Friday, April 11, 2008
Young Labour talk - people and planet before profit.
Speech to Young Labour Conference
Gareth Hughes
Nga mihi nui kia kotou. Kia ora. Thanks for inviting me I am Garth Hughes; I am a Young Green and also a candidate for the Green party in Ohariu.
I’m a history student and I love playing ‘what ifs’ - I want to start with a ‘what if favourite’ – what if in 2005 we had seen a Green-Maori-Labour coalition form? In fact, on election night in 2005 friends and I cracked open a bottle bubbly celebrating what looked like a Labour-Green-Maori coalition. It seemed like such a great fit – sure Helen and Tariana had their disagreements, but hey, it would be a Government that would look after people, the planet and tanga te whenua. After all, why would Labour want to buddy up with Peters and Dunne?
What we would have we seen – I’m sure all the Governments talk about sustainability would have been more than just talk; I can imagine Jeanette Fitzsimons as our climate Minister and maybe Pita Sharpels as Maori Affairs Minister. I can imagine the carbon tax would have stayed, and our emissions would be dropping rather than increasing. I can imagine a country that spends its money more wisely and with an eye to the future – I can think of plenty of projects that we could have spent money on with the savings from Transmission Gully or the new Waterview Connection. Like students. It would have been a more-left-of-centre Government that would have scrapped Youth Rates without a fight and who would have raised the minimum wage even more. We would have seen change – not this sort of steady as she goes, status quo, attempt to sneak into a historic 4th term. In 2005 we would have seen the kind of Government that our members thought they were voting for.
Today I want to talk about what real sustainability would look like – what would a Government that put people and planet before profit would look like.
I want to acknowledge all your successes like wiping interest of student loans and banning bottom trawling. I also want say where I think you have gone wrong and how I think you can get on the right track. I want to especially look at climate change as an issue and finally end with a bit of politics, looking towards the election in a few months.
You’ve asked me to challenge you but I want to first acknowledge the positive role played by Young labour on the youth rates campaign, where I worked with some you and also on S59. I don’t know if it’s been you or not, but I totally liked seeing the John Key posters around town. I know you guys are often well in advance of the rest of your party on progressive policy issues.
I want to acknowledge you as individuals – It’s awesome to see so many people keen to get involved in political debate. Politics can be such a dirty word and it’s viewed with such distain by so many people. It’s important young people get involved and get our view points across. 40 years ago it was young people in the US, France, Czechoslovakia and many other countries that took action and changed the direction of the world. Peace issues, environmental issues, the rise of feminism all came about because young people said ‘fuck it’ and did something. I do think its missing somewhat from our generation now, but hey young people are still active on so many causes.
I think young people have more of a role to play in party politics and in parliament. The House of Representatives has an average MP age of 51, - that’s not very representative, and that’s why I’m standing this election.
Maybe I should talk a bit about myself and my motivation.
I work for Greens, as the Climate Change Campaigner – we split our outreach/electoral office hours and spend them on campaigns – our national constituency – so this is my lunch break. I get to work with Jeanette, who is amazing and she is as much of a legend up close as she is on the telly.
I am currently the YG spokesperson and we have an active network in the major campuses across the country. I’m also a part-time post grad student at Victoria, and a member of the Greens@vic who have been exceptionally busy this year.
I have joined the Green Party in 2001, inspired by the ‘99 election campaign, (that I guess I wouldn’t have been half as interesting had of we still had FPP). I first voted in 99 while I was in high school and it was exciting seeing people like Nandor get in to parliament. It wasn’t just old white men making decisions in smoky back rooms, anymore - politics seemed more inclusive. It was people like me talking about issues I cared about. I remember travelling overseas and felling really proud that our parliament had a transgender MP, Muslims, openly gay MPs and most notably a Rastafarian.
I should also add it was great getting rid of Shippley, after having National so long in Power. 9 yeas of privatisations, benefit cuts, the Employment Relations Act, and the superannuation surtax was too much. That National Government still has a lingering bad aftertaste in the mouths of many Green members who couldn’t countenance the idea of a coalition with National. Still however our policy isn’t like in 05 where we said we’d only go with Labour, rather our policy is to look at the policies closer to the election and make up our minds then – like the principled and independent party we are.
In ‘99 one of the best things I think you did was immediately stop native forrest logging – it was a brave and bold decision that demarcated that this Government was going to be different, kind of like Savage’s immediate Christmas bonus to beneficiaries in 1935. However now I wish you could make an equally brave decision and stop coal mining on the West Coast and the destruction of species like Powelliphanta, the rare carnivorous snail that lives no where else. Instead of phasing out coal mining as was the plan when Don Elder took over state-owned Solid Energy, the increase in world coal prices has seen mining take off again and expand, like the new Pike River and expanded Stockton mines. It is the state involved, and the state profiting from selling the coal to China and India, who aren’t facing a price on the carbon emissions.
Now 9 years on - that historic victory has lost a little lustre that I guess that’s a product of age, and a product of Helen’s decision not to be a reforming ball of energy like the forth Labour Government and consume itself, but be a steady as she goes manager. The question for the electors is – have they had enough and want change? Has Labour ran out of ideas, and the electorate, patience? Only time will tell.
My background is firmly within the environmental movement – my only serious jobs have been with Greenpeace whom I first started working for in 2000 and the Green Party. I’ve also been a telemarketer, a barman, a on the street fundraiser, a hospital cleaner, a pamphlet deliver and worked in a supermarket and a fish n chip store. That’s why I was so glad to see the youth minimum wage go up, and youth rates abolished (after the 90 day caveat). I remember feeling personally cheated by Jenny Shipley when I was sweating my ass off pushing supermarket trolleys for like $7. I still feel sorry for the under 16 year olds who can be paid anything.
Since you have invited me here I thought I’d tell you a little bit about the Green Party. At our bedrock is accepting Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the founding document of Aotearoa; and recognising Maori as Tangata Whenua. We have four core principles:
Ecological Wisdom:
The basis of ecological wisdom is that human beings are part of the natural world. This world is finite, therefore unlimited material growth is impossible. Ecological sustainability is paramount.
Social Responsibility:
Unlimited material growth is impossible. Therefore the key to social responsibility is the just distribution of social and natural resources, both locally and globally.
Appropriate Decision-making:
For the implementation of ecological wisdom and social responsibility, decisions will be made directly at the appropriate level by those affected.
Non-Violence:
Non-violent conflict resolution is the process by which ecological wisdom, social responsibility and appropriate decision making will be implemented. This principle applies at all levels.
You could argue we’ve been a force in NZ politics since 1972 with the Values Party but it has been since MMP and breaking the links with the Alliance Party that we’ve come into our own. I think we are a much needed and valuable part of the political landscape, and I hope you agree. I believe we are the natural 3rd force in Parliament and the only long term minor party contender, when the current dear-leader-based minor parties loose their leader and disappear as surely will happen to United, the Progressives and NZ First.
One of the biggest disappointments of MMP, in my opinion has been the continued stranglehold of parliamentary seats by the two big parties – we call them the ‘grey parties’ – Labour and National. The big parties consistently get two thirds or more of the seats in parliament to the smaller parties’ detriment. I would like to see us more like Germany, where there is a more even distribution of seats and not so much a stranglehold. With the Medias focus on a two horse race and a more presidential style of coverage the smaller parties seem to miss out, and I think the public also miss out.
