Who wrote the climate law? Lobbyists' text closely mirrored in Government reform

Hard paywall, so text follows.

In mid-2024, two of New Zealand’s largest corporate energy and agricultural emitters drafted a specific, two-sentence amendment to the country's climate laws. They printed it out and hand-delivered it to the prime minister’s office.

Two years later, the Government announced it was advancing legislation that closely mirrors that exact corporate text, while saying it has no internal record of any meetings or documents.

The disclosure of the corporate-drafted law change emerged following a High Court order by Justice Peter Andrew, which overturned confidentiality claims to release a 2024 “Briefing Note”.

The document was prepared on behalf of the defendants in Smith v Fonterra and Ors, a landmark case where climate change activist Mike Smith is suing several companies including the dairy giant, Z Energy, New Zealand Steel and Genesis Energy for climate damage.

The corporate blueprint explicitly proposed adding a new section to the Climate Change Response Act (CCRA).

The text was designed to retroactively strip New Zealanders of their right to bring common-law climate claims in equity or tort, effectively killing Smith's active Supreme Court-sanctioned trial before it could be heard.

On May 12, Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith announced that the Government would progress a law change matching that exact framework.

Yet the briefing note was not included in the response to two Official Information Act requests, including a targeted OIA request to the office of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon tracking any documents, discussions, or meetings regarding responses to the Smith v Fonterra litigation.

The response contained no mention of meetings in June and July 2024, nor did it include the hand-delivered Briefing Note. The document only came to light this month through the High Court's discovery process.

Last week, a Z Energy spokesperson confirmed to The Post the company provided the document “summarising their views on the implications of the Smith v Fonterra case and the potential role of legislation” in 2024.

He added: “We stand behind the document, which reflects Z’s perspective and is consistent with our publicly stated positions.

“As New Zealand’s largest transport energy company, Z is a significant emitter, with the fuel we sell to our customers contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. It is appropriate that we have engaged with Government on industry issues that have economic and environmental issues of national significance...Z’s long-held view is that it is the role of Government, not the courts, to develop climate policy.”

A spokesperson for Fonterra said: “Like many businesses we engage constructively with government on a number of policy issues including climate change and emissions reductions. We routinely share information with stakeholders in various forms including hard copy.”

But when asked to comment on meetings, a spokesperson for Luxon said the office has no file trail of the interaction.

“We have been made aware of these meetings and briefing notes via the media and have no record of either on file,” he said. “Stakeholders on all sides of issues request to meet with staff but Cabinet makes its own decisions and did so on this issue to ensure businesses have legal clarity and certainty.

“This Government is removing the possible development of a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted to respond to climate change.”

Follow-up questions were not answered.

In March 2025, Matt Hall of the Environmental Law Initiative filed a sweeping OIA request explicitly tracking any documents, discussions, or meetings concerning the Smith v Fonterra case.

The prime minister’s office responded on May 21, after a 19-working-day extension for “consultations”. The response contained no mention of the June or July 2024 meetings, nor did it include copies of the hand-delivered briefing note.

A similar OIA request by Lawyers for Climate Action NZ did not return the same material.

In response to the latest court disclosures, ELI has called for an Ombudsman inquiry and a solicitor-general review into the handled information.

“Industry lobbying hidden by the prime minister’s office strikes at the heart of transparent government,” Hall, ELI’s director of research and legal, said. “We sought official information about corporate lobbying and received only limited material, so to see this document emerge later in such an important case is deeply troubling.”

He added: “If powerful commercial interests were able to influence the blocking of a major public interest case behind closed doors, the public deserves to know how that happened, who knew, and what else has been withheld.”

Smith also criticised the lack of transparency, pointing out that the defendants had been ordered by the High Court to discover documents relating to their lobby efforts by March 2026. It “paints the picture of a co-ordinated effort to kill a legitimate legal claim before it could be heard properly,” he said.

Smith said he learned about the briefing only after it was disclosed to him following Goldsmith’s announcement about the law change.

“This increasingly looks to me like a cover-up of secret lobbying between the Government and some of the country’s most powerful corporate interests,” Smith said.

“Ordinary New Zealanders do not get private access to the prime minister’s office to discuss shutting down active court proceedings against them.”

The disclosure echoes an incident from July 2024, where primary industry lobby groups similarly drafted specific legislative solutions after receiving unfavourable court rulings.

Following a High Court decision that set aside a pollution discharge consent for the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation scheme, industry bodies, including Beef + Lamb, DairyNZ, and Federated Farmers, submitted a joint letter to Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard.

The letter contained their own preferred statutory amendments to sections 70 and 107 of the Resource Management Act (RMA) to bypass the court’s enforcement of strict environmental bottom lines.

Within weeks, the Government amended the RMA under urgency, creating new clauses that allow councils to permit otherwise prohibited discharges in catchments already degraded by pollution.

Iwi leader Smith launched his case in 2019. In 2024, he was granted permission by the Supreme Court to sue Fonterra and other major dairy and fossil fuel companies.

The hearing was sent back to the High Court and was due to start in April next year.

But the government announced on Tuesday that it would amend legislation to prevent companies from being sued over damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The change will prevent findings of liability in torts (a civil wrong that causes loss or harm) and would apply to current and future cases, halting Smith’s case.