NZ shows us the way again, with $8000 clean-car rebate
Kiwis have shown off, once again, how much smarter and more advanced they are than us by introducing a $302 million government scheme aimed at encouraging New Zealanders to buy low-emission vehicles.
Under the likely plan, car buyers will be able to claim rebates as high as $8000 on cars categorised as energy efficient, while people buying high-emissions vehicles would be slapped with a fee of up to $3000 to help pay for all that green generosity. It’s like robbing Scot to pay Greta, as it were.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced a $302 million amount put aside for an unnamed policy “to implement a regime to incentivise the uptake of low-emissions vehicles”, according to stuff.co.nz.
Locally, this is being seen as the rebirth of a police known in NZ as the “feebate”, which was proposed in 2019, but didn’t quite make it through parliament. Climate Minister James Shaw said the new scheme would have a “broadly similar design” to the feebate.
A statement said the “initiative will build demand for buyers of zero and low-emission vehicles”.
Shaw’s office also referred to the $302m fund as the Clean Car Discount, which was the official name of the feebate.
The original feebate, with its large rebates for those buying clean cars and effectively a tax on gas guzzlers, was estimated to prevent up to 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere in New Zeland over 20 years.