ECOLOGICAL LIMITS
You asked me to challenge you and I think you are missing the biggest shift in political thinking since Communism - the most radical idea in New Zealand politics, in fact probably the most radical idea in current international political debate - It may sound ridiculous because it’s such simple common sense, but it is something that our current economic theory just doesn't acknowledge – that we have only one planet. Our economy assumes that we can achieve infinite growth and dispose of infinite waste on a finite planet.
Thus in the decision making equations used by Cullen, more roads and motorways are good because they provide jobs and increase GDP and by inferred-assumption make us better off. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry about 455,000ha of forestry land is at risk of being converted into meat and dairy. This is nearly seven times the size of Lake Taupo. For both Labour and National this is a great thing – again more jobs, more foreign currency, more profit! But try positively spinning that to someone who can’t swim in a river that their parents did, or to the local iwi who can’t eel there anymore, because its so polluted; or to someone in a developing country, who we say should reduce their emissions but we shouldn’t have to reduce ours because its agricultural based.
The key idea Greens bring to parliament is the concept of a finite planet and the realisation that as individuals and communities are actually changing the planet, our only home. Ever since the industrial revolution 250 years ago we have managed to tap into vast stores of trapped sunlight in the form of fossil fuels and released massive amounts of energy. We have liberated ourselves from manual work and achieved incredible wealth but now we are seeing the natural consequences, the real costs involved of living on a finite world. Climate change, and peak oil, I believe will be the two major challenges of my generation.
Stern called climate change the biggest market failure in history and until we start to treat our planet as if it was our only one, we are going to continue to make these crazy and short sighted decisions. Until we start internalising the externalities like pollution or environmental damage or biodiversity loses we are going to keep making the same dumb decisions. We are going to keep putting profit before the planet.
For example if agriculture wasn’t getting a free ride off the Labour Government and having its international carbon costs covered by the taxpayer in the Emissions Trading Scheme, and had to pay the costs of its damage on the climate – a farmer weighing up deciding to cut down a forest, sequestering and storing carbon to intensively farm methane and nitrous oxide producing dairy cows he’d think twice. At the moment the only question is the price of lumber and the price of dairy and the decisions made are to our grandchildren’s detriment.
The only party that acknowledges that and its consequences is the Greens. And I welcome this chance to talk to you about it – because until you actually get this and value the long term well being of the planet – its soils, and rivers and species - above short term profit we are going to keep getting ourselves further into ecological mess – we are going to keep loosing species at a rate of 150-200 a day, and our fisheries are going to continue to collapse, and more and more people are going to loose access to clean drinking water. Until we value ecosystem services, until we tax ‘bads’ and rewards ‘goods’, and until we start living as if we mean to stay on the planet no amount of taking about ‘carbon neutrality’ – even saying it 36 times in one speech, no amount of sustainability aspirations, or empty targets like 50% by 2050 is going to get us there.
So what another about another ‘what if’ – The 2011 rugby world cup in New Zealand.
Let’s fast forward for a moment to the Rugby World Cup 2011 and imagine what’s happened under another Labour Government without the Greens.
Visitors from across the world will be deciding whether to fly all the way to New Zealand to attend, with many of them opting to stay at home and watch it on television rather than increase their carbon footprint. Others may be working to offset their emissions – many paying extra money, or cutting emissions elsewhere to account for their footprint.
Many will be looking to the New Zealand Government to reassure them that we’re
serious about climate change. We may have to make a special bid in climate change
terms to get people to travel here. Our “Clean Green” image will be put in the
spotlight.
The visitors will arrive in New Zealand, only to find that nobody except the major electricity companies and stationery energy is paying a price on carbon. Our pioneering Emissions Trading System doesn’t even include agriculture yet, even though it makes up half of our emissions and a good chunk in the growth of emissions and is one of the major reasons why we are failing our Kyoto targets so miserably.
Arriving at Auckland Airport they’ll discover they can’t simply catch a train to town but instead they’ll have to pile into a bus or mini van and then experience Auckland’s notorious motorway. They’ll discover all of NZs Transport systems are still heavily car-reliant, with hardly any public transport options in the towns and none at all in smaller centres. .
They may find new roads, motorways and tunnels being built in Auckland and Wellington and even more cars on them, even though petrol is more than $2 a litre. They’ll ask about the suburban trains, and find one tiny train line still serves the whole of Auckland and it still runs on dirty diesel power. They might decide to limit their carbon footprint and take the train from Auckland to Wellington on the Overlander and they’ll be shocked to find it doesn’t actually travel on that day, or if it does it take a numbing 11 hours. God help them if the try to catch one in the South Island.
The houses the visitors have rented from the locals (at inflated prices) have little
insulation and hot water is still largely heated through antiquated immersion heater
systems. There’s no such thing as double-glazing in most of the country, and few solar hot water heating systems. The public has no idea about what they should be doing, due to a lack of education.
The Rugby World Cup stadium in Mt Eden has been expanded on a shoestring budget, with no consideration given to its carbon footprint. The food provided is still freighted by road around the country and imported from overseas. There has been an effort to make the lightbulbs energy efficient but there’s no sign of solar panels on the roof and It is powered directly from the grid.
The visitors are stunned that in 2011 they’ve arrived in a country where people are still wasting energy, driving their cars too much and who try and make excuse about their agricultural emissions because they are biological, even though in reality they are our antipodean versions of factories.
Their vision of our Clean and Green country is shattered. The Rugby World Cup shows up New Zealand as an international environmental embarrassment.
However, it is still 3 years away and even though that isn’t much time left, we can still turn the world cup into a showcase, and stand proudly on the world stage.
So what is going to happen in 2008? – is this the change election?
It has definitely been an interesting year for politics junkies like myself with the Australian elections, Pakistani elections, Zimbabweam elections – even Bhutans first elections have been interesting, but most of all its been great to watch the US Presidential election campaign.
It has been fascinating watching the growth of Obamamania in the US and his mantra of change seems to have struck a chord amongst Democratic voters. In NZ the big parties would like to claim some of this ground – Labour with their recent conversion to sustainability and National with their message 'its time to change the Government'. However as an impartial observer I can’t seem to see much difference between them – they both of them really stand for much of the same – in fact, the differences between them this election may be the smallest ever.
While Obama draws huge crowds of disillusioned voters with his message of changing the way politics is done. In New Zealand most of our MPs are raving on about the latest scapegoat – Asians, or young people. Painting a picture of hoards of P-ravaged petty thugs and knife-wielding killers who will as soon tag your corpse as take your purse, this strategy is as despicable as Brash's Maori-bashing 3 years ago. The solutions are as equally short-sighted - either high school till 18 or military-style boot camps. Keys $50 criminal tax is simply a bad joke. Its like he’s making up policy from a game of monopoly. It really draws attention to the fact most young people can’t afford a house even on Old Kent Road or White Chapel, yet Key owns motels on Mayfair and Park Lane. It really does seem to be ambulance at the bottom of the cliff sort of stuff.
No wonder Kiwi kids are disillusioned with politics – the only change they see coming out of Wellington is tax cuts for the wealthy, punitive attacks on young people and more demagoguery. What we need is a change in the climate of politics.
