Parliament has voted 67 to 53 to bar climate change damages claims against companies, ending a court case that had been running for seven years and was days away from heading towards trial. The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill passed its third reading on Tuesday night, 18 August 2026, with the government parties in support and the opposition against.
The law amends the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to prevent findings of liability in tort for climate change damage or harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions. It applies to future claims and, unusually, to cases already before the courts. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said in a statement released after the vote that businesses would now have certainty about their climate obligations.
“The courts are not the right place to resolve claims of harm from climate change, and tort law is not well-suited to respond to a problem like climate change which involves a range of complex environmental, economic and social factors,” Goldsmith said. “Our response to climate change is best managed by the Government at a national level and not through piece-meal litigation in the courts.”
He said the change would not alter the government’s own responsibilities under the Act, and companies covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme would still have to meet their obligations there.
The case the law stops was brought by Northland iwi leader and climate activist Mike Smith against six large emitters, among them Fonterra, Genesis, Z Energy, New Zealand Steel, Dairy Holdings and BT Mining. Smith sued in public nuisance, negligence and a proposed new duty covering damage to the climate system. The High Court and Court of Appeal struck the claims out, but in February 2024 the Supreme Court unanimously reinstated all of them and sent the case back for trial. That decision is what the new law overrides.
Speaking in the House, Goldsmith said the law confirmed that the role of setting policy on greenhouse gas emissions “sits with the elected government and the parliament”, and argued it was needed to avoid uncertainty while Smith’s case worked through the courts. He said it would not “take existing rights away from Mr. Smith”. “The bill has not altered the law, rather, it will remove the prospect of finding out what the common law might eventually say,” he told MPs.
Labour’s Camilla Belich rejected that. She said that no matter what the minister claimed, “rights certainly will be” removed. “In fact, if they were not to be removed, it is hard to know why this piece of legislation has come with such urgency to this house to be passed to prevent Mr. Smith from following through on those exact rights.” Belich said the government could have simply let the case run its course, and that principles against retrospective lawmaking were under attack.
Green MP Steve Abel said the bill amended legislation “designed explicitly to protect the stability of our atmosphere”, and accused the government of ignoring Ministry of Justice advice and shutting out the party most affected. He said the companies had argued their case in court “and they lost”, then asked Parliament to extinguish the proceeding.
For ACT, Simon Court said his party supported the bill because it settled who writes New Zealand law. “Parliament makes the laws. Courts interpret the laws,” he said. Court argued the case risked producing a parallel and contradictory climate regime, and that activists should not achieve through litigation what they had failed to achieve at the ballot box. He said it was not an attack on Smith or on the judiciary.
New Zealand First MP David Wilson said it was in the public interest not to let what he called a spurious case trigger a run of similar claims, and took issue with Fonterra being described as a polluter that cheated, saying New Zealand dairy farmers were among the most emissions efficient in the world.
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said every part of the bill was “rotten”. “This bill has been designed, without a doubt, to protect the largest corporate emitters” from being held accountable, she said, pointing to briefing documents that reached the Prime Minister’s office from two of the companies Smith was suing.
Those documents have shadowed the bill since May. Court disclosure revealed that in mid 2024 staff from Fonterra and Z Energy hand delivered a printed briefing note to the Prime Minister’s then chief policy adviser, Matt Burgess, and that a copy was sent to his personal email address on 25 June 2024. The note argued that Smith’s case created sovereign risk for international investors and that legislative intervention was critical, and it proposed a two sentence amendment to the Climate Change Response Act. It was not released when the Environmental Law Initiative asked the Prime Minister’s office for material about the case under the Official Information Act.
On 1 July the Chief Ombudsman, John Allen, ruled that the office unreasonably breached the Act. Allen said the documents appeared to be significant to the legislative process that followed, and that he found it surprising the former adviser could not recall what became of them. Burgess told the Ombudsman he had not knowingly destroyed any record and had engaged with the request in good faith. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in early June that the use of private email had “definitely not met the high standard that I have of staffers in the Beehive”, and that his office had no record or recollection of the note. Fonterra said the note went to a private address at the staff member’s request and that this was not consistent with company policy. Z Energy said it stood by the document and that engaging with government on issues of national significance was appropriate.
Smith said Tuesday would be remembered as a “dark day for democracy, the rule of law and climate accountability in Aotearoa New Zealand”. He said Parliament had stepped in after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled his case should go to trial, and that changing the law before that trial could happen “should concern every New Zealander, regardless of where they stand on climate change”.
The bill now goes for Royal assent. With the general election set for 7 November, the question of whether the bar stays on the statute book will sit with whoever forms the next government. If you are still weighing up where the parties stand on questions like this one, our voting tool lets you compare their positions before you cast a vote. We covered the bill’s first reading in July and the Ombudsman complaint over the lobbying note in May.
What do you make of Parliament stopping a court case that was already under way? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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