The government has ignored international law, the world’s highest court, our own Supreme Court and the science.

There’s a concept in TV called jumping the shark. It’s the moment where a show loses all credibility because it gets so outlandish the audience can no longer suspend disbelief. When script writers, desperate to maintain popularity, do something so spectacularly stupid, they cement their downfall.

This week, the New Zealand government might well have jumped the shark when it announced plans to change the law to ensure no company can be held to account in court for the damage their emissions cause. To any New Zealander. Ever.

Apparently it was scared of what one man had set in motion.

Māori leader Mike Smith, elder of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu, took on seven of this country’s most powerful companies, including Fonterra, Z and Genesis, acting as kaitiaki for his land and sea. When he took legal action in 2019, no global court had yet endorsed the approach. Columbia University called his case “perhaps the biggest climate common law breakthrough” ever. In 2023, the world’s leading climate scientists confirmed for the first time that climate litigation is an effective tool for cutting emissions. In 2024, New Zealand’s own Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Smith’s case deserved its day in court. The trial was set for April 2027.

Last July, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the world’s highest court, ruled unanimously that governments have a legal duty to protect their citizens from the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, this week, in the face of overwhelming global momentum, the New Zealand government decided to change the law, choosing to ignore international law, global scientific consensus, and cutting out our own Supreme Court. No consultation. No debate. Just a quiet announcement it might have hoped we’d miss in a sea of bad environmental decisions.

Smith himself put it plainly: “If Parliament can cancel a live court case, then no legal claim is secure at all, once it becomes politically inconvenient.” 

He’s right. And this isn’t just about climate. 

The first companies the government’s law change will protect – seven of New Zealand’s biggest emitters – are collectively responsible for a third of the country’s emissions, and make billions in combined revenue. Fonterra alone made over $1bn profit last year. Fonterra, Genesis and Z Energy are all members of something brazenly called “the Climate Leaders Coalition”. It lobbied the government.

It’s tempting to assume that in making this decision, the government has done something stupid. But I think it’s much worse than stupidity. It knows the immense harm inaction on climate change is causing. And it simply doesn’t care.

Over the past two years in power the Luxon-led coalition has cancelled dozens of climate policies and plans. It axed the clean car discount and EV sales collapsed from one in five new cars to one in 13. It abandoned plans to price agricultural emissions, even though National campaigned on a pricing system.

The government also reversed the offshore oil and gas exploration ban, making New Zealand the first country in the world to walk away from a commitment to phase out fossil fuels. It gutted climate reporting requirements for big business. It rejected every single recommendation from their own Climate Change Commission on emissions targets. Every one.

The government has attempted to present itself as pragmatic – the grownups in the room – while ignoring scientific reports, global court rulings and the increasing cost to New Zealand livelihoods. The 2023 Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle alone cost the New Zealand economy$9-$14bn. In Treasury’s own words: “These severe weather events are only going to get more frequent and worse. We’re experiencing the best weather we’re going to see in our lifetimes, now.”

The government’s own independent Climate Change Commission confirmed last month: climate impacts are hitting New Zealand sooner and more severely than expected. The Emissions Trading Scheme is failing. All four government carbon auctions in 2025 failed to sell a single unit. The Commission warns it could collapse entirely.

Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says this government is using its “dying breaths” to remove New Zealanders’ right to hold emitters accountable. The courts can’t intervene, it just made sure of that. The only thing that can change this is a new government reversing it.

Mike Smith showed us what one person acting with conviction can do. He nearly had this country’s biggest polluters in a courtroom. So our government changed the law. But this global movement is bigger than one case and it is not stopping.

Christopher Luxon and his friends may be counting on enough confusion, enough cynicism, enough exhaustion for this to slide. They’ve ignored international law, the world’s highest court, our own Supreme Court, their own commission, and the science. They’ve now made sure no New Zealander can ever take a polluter to court.

The question is whether we let them get away with it.