I have plenty more criticism of the Government but to start with I’d like to acknowledge the positive changes I’ve seen over the last few years. There has been some great legislation come out of Parliament like KiwiSaver, interest free student loans, paid parental leave, Maori TV, Working For Families, stopping native forest logging. There’s also been some great Green legislation that has been enacted with Government support – the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act, setting up EECA; Nandor’s waste Bill, which I would like to touch on in a bit of depth; protecting our kids from Section 59, the abolition of youth rates, the mothers with babies in prison Bill along with our support level agreements with the Government on energy efficiency, Buy Kiwi Made and organics.
I know some commentators have challenged Labours track record on social change, saying you went too far too soon, and there are definitely politically strategic arguments both ways, but I am glad that Labour could stick up for homosexual law reform, banning cigarettes in bars and cafes, prostitution reform and controversially Section 59.
Progressive social reform should be the hallmark of a good Labour government – Savage introduced the most sweeping social changes since Seddon introducing the Social Security Bill; Kirk got us out of Vietnam and Lange stood up against the might of the US and proclaimed “We are to be made an example of; we are to be ostracised and anathematised until we are compelled to resume our seat in the dress circle of the nuclear theatre.”
I’m really glad that Helen did decide to make a stand on S59 and damn the polls. I’m glad she came to rest on the right side of the debate. I don’t know what the internal processes were with the Labour Caucus. I know I’ve been learning lately in my class on the principle of primus inter pares – “first amongst equals” that all in Cabinet are theoretically equal. But in reality the PM has considerable power in Government as Lange demonstrated when he unilaterally derailed the Rogernomics experiment of flat taxes, and I’m stoked that she then used her weight to do the right thing. I think this decision will be vindicated by future generations.
Another controversial piece of legislation currently causing all sorts of troubles is the Electoral Finance Act, and as someone who is standing it sure is a dogs breakfast and confusing the hell out of everyone. However in select committee I made a submission supporting the Bill, not necessarily what it was – because it was much worse in its first draft, but what it was it stood for. We need to protect the principle of one person one vote not one dollar one vote. We have to avoid the nefarious interests of big business and shadowy overseas donors looking to buy and influence our elections. We’ve seen it first hand in the case of the Exclusive Brethren, and read all about it in Nickys book. Sure it is a hard-to-implement law and it will probably take an election or two, and a number of court cases to reach a sort-of established understanding or equilibrium but we needed it. It’s just is a pity that the legislation was rolled out in such a fashion that the opposition, not to mention the Herald, managed to swing the argument around, and those who should have been shamed, actually rallied against it as an issue of freedom of speech – I guess they were paying attention to Crosby and Textors advise to attack your opponents strengths. I only wished Labour had kept the state funding of elections element.
Let’s talk trash. Good on the Government for supporting our waste legislation going through the house. Waste is an important environmental issue, and if there were international awards for producing it – we’d be winners. Every day New Zealanders throw out ten million kilograms of it into landfills or burn it; producing a massive problem that has often been considered, ‘out of sight out of mind.’ The problem is not just where it goes – but also how much of it we are producing. There are currently ninety landfill sites operating in New Zealand, taking a total of over 3 million tonnes of our rubbish each year.
Burying our waste is not a long term solution and we can’t keep hoping it will go away. It won’t. Looking at natural ecosystems there is no such thing as waste – everything gets recycled, even us. The Bill contains a raft of changes intended to reduce the amount of waste created as well as promoting reuse and recycling whenever possible. Landfill waste levies would be introduced to help pay for a variety of measures including public education about recycling. Its great to see the first ever waste legislation going through our parliament.
An issue I have been especially passionate about since seeing it close up is bottom trawling. In 2005 I sailed into the Tasman Sea on the Rainbow Warrior to do what the NZ Government wouldn’t do and actually stop Kiwi bottom trawlers from wreaking their havoc on the ocean floor. Bottom trawling involves dragging large nets the size of football fields across the ocean floor to hunt for species like orange roughy. The problem is it also gets everything else down there. Out in the ocean I saw fishers throwing overboard old man-sized corals that had grown undisturbed in the depths for 500 years or more. In all, we caught them throwing ten fish overboard – well actually they were throwing some of them at us – along with potatoes, which they actually built a mortar to shoot us with, fire hoses and insults – it really was surreal to be told in the middle of the ocean to ‘get a real job.’ From just these ten fish – out of the tonnes one ship would catch a day – scientists discovered two new specials of fish. We were destroying the ocean floor and we didn’t even know what was down there.
Thanks to the work by Greenpeace, the Green Party and other NGOs enough pressure was placed on our Government to support ‘essentially’ a ban on bottom trawling in international waters. I sleep a little bit better knowing that the gorgonian’s, blobfishes, and all the other millions of fish we now nothing about are safe – and we can thank the Government for finally doing what was right.
However how we are treating our inshore fisheries is another question –for example in one fishery zone, orange roughy numbers hadve crashed to 3% their original levels. Our continued allowance of shark finning of which we kill an estimated 30-50 thousand annually is a shameful blot on our record. Clearly Anderton is failing in this area, failing to stick up against the profit demands of fishers.
Yesterday we reached the unenviable milestone of $10b student debt. The milestone is more like a millstone around students necks. As it has been pointed out - $10 billion buys a lot of stadiums but it also buy a lot public transport improvements or reforestation projects or hip operations. The fact is, this much debt is unsustainable for New Zealand and what we are in effect producing is a generation of debt-ridden graduates who can't afford to buy a house, who delay having a family and many who feel they have to leave offshore. Around half a million Kiwis now have student loan debts. I have a $30,000 debt and its like an education tax that comes out of my pay check and it really means I can’t afford to buy a house for my wife and baby. Accommodation, transport, and food costs are all increasing and adding an extra burden onto student's already sagging shoulders. What's worse is that this has prevented some people from obtaining tertiary education.
We need to value our students and introduce a universal allowance - students shouldn't be borrowing to live. I’d be keen to know what Young labours tertiary education policies are.
National are making noises about a brain drain but they refuse to acknowledge that some debt ridden students are fleeing the country to escape it's burden not just the over-taxing-totalitarian-nanny-state that they would paint the Government. In 2005 Labour introduced bold policy on student loans that probably saved the election, this year I hope you may also be considering a universal student allowance to pull out in the last weeks of the campaign.
Another topical issue I can’t ignore, even though the Government is trying to - is Tibet, Darfur and human, democratic and workers rights in China. I know the Government is chuffed by the FTA with China. Once again it is putting profits above environmental and social considerations. Goff can try and avoid the moral hurdles and make arguments about the positive impact we’ll have on China…maybe…eventually, but that argument didn’t cut it with South Africa under apartheid – we are not signing this FTA to help the Chinese workers, or help China reduce its skyrocketing emissions with clean technology, we aren’t even helping the oppressed people of Tibet, whom we shamefully wouldn’t openly meet with their spiritual leader.
It’s not about democratisation. It is about, as Russel Norman puts it ‘offering the Chinese Government respectability on the World stage by associating with us - a progressive liberal democracy with a proud heritage, in return for selling more milk.
We are selling out so that we can sell more of our stuff to China. The trade deal does not eliminate non-tariff barriers to fair trade - things like forced prison labour, child labour, sweatshop conditions, a ban on independent unions and poor environmental protections. These elements of authoritarian capitalism give Chinese business an unfair advantage over New Zealand businesses and will result in further job losses in New Zealand as tariffs fall.
One hundred years ago this year, a group of miners broke the law and striked for 3 months at Blackball, on the West Coast for an extra 15 minutes lunch time and out of the conflict evolved the Federation of Labour and eventually the Labour Party. However 100 years on we are selling our workers down the Yangze with a FTA agreement with China and still valuing profit over people.
However after 9 years of a Labour Government our social statistics are still dire. We are seeing a growing gap between rich and poor. We are seeing kids grow up in poverty and in cycles of violence. Just this morning we heard 20,000 kids are missing breakfast and its optimistic to think its because of dieting as Parakura Horomia suggests. The decline in unemployment should be lauded widely and is a proud achievement and it is having an effect on wage increases – to John Key’s dismay, but still we need the minimum wage to be lifted to at least $15 an hour immediately. Sue Bradford says it best – “The ERA should be overhauled, including strengthening the ability to use multi employer collective bargaining and agreements and to deal more strongly with freeloading. Workers should have the right to strike legally on matters of political, economic and environmental significance. Our welfare system should be completely restructured so that benefits are enough to live on, and so that welfare is administered in a much fairer, simpler and in fact cheaper way than it is at present.:
That leads me to my final point – my passion – saving the world.
When Helen Clark opened Parliament, the year-before-last she used the phrase ‘carbon neutrality’ 36 times in one speech. Now 4 months into the first Kyoto commitment period our emissions are increasing and are no where near neutral – whatever that means. Unfortunately what we are seeing is climate inaction and the 100% pure lie.
Almost everyone now agrees that humans are changing the climate through activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation and intensive agriculture and this is warming the planet. The effects of climate change are going to impact most of all on the people who are the least responsible - on the poorest and most marginalised people.
The scientists are saying we have little time left to avoid catastrophic run-away climate change yet in New Zealand we are failing our Kyoto targets dismally and have increased our greenhouse gas emissions 25% above 1990 levels. The new Emissions Trading Scheme while having some elements such as a price on carbon that the Greens campaigned for, still has major flaws such as agriculture being subsided by the taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the exclusion of export coal and fugitive coal emissions. The Government is still on a motorway building binge and new coal mines are opening. The Green Party says we need to act urgently to kick the carbon habit.
The Greens believe we owe it to our children and grandchildren to act now, and if all countries work together we can deal with the challenge but also make our air and water cleaner, homes warmer and drier, public transport more reliable and frequent, heavy freight on the rail not the roads. There will be more forest, less flooding and slips, more wildlife. Our economy will be smarter rather than just bigger, and our international reputation will be a major asset.
Our economy is under severe threat from the effects of climate change. I won’t bore you with the predictions of changing weather patterns impacting on agricultural productivity, or an increase in floods and droughts and other extreme weather events; or biodiversity loses, or threats from introduced pests and diseases, or of sea level rise but our economy has to adapt to a world that runs an economy as if the climate mattered.
We are a nation that mostly makes our living growing grass – selling it off as meat and dairy and hosting people to come see our grass…and mountains….and beaches. We ship a whole lot of basic commodities from a large distance and fly in a whole lot of people for a relatively short time also from a very large distance. Already our products are under attack in the UK for our air-miles, even if they are marginally more efficient. It is a simple and convincing argument ‘boycott NZ products – it obviously has come a very long way.’ The same could be true here, but because the Labour Government put meat industry lobbying above the interests of its peoples and killed our Country of Origin Labelling Bill, you don’t really now where much of our supermarket products come from. Unless we can prove our climate credentials internationally and find our ways to reduce agricultural emissions we will be a target.
How are we dealing with these long term economic challenges? The workers’ traditional ally, the Labour Party, seems almost completely stuck in an economic mindset that was first embraced by Roger Douglas and has been entrenched as mainstream thinking in this country ever since, in which the success of the economy is judged by a narrow set of indicators that have more to do with the rate of profit being made by a handful of financial institutions than the well-being of ordinary Kiwis. In New Zealand we have a few sacred cows and dairy is one of them. Fonterra’s model is producing more - infinite growth – it is 4% compound growth which is unsustainable and frankly frightening for our environment.
So what does the Government need to do:
Urgent action – start reducing emissions and protecting forests sinks NOW
Polluter pays – those who produce greenhouse emissions should be responsible for them
A price on greenhouse emissions – we need a price on carbon now across the whole economy to make the clean alternatives cheaper and fossil fuels dearer
Fairness – all sectors of the economy must face this price with no free-loaders – but those with the most options should move fastest
Simplicity – we can’t spend the next five years designing a detailed, complicated emissions trading policy
Internationalism – the NZ price on carbon should be linked with the international price under Kyoto, which NZ will have to pay in 2012 for the increase in our emissions above 1990 levels
Future-focussed – the system we design now must leave us in a better position to cut emissions further in the next Kyoto period, after 2012
Social justice – there must be government programmes to help those who will suffer hardship when energy prices rise.
Opportunities for businesses – ‘greenwash’ isn’t one of them
I am not going to apologise for being partisan on this issue and I think the Greens have numerous achievements to highlight, even though we haven’t been in Government. It was a Green private member bill that established EECA and Jeanette’s work as spokesperson that has seen massive energy savings and support go to households and businesses. The Greens have led campaigns to save the Overlander train and Wellington’s electric trolley buses. We’ve started the process the electrify Auckland’s rail network and we convinced the Government to buy back the rail network. We were the first to raise the issue peak oil in the house and have spoken the most about climate change in Parliament.
I think Labour could have reduced emissions if Jeanette was the Minister for Climate Change and I think the latest Shape poll, shows that’s what voters want – 82% of Kiwis think climate change is an urgent problem or a problem now (up from 73% a year ago) and 56% of Kiwis want NZ to become a global leader. Asked which major parties is best to manage climate change, the results were fairly close Labour 32%, National 32% and don’t knows 35%, whereas when asked for ‘which preferred coalition scenarios would best manage climate change’ the results were clear – respondents wanted Greens in either a Labour or National Government (33% to labour-Green and 23% to National-Green). The message is ‘voters want a Green voice in Government to place the planet before profit.’
You should ask your MPs if they will pay to offset the carbon from their flights. Or better yet convince the speaker to compulsorily measure and offset – hey, and why’ll we’re at it, why doesn’t Parliament go Green like the Reichstag and be powered by solar energy?
POLITICS
So there is going to be an election in a few months time and I wouldn’t know where to bet my money. If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said Labour was dead in the water, but now I’m not so sure. Key doesn’t look as impenetrable as before and the spectre of Douglas sitting around the Cabinet table is terrifying to many.
I do know how ever if you are going to win a historic forth term you probably are going to need the Greens. I personally like the idea of saving a Labour Government
because I hate the idea of John Key as my Prime Minister, but more especially the likes of Brownless, Sowry, and Nick Smith becoming Ministers. I hope the Greens hold the balance of power and can be a powerful force in a Labour Government. I hope we get at least ten percent so I have a chance of getting in. We’ve shown we can do a lot with 6 MPs –imagine 12! I have to say we were hurt at the last election by Labour switching to the UF and NZF, and I know the numbers weren’t good enough from us, but I really wished the champagne I drank on election night 2005 for a Green-Maori-Labour Government wasn’t in vain. Can we work together? To quote Jeanette “We will, however, be asking a high price of our co-operation. Because this planet is worth a high price. Because a decent future for our children and grandchildren is worth a high price. Our price is real action, not greenwash.”
What is my advice to Labour? It is to go back to the past for inspiration. I like what Russel says about Michael Joseph Savage, he said he “…had the courage and determination to challenge the international economic orthodoxy in order to overcome the social crisis of the Great Depression. He did not abolish the market but changed the way it worked to make it socially sustainable. They did not abolish the market system, but they placed rules on it and replaced dog eat dog with opportunities for underdogs. They created a world in which people like John Key could gain access to decent affordable housing, health and education so that he had the opportunity to follow his dreams, whatever one may think of the morality of currency trading and financial speculation.” They put people before profit.
So in summary I don’t have a clue what is going to happen in 2008 but I hope Helen is still PM or maybe Shane Jones, or better still, Sonny Thomas.
What Labour needs is action - not just rhetoric but action. Real change in 2008 would see tertiary students valued – and paid a fair universal allowance, the environment protected from the likes of more cows, cars and coal; New Zealand kicking the carbon habit and seriously addressing climate change; and more GE-free, healthy, organic food.
Thanks very much.
Gareth Hughes
Nga mihi nui kia kotou. Kia ora. Thanks for inviting me I am Garth Hughes; I am a Young Green and also a candidate for the Green party in Ohariu.
I’m a history student and I love playing ‘what ifs’ - I want to start with a ‘what if favourite’ – what if in 2005 we had seen a Green-Maori-Labour coalition form? In fact, on election night in 2005 friends and I cracked open a bottle bubbly celebrating what looked like a Labour-Green-Maori coalition. It seemed like such a great fit – sure Helen and Tariana had their disagreements, but hey, it would be a Government that would look after people, the planet and tanga te whenua. After all, why would Labour want to buddy up with Peters and Dunne?
What we would have we seen – I’m sure all the Governments talk about sustainability would have been more than just talk; I can imagine Jeanette Fitzsimons as our climate Minister and maybe Pita Sharpels as Maori Affairs Minister. I can imagine the carbon tax would have stayed, and our emissions would be dropping rather than increasing. I can imagine a country that spends its money more wisely and with an eye to the future – I can think of plenty of projects that we could have spent money on with the savings from Transmission Gully or the new Waterview Connection. Like students. It would have been a more-left-of-centre Government that would have scrapped Youth Rates without a fight and who would have raised the minimum wage even more. We would have seen change – not this sort of steady as she goes, status quo, attempt to sneak into a historic 4th term. In 2005 we would have seen the kind of Government that our members thought they were voting for.
Today I want to talk about what real sustainability would look like – what would a Government that put people and planet before profit would look like.
I want to acknowledge all your successes like wiping interest of student loans and banning bottom trawling. I also want say where I think you have gone wrong and how I think you can get on the right track. I want to especially look at climate change as an issue and finally end with a bit of politics, looking towards the election in a few months.
You’ve asked me to challenge you but I want to first acknowledge the positive role played by Young labour on the youth rates campaign, where I worked with some you and also on S59. I don’t know if it’s been you or not, but I totally liked seeing the John Key posters around town. I know you guys are often well in advance of the rest of your party on progressive policy issues.
I want to acknowledge you as individuals – It’s awesome to see so many people keen to get involved in political debate. Politics can be such a dirty word and it’s viewed with such distain by so many people. It’s important young people get involved and get our view points across. 40 years ago it was young people in the US, France, Czechoslovakia and many other countries that took action and changed the direction of the world. Peace issues, environmental issues, the rise of feminism all came about because young people said ‘fuck it’ and did something. I do think its missing somewhat from our generation now, but hey young people are still active on so many causes.
I think young people have more of a role to play in party politics and in parliament. The House of Representatives has an average MP age of 51, - that’s not very representative, and that’s why I’m standing this election.
Maybe I should talk a bit about myself and my motivation.
I work for Greens, as the Climate Change Campaigner – we split our outreach/electoral office hours and spend them on campaigns – our national constituency – so this is my lunch break. I get to work with Jeanette, who is amazing and she is as much of a legend up close as she is on the telly.
I am currently the YG spokesperson and we have an active network in the major campuses across the country. I’m also a part-time post grad student at Victoria, and a member of the Greens@vic who have been exceptionally busy this year.
I have joined the Green Party in 2001, inspired by the ‘99 election campaign, (that I guess I wouldn’t have been half as interesting had of we still had FPP). I first voted in 99 while I was in high school and it was exciting seeing people like Nandor get in to parliament. It wasn’t just old white men making decisions in smoky back rooms, anymore - politics seemed more inclusive. It was people like me talking about issues I cared about. I remember travelling overseas and felling really proud that our parliament had a transgender MP, Muslims, openly gay MPs and most notably a Rastafarian.
I should also add it was great getting rid of Shippley, after having National so long in Power. 9 yeas of privatisations, benefit cuts, the Employment Relations Act, and the superannuation surtax was too much. That National Government still has a lingering bad aftertaste in the mouths of many Green members who couldn’t countenance the idea of a coalition with National. Still however our policy isn’t like in 05 where we said we’d only go with Labour, rather our policy is to look at the policies closer to the election and make up our minds then – like the principled and independent party we are.
In ‘99 one of the best things I think you did was immediately stop native forrest logging – it was a brave and bold decision that demarcated that this Government was going to be different, kind of like Savage’s immediate Christmas bonus to beneficiaries in 1935. However now I wish you could make an equally brave decision and stop coal mining on the West Coast and the destruction of species like Powelliphanta, the rare carnivorous snail that lives no where else. Instead of phasing out coal mining as was the plan when Don Elder took over state-owned Solid Energy, the increase in world coal prices has seen mining take off again and expand, like the new Pike River and expanded Stockton mines. It is the state involved, and the state profiting from selling the coal to China and India, who aren’t facing a price on the carbon emissions.
Now 9 years on - that historic victory has lost a little lustre that I guess that’s a product of age, and a product of Helen’s decision not to be a reforming ball of energy like the forth Labour Government and consume itself, but be a steady as she goes manager. The question for the electors is – have they had enough and want change? Has Labour ran out of ideas, and the electorate, patience? Only time will tell.
My background is firmly within the environmental movement – my only serious jobs have been with Greenpeace whom I first started working for in 2000 and the Green Party. I’ve also been a telemarketer, a barman, a on the street fundraiser, a hospital cleaner, a pamphlet deliver and worked in a supermarket and a fish n chip store. That’s why I was so glad to see the youth minimum wage go up, and youth rates abolished (after the 90 day caveat). I remember feeling personally cheated by Jenny Shipley when I was sweating my ass off pushing supermarket trolleys for like $7. I still feel sorry for the under 16 year olds who can be paid anything.
Since you have invited me here I thought I’d tell you a little bit about the Green Party. At our bedrock is accepting Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the founding document of Aotearoa; and recognising Maori as Tangata Whenua. We have four core principles:
Ecological Wisdom:
The basis of ecological wisdom is that human beings are part of the natural world. This world is finite, therefore unlimited material growth is impossible. Ecological sustainability is paramount.
Social Responsibility:
Unlimited material growth is impossible. Therefore the key to social responsibility is the just distribution of social and natural resources, both locally and globally.
Appropriate Decision-making:
For the implementation of ecological wisdom and social responsibility, decisions will be made directly at the appropriate level by those affected.
Non-Violence:
Non-violent conflict resolution is the process by which ecological wisdom, social responsibility and appropriate decision making will be implemented. This principle applies at all levels.
You could argue we’ve been a force in NZ politics since 1972 with the Values Party but it has been since MMP and breaking the links with the Alliance Party that we’ve come into our own. I think we are a much needed and valuable part of the political landscape, and I hope you agree. I believe we are the natural 3rd force in Parliament and the only long term minor party contender, when the current dear-leader-based minor parties loose their leader and disappear as surely will happen to United, the Progressives and NZ First.
One of the biggest disappointments of MMP, in my opinion has been the continued stranglehold of parliamentary seats by the two big parties – we call them the ‘grey parties’ – Labour and National. The big parties consistently get two thirds or more of the seats in parliament to the smaller parties’ detriment. I would like to see us more like Germany, where there is a more even distribution of seats and not so much a stranglehold. With the Medias focus on a two horse race and a more presidential style of coverage the smaller parties seem to miss out, and I think the public also miss out.
ECOLOGICAL LIMITS
You asked me to challenge you and I think you are missing the biggest shift in political thinking since Communism - the most radical idea in New Zealand politics, in fact probably the most radical idea in current international political debate - It may sound ridiculous because it’s such simple common sense, but it is something that our current economic theory just doesn't acknowledge – that we have only one planet. Our economy assumes that we can achieve infinite growth and dispose of infinite waste on a finite planet.
Thus in the decision making equations used by Cullen, more roads and motorways are good because they provide jobs and increase GDP and by inferred-assumption make us better off. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry about 455,000ha of forestry land is at risk of being converted into meat and dairy. This is nearly seven times the size of Lake Taupo. For both Labour and National this is a great thing – again more jobs, more foreign currency, more profit! But try positively spinning that to someone who can’t swim in a river that their parents did, or to the local iwi who can’t eel there anymore, because its so polluted; or to someone in a developing country, who we say should reduce their emissions but we shouldn’t have to reduce ours because its agricultural based.
The key idea Greens bring to parliament is the concept of a finite planet and the realisation that as individuals and communities are actually changing the planet, our only home. Ever since the industrial revolution 250 years ago we have managed to tap into vast stores of trapped sunlight in the form of fossil fuels and released massive amounts of energy. We have liberated ourselves from manual work and achieved incredible wealth but now we are seeing the natural consequences, the real costs involved of living on a finite world. Climate change, and peak oil, I believe will be the two major challenges of my generation.
Stern called climate change the biggest market failure in history and until we start to treat our planet as if it was our only one, we are going to continue to make these crazy and short sighted decisions. Until we start internalising the externalities like pollution or environmental damage or biodiversity loses we are going to keep making the same dumb decisions. We are going to keep putting profit before the planet.
For example if agriculture wasn’t getting a free ride off the Labour Government and having its international carbon costs covered by the taxpayer in the Emissions Trading Scheme, and had to pay the costs of its damage on the climate – a farmer weighing up deciding to cut down a forest, sequestering and storing carbon to intensively farm methane and nitrous oxide producing dairy cows he’d think twice. At the moment the only question is the price of lumber and the price of dairy and the decisions made are to our grandchildren’s detriment.
The only party that acknowledges that and its consequences is the Greens. And I welcome this chance to talk to you about it – because until you actually get this and value the long term well being of the planet – its soils, and rivers and species - above short term profit we are going to keep getting ourselves further into ecological mess – we are going to keep loosing species at a rate of 150-200 a day, and our fisheries are going to continue to collapse, and more and more people are going to loose access to clean drinking water. Until we value ecosystem services, until we tax ‘bads’ and rewards ‘goods’, and until we start living as if we mean to stay on the planet no amount of taking about ‘carbon neutrality’ – even saying it 36 times in one speech, no amount of sustainability aspirations, or empty targets like 50% by 2050 is going to get us there.
So what another about another ‘what if’ – The 2011 rugby world cup in New Zealand.
Let’s fast forward for a moment to the Rugby World Cup 2011 and imagine what’s happened under another Labour Government without the Greens.
Visitors from across the world will be deciding whether to fly all the way to New Zealand to attend, with many of them opting to stay at home and watch it on television rather than increase their carbon footprint. Others may be working to offset their emissions – many paying extra money, or cutting emissions elsewhere to account for their footprint.
Many will be looking to the New Zealand Government to reassure them that we’re
serious about climate change. We may have to make a special bid in climate change
terms to get people to travel here. Our “Clean Green” image will be put in the
spotlight.
The visitors will arrive in New Zealand, only to find that nobody except the major electricity companies and stationery energy is paying a price on carbon. Our pioneering Emissions Trading System doesn’t even include agriculture yet, even though it makes up half of our emissions and a good chunk in the growth of emissions and is one of the major reasons why we are failing our Kyoto targets so miserably.
Arriving at Auckland Airport they’ll discover they can’t simply catch a train to town but instead they’ll have to pile into a bus or mini van and then experience Auckland’s notorious motorway. They’ll discover all of NZs Transport systems are still heavily car-reliant, with hardly any public transport options in the towns and none at all in smaller centres. .
They may find new roads, motorways and tunnels being built in Auckland and Wellington and even more cars on them, even though petrol is more than $2 a litre. They’ll ask about the suburban trains, and find one tiny train line still serves the whole of Auckland and it still runs on dirty diesel power. They might decide to limit their carbon footprint and take the train from Auckland to Wellington on the Overlander and they’ll be shocked to find it doesn’t actually travel on that day, or if it does it take a numbing 11 hours. God help them if the try to catch one in the South Island.
The houses the visitors have rented from the locals (at inflated prices) have little
insulation and hot water is still largely heated through antiquated immersion heater
systems. There’s no such thing as double-glazing in most of the country, and few solar hot water heating systems. The public has no idea about what they should be doing, due to a lack of education.
The Rugby World Cup stadium in Mt Eden has been expanded on a shoestring budget, with no consideration given to its carbon footprint. The food provided is still freighted by road around the country and imported from overseas. There has been an effort to make the lightbulbs energy efficient but there’s no sign of solar panels on the roof and It is powered directly from the grid.
The visitors are stunned that in 2011 they’ve arrived in a country where people are still wasting energy, driving their cars too much and who try and make excuse about their agricultural emissions because they are biological, even though in reality they are our antipodean versions of factories.
Their vision of our Clean and Green country is shattered. The Rugby World Cup shows up New Zealand as an international environmental embarrassment.
However, it is still 3 years away and even though that isn’t much time left, we can still turn the world cup into a showcase, and stand proudly on the world stage.
So what is going to happen in 2008? – is this the change election?
It has definitely been an interesting year for politics junkies like myself with the Australian elections, Pakistani elections, Zimbabweam elections – even Bhutans first elections have been interesting, but most of all its been great to watch the US Presidential election campaign.
It has been fascinating watching the growth of Obamamania in the US and his mantra of change seems to have struck a chord amongst Democratic voters. In NZ the big parties would like to claim some of this ground – Labour with their recent conversion to sustainability and National with their message 'its time to change the Government'. However as an impartial observer I can’t seem to see much difference between them – they both of them really stand for much of the same – in fact, the differences between them this election may be the smallest ever.
While Obama draws huge crowds of disillusioned voters with his message of changing the way politics is done. In New Zealand most of our MPs are raving on about the latest scapegoat – Asians, or young people. Painting a picture of hoards of P-ravaged petty thugs and knife-wielding killers who will as soon tag your corpse as take your purse, this strategy is as despicable as Brash's Maori-bashing 3 years ago. The solutions are as equally short-sighted - either high school till 18 or military-style boot camps. Keys $50 criminal tax is simply a bad joke. Its like he’s making up policy from a game of monopoly. It really draws attention to the fact most young people can’t afford a house even on Old Kent Road or White Chapel, yet Key owns motels on Mayfair and Park Lane. It really does seem to be ambulance at the bottom of the cliff sort of stuff.
No wonder Kiwi kids are disillusioned with politics – the only change they see coming out of Wellington is tax cuts for the wealthy, punitive attacks on young people and more demagoguery. What we need is a change in the climate of politics.
I have plenty more criticism of the Government but to start with I’d like to acknowledge the positive changes I’ve seen over the last few years. There has been some great legislation come out of Parliament like KiwiSaver, interest free student loans, paid parental leave, Maori TV, Working For Families, stopping native forest logging. There’s also been some great Green legislation that has been enacted with Government support – the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act, setting up EECA; Nandor’s waste Bill, which I would like to touch on in a bit of depth; protecting our kids from Section 59, the abolition of youth rates, the mothers with babies in prison Bill along with our support level agreements with the Government on energy efficiency, Buy Kiwi Made and organics.
I know some commentators have challenged Labours track record on social change, saying you went too far too soon, and there are definitely politically strategic arguments both ways, but I am glad that Labour could stick up for homosexual law reform, banning cigarettes in bars and cafes, prostitution reform and controversially Section 59.
Progressive social reform should be the hallmark of a good Labour government – Savage introduced the most sweeping social changes since Seddon introducing the Social Security Bill; Kirk got us out of Vietnam and Lange stood up against the might of the US and proclaimed “We are to be made an example of; we are to be ostracised and anathematised until we are compelled to resume our seat in the dress circle of the nuclear theatre.”
I’m really glad that Helen did decide to make a stand on S59 and damn the polls. I’m glad she came to rest on the right side of the debate. I don’t know what the internal processes were with the Labour Caucus. I know I’ve been learning lately in my class on the principle of primus inter pares – “first amongst equals” that all in Cabinet are theoretically equal. But in reality the PM has considerable power in Government as Lange demonstrated when he unilaterally derailed the Rogernomics experiment of flat taxes, and I’m stoked that she then used her weight to do the right thing. I think this decision will be vindicated by future generations.
Another controversial piece of legislation currently causing all sorts of troubles is the Electoral Finance Act, and as someone who is standing it sure is a dogs breakfast and confusing the hell out of everyone. However in select committee I made a submission supporting the Bill, not necessarily what it was – because it was much worse in its first draft, but what it was it stood for. We need to protect the principle of one person one vote not one dollar one vote. We have to avoid the nefarious interests of big business and shadowy overseas donors looking to buy and influence our elections. We’ve seen it first hand in the case of the Exclusive Brethren, and read all about it in Nickys book. Sure it is a hard-to-implement law and it will probably take an election or two, and a number of court cases to reach a sort-of established understanding or equilibrium but we needed it. It’s just is a pity that the legislation was rolled out in such a fashion that the opposition, not to mention the Herald, managed to swing the argument around, and those who should have been shamed, actually rallied against it as an issue of freedom of speech – I guess they were paying attention to Crosby and Textors advise to attack your opponents strengths. I only wished Labour had kept the state funding of elections element.
Let’s talk trash. Good on the Government for supporting our waste legislation going through the house. Waste is an important environmental issue, and if there were international awards for producing it – we’d be winners. Every day New Zealanders throw out ten million kilograms of it into landfills or burn it; producing a massive problem that has often been considered, ‘out of sight out of mind.’ The problem is not just where it goes – but also how much of it we are producing. There are currently ninety landfill sites operating in New Zealand, taking a total of over 3 million tonnes of our rubbish each year.
Burying our waste is not a long term solution and we can’t keep hoping it will go away. It won’t. Looking at natural ecosystems there is no such thing as waste – everything gets recycled, even us. The Bill contains a raft of changes intended to reduce the amount of waste created as well as promoting reuse and recycling whenever possible. Landfill waste levies would be introduced to help pay for a variety of measures including public education about recycling. Its great to see the first ever waste legislation going through our parliament.
An issue I have been especially passionate about since seeing it close up is bottom trawling. In 2005 I sailed into the Tasman Sea on the Rainbow Warrior to do what the NZ Government wouldn’t do and actually stop Kiwi bottom trawlers from wreaking their havoc on the ocean floor. Bottom trawling involves dragging large nets the size of football fields across the ocean floor to hunt for species like orange roughy. The problem is it also gets everything else down there. Out in the ocean I saw fishers throwing overboard old man-sized corals that had grown undisturbed in the depths for 500 years or more. In all, we caught them throwing ten fish overboard – well actually they were throwing some of them at us – along with potatoes, which they actually built a mortar to shoot us with, fire hoses and insults – it really was surreal to be told in the middle of the ocean to ‘get a real job.’ From just these ten fish – out of the tonnes one ship would catch a day – scientists discovered two new specials of fish. We were destroying the ocean floor and we didn’t even know what was down there.
Thanks to the work by Greenpeace, the Green Party and other NGOs enough pressure was placed on our Government to support ‘essentially’ a ban on bottom trawling in international waters. I sleep a little bit better knowing that the gorgonian’s, blobfishes, and all the other millions of fish we now nothing about are safe – and we can thank the Government for finally doing what was right.
However how we are treating our inshore fisheries is another question –for example in one fishery zone, orange roughy numbers hadve crashed to 3% their original levels. Our continued allowance of shark finning of which we kill an estimated 30-50 thousand annually is a shameful blot on our record. Clearly Anderton is failing in this area, failing to stick up against the profit demands of fishers.
Yesterday we reached the unenviable milestone of $10b student debt. The milestone is more like a millstone around students necks. As it has been pointed out - $10 billion buys a lot of stadiums but it also buy a lot public transport improvements or reforestation projects or hip operations. The fact is, this much debt is unsustainable for New Zealand and what we are in effect producing is a generation of debt-ridden graduates who can't afford to buy a house, who delay having a family and many who feel they have to leave offshore. Around half a million Kiwis now have student loan debts. I have a $30,000 debt and its like an education tax that comes out of my pay check and it really means I can’t afford to buy a house for my wife and baby. Accommodation, transport, and food costs are all increasing and adding an extra burden onto student's already sagging shoulders. What's worse is that this has prevented some people from obtaining tertiary education.
We need to value our students and introduce a universal allowance - students shouldn't be borrowing to live. I’d be keen to know what Young labours tertiary education policies are.
National are making noises about a brain drain but they refuse to acknowledge that some debt ridden students are fleeing the country to escape it's burden not just the over-taxing-totalitarian-nanny-state that they would paint the Government. In 2005 Labour introduced bold policy on student loans that probably saved the election, this year I hope you may also be considering a universal student allowance to pull out in the last weeks of the campaign.
