• Last Tuesday, the Government announced it would amend the Climate Change Response Act to prevent courts from finding companies liable in tort for harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The change applies to current and future cases, meaning it will stop, mid-stride, a High Court case that the Supreme Court had already permitted to proceed. It is worth pausing on that sequence of events, because the sequence matters, writes Dr Mawera Karetai

In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that iwi leader and activist Mike Smith could take Fonterra and five other major emitters to court.

His case alleged that these companies, which collectively account for roughly a third of New Zealand’s emissions, had a duty of care to him and to others whose land, livelihoods and cultural interests are being damaged by climate change.

This was not a fringe claim dismissed at the first hurdle. It survived scrutiny at the highest judicial level in the country. A trial date was set for 2027.

Now Parliament has moved to ensure that trial never happens. Not by arguing the case on its merits, but by changing the law so the case cannot be argued at all.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith’s stated reasoning is that the courts are not the right venue for climate change disputes, that tort law is ill-suited to the complexity of the problem, and that ongoing litigation is creating uncertainty for business confidence and investment.

These are not unreasonable points in isolation. Courts do have limits. Parliament does set climate policy. These things are true.

But they are not the whole truth, and the timing and method of this intervention demand scrutiny.

The Government is, in the final months of its term, passing retrospective legislation to extinguish a case it does not like the look of.

The law will not merely shape future behaviour. It will reach back and erase a legal proceeding that a citizen pursued through years of courts, at considerable cost, and which the country’s highest court said deserved to be heard. That is a meaningful distinction from ordinary law-making.

There is also a question of who bears the cost when liability is removed. As one climate change lawyer put it plainly: if major emitters are not responsible for paying for harm caused by their emissions, then who is?

The answer, effectively, is everyone.

Ratepayers and taxpayers absorb costs through infrastructure damage, emergency responses and insurance losses that flow from extreme weather events. The private profits remain with the companies. The public risk is socialised.

This year alone, New Zealand has already declared more extreme weather-related states of emergency than it did across the entirety of 2025.

The connection between emissions, climate change, and those events is not speculative. It is the subject of scientific consensus and, increasingly, of legal argument in courts around the world.

The Government’s position is that Parliament, not the courts, is the right place to address these harms.

But Parliament has chosen not to hold emitters liable. It has chosen, instead, to legislate away the avenue through which a citizen might ask a court to consider whether they should be.

That is a different thing from Parliament governing well.

Democratic systems depend on a separation of functions. Parliaments make law.

Courts interpret it, develop the common law, and provide a forum for individuals to seek remedy against those who have harmed them.

When a government uses its parliamentary majority to shut down a specific case that has already been assessed and approved by the judiciary, it blurs that boundary in a way that should concern anyone, regardless of their views on climate policy.

This is not about whether you believe climate litigation is good policy or bad policy. It is about whether individuals in a democratic society should retain the ability to seek legal remedy for harm.

The government’s amendment says, effectively, that in this category of harm, they cannot. That is a significant curtailment of a basic legal right, introduced quickly, with retrospective effect, to protect named industries from a named case.

Governments are entitled to set frameworks. They are entitled to disagree with legal strategies pursued by activists.

What is harder to justify is reaching into the court system to pull out a specific proceeding that the courts themselves had decided was legitimate.

Mr Smith said this week that the real threat to the dairy and fossil fuel industries was not his lawsuit. It was the droughts, floods and disruptions that climate change would bring to their operations.

He may well be right about that. But his observation should not obscure what has happened here: a citizen pursued a lawful remedy through proper legal channels, reached the highest court, and was told he could proceed.

Then the government changed the rules.

That deserves to be called what it is. Maybe not a dictatorship, albeit close to the line. But definitely a serious and troubling use of legislative power.