change of government.
"I want to thank the prime minister, the right honourable Christopher Luxon, for his personal leadership on this," he said, calling Mr Luxon a friend.
He urged Mr Luxon, leader of the conservative National party and prime minister of a right-leaning coalition government, to hold the line against "partisans", some of whom were ministers.
"The framework is being quietly sabotaged, subtly undermined," he said.
"There is an increasing risk New Zealand will collapse into the climate culture wars that we see in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
"Pressure is building and the consensus is already fraying."
He also humorously threatened the prime minister to do more to tackle the biodiversity crisis, "a crisis every bit as severe as the climate crisis".
"New Zealand has the highest species extinction rate in the world with 63 per cent of our ecosystems threatened," he said.
"Christopher, if you let them unwind the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity, I will haunt you," he said to laughs, including from Mr Luxon.
Mr Shaw also used his speech to thank three of his best friends in politics - ex-National leader Todd Muller, former Labour finance minister Grant Robertson and Ms Ardern.
"Serving in Jacinda Ardern's government was the privilege of my lifetime," he said, before a nod to the saturation of abuse Ms Ardern has received in the wake of tough pandemic measures.
"She is a woman of humility, service, intelligence and integrity and she also deserves far better treatment than she has been receiving."
Mr Shaw also announced he wi suite of new jobs.
He will take up a partnership at infrastructure managers Morrison, a consultancy with Greenbridge Capital Management, and join the board of WWF New Zealand and the sustainability panel of Air New Zealand
"I am in a real hurry to protect and restore our wildernesses and wildlife, atmosphere, and oceans," he said.
"I am giving myself a five-year mission to boldly reduce or remove 150 million tonnes of climate pollution from global emissions by 2030."
Australian Associated Press