Another topical issue I can’t ignore, even though the Government is trying to - is Tibet, Darfur and human, democratic and workers rights in China. I know the Government is chuffed by the FTA with China. Once again it is putting profits above environmental and social considerations. Goff can try and avoid the moral hurdles and make arguments about the positive impact we’ll have on China…maybe…eventually, but that argument didn’t cut it with South Africa under apartheid – we are not signing this FTA to help the Chinese workers, or help China reduce its skyrocketing emissions with clean technology, we aren’t even helping the oppressed people of Tibet, whom we shamefully wouldn’t openly meet with their spiritual leader.
It’s not about democratisation. It is about, as Russel Norman puts it ‘offering the Chinese Government respectability on the World stage by associating with us - a progressive liberal democracy with a proud heritage, in return for selling more milk.
We are selling out so that we can sell more of our stuff to China. The trade deal does not eliminate non-tariff barriers to fair trade - things like forced prison labour, child labour, sweatshop conditions, a ban on independent unions and poor environmental protections. These elements of authoritarian capitalism give Chinese business an unfair advantage over New Zealand businesses and will result in further job losses in New Zealand as tariffs fall.
One hundred years ago this year, a group of miners broke the law and striked for 3 months at Blackball, on the West Coast for an extra 15 minutes lunch time and out of the conflict evolved the Federation of Labour and eventually the Labour Party. However 100 years on we are selling our workers down the Yangze with a FTA agreement with China and still valuing profit over people.
However after 9 years of a Labour Government our social statistics are still dire. We are seeing a growing gap between rich and poor. We are seeing kids grow up in poverty and in cycles of violence. Just this morning we heard 20,000 kids are missing breakfast and its optimistic to think its because of dieting as Parakura Horomia suggests. The decline in unemployment should be lauded widely and is a proud achievement and it is having an effect on wage increases – to John Key’s dismay, but still we need the minimum wage to be lifted to at least $15 an hour immediately. Sue Bradford says it best – “The ERA should be overhauled, including strengthening the ability to use multi employer collective bargaining and agreements and to deal more strongly with freeloading. Workers should have the right to strike legally on matters of political, economic and environmental significance. Our welfare system should be completely restructured so that benefits are enough to live on, and so that welfare is administered in a much fairer, simpler and in fact cheaper way than it is at present.:
That leads me to my final point – my passion – saving the world.
When Helen Clark opened Parliament, the year-before-last she used the phrase ‘carbon neutrality’ 36 times in one speech. Now 4 months into the first Kyoto commitment period our emissions are increasing and are no where near neutral – whatever that means. Unfortunately what we are seeing is climate inaction and the 100% pure lie.
Almost everyone now agrees that humans are changing the climate through activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation and intensive agriculture and this is warming the planet. The effects of climate change are going to impact most of all on the people who are the least responsible - on the poorest and most marginalised people.
The scientists are saying we have little time left to avoid catastrophic run-away climate change yet in New Zealand we are failing our Kyoto targets dismally and have increased our greenhouse gas emissions 25% above 1990 levels. The new Emissions Trading Scheme while having some elements such as a price on carbon that the Greens campaigned for, still has major flaws such as agriculture being subsided by the taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the exclusion of export coal and fugitive coal emissions. The Government is still on a motorway building binge and new coal mines are opening. The Green Party says we need to act urgently to kick the carbon habit.
The Greens believe we owe it to our children and grandchildren to act now, and if all countries work together we can deal with the challenge but also make our air and water cleaner, homes warmer and drier, public transport more reliable and frequent, heavy freight on the rail not the roads. There will be more forest, less flooding and slips, more wildlife. Our economy will be smarter rather than just bigger, and our international reputation will be a major asset.
Our economy is under severe threat from the effects of climate change. I won’t bore you with the predictions of changing weather patterns impacting on agricultural productivity, or an increase in floods and droughts and other extreme weather events; or biodiversity loses, or threats from introduced pests and diseases, or of sea level rise but our economy has to adapt to a world that runs an economy as if the climate mattered.
We are a nation that mostly makes our living growing grass – selling it off as meat and dairy and hosting people to come see our grass…and mountains….and beaches. We ship a whole lot of basic commodities from a large distance and fly in a whole lot of people for a relatively short time also from a very large distance. Already our products are under attack in the UK for our air-miles, even if they are marginally more efficient. It is a simple and convincing argument ‘boycott NZ products – it obviously has come a very long way.’ The same could be true here, but because the Labour Government put meat industry lobbying above the interests of its peoples and killed our Country of Origin Labelling Bill, you don’t really now where much of our supermarket products come from. Unless we can prove our climate credentials internationally and find our ways to reduce agricultural emissions we will be a target.
How are we dealing with these long term economic challenges? The workers’ traditional ally, the Labour Party, seems almost completely stuck in an economic mindset that was first embraced by Roger Douglas and has been entrenched as mainstream thinking in this country ever since, in which the success of the economy is judged by a narrow set of indicators that have more to do with the rate of profit being made by a handful of financial institutions than the well-being of ordinary Kiwis. In New Zealand we have a few sacred cows and dairy is one of them. Fonterra’s model is producing more - infinite growth – it is 4% compound growth which is unsustainable and frankly frightening for our environment.
So what does the Government need to do:
Urgent action – start reducing emissions and protecting forests sinks NOW
Polluter pays – those who produce greenhouse emissions should be responsible for them
A price on greenhouse emissions – we need a price on carbon now across the whole economy to make the clean alternatives cheaper and fossil fuels dearer
Fairness – all sectors of the economy must face this price with no free-loaders – but those with the most options should move fastest
Simplicity – we can’t spend the next five years designing a detailed, complicated emissions trading policy
Internationalism – the NZ price on carbon should be linked with the international price under Kyoto, which NZ will have to pay in 2012 for the increase in our emissions above 1990 levels
Future-focussed – the system we design now must leave us in a better position to cut emissions further in the next Kyoto period, after 2012
Social justice – there must be government programmes to help those who will suffer hardship when energy prices rise.
Opportunities for businesses – ‘greenwash’ isn’t one of them
I am not going to apologise for being partisan on this issue and I think the Greens have numerous achievements to highlight, even though we haven’t been in Government. It was a Green private member bill that established EECA and Jeanette’s work as spokesperson that has seen massive energy savings and support go to households and businesses. The Greens have led campaigns to save the Overlander train and Wellington’s electric trolley buses. We’ve started the process the electrify Auckland’s rail network and we convinced the Government to buy back the rail network. We were the first to raise the issue peak oil in the house and have spoken the most about climate change in Parliament.
I think Labour could have reduced emissions if Jeanette was the Minister for Climate Change and I think the latest Shape poll, shows that’s what voters want – 82% of Kiwis think climate change is an urgent problem or a problem now (up from 73% a year ago) and 56% of Kiwis want NZ to become a global leader. Asked which major parties is best to manage climate change, the results were fairly close Labour 32%, National 32% and don’t knows 35%, whereas when asked for ‘which preferred coalition scenarios would best manage climate change’ the results were clear – respondents wanted Greens in either a Labour or National Government (33% to labour-Green and 23% to National-Green). The message is ‘voters want a Green voice in Government to place the planet before profit.’
You should ask your MPs if they will pay to offset the carbon from their flights. Or better yet convince the speaker to compulsorily measure and offset – hey, and why’ll we’re at it, why doesn’t Parliament go Green like the Reichstag and be powered by solar energy?
POLITICS
So there is going to be an election in a few months time and I wouldn’t know where to bet my money. If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said Labour was dead in the water, but now I’m not so sure. Key doesn’t look as impenetrable