The aristocracy of pull, so long as you're the aristocrat

I hate election campaigns.

I can never tell whether some bit of idiocy is actual proposed policy, or whether a candidate was just reaching into a bag full of words in hope of getting through the next couple minutes of an interview.

I hope it's the latter in this case. Because my gawd.

Pressed on how National would incentivise businesses to ditch fossil fuels, [National Party Climate Spokesperson Simon] Watts said: “On our watch, under a National government, there would be a pretty clear conversation between government and industry. If you’re significantly profitable, then you have a social obligation in order to do what is required in terms of helping this country achieve our emissions [goals].”

On behalf of the country, the government needed to apply “the appropriate pressure to these organisations”. Watts expected businesses putting profit margins ahead of this obligation “to change their view pretty rapidly”. He didn’t specify how he’d apply this pressure as Climate Minister.

We have an Emissions Trading Scheme. It puts a price on carbon. He's talking about the covered sector, because the conversation here is around what a National-led government would do instead of dumb GIDI corporate welfare. 

Within the covered sector, the carbon price encourages companies to make decarbonisation investments that meet the bottom line, and to avoid those that are not cost-effective. That is the point of using a carbon price rather than command-and-control regulation. Businesses are better placed than governments to know which investments make most sense for them, weighing carbon cost alongside a thousand otherwise unknowable considerations. 

And Simon Watts believes that it is right and proper for government to apply 'appropriate pressure' to companies, as part of "a pretty clear conversation between government and industry." If an industry is profitable, it can and should be leaned on by Government to achieve the Government's objectives. 

Isn't it wonderful! Corporatism I mean. Government and Business, in partnership, of a sort. Where Government can apply pressure through numerous discretionary regulatory decisions that could hurt or bankrupt a company if the 'conversation' didn't go the way the government might have wanted. 

All kinds of other desirable objectives could be part of these kinds of conversations. 

Companies could be 'encouraged' to reformulate consumer goods to meet Shane Reti's views on what people should be eating and drinking.

They could be 'nudged' toward fulfilling Simon O'Connor's social views, if he were the relevant minister in an area. Or perhaps Chris Bishop's after a cabinet reshuffle. The 'conversations' would be very different! And businesses would always have to be guessing at just what an incoming Minister might consider to be the appropriate social obligation, if they dared to be profitable. 

All of it will be simply wonderful for productivity. Because the predictability of the rule of law is overrated, relative to having pretty clear conversations about one's social obligations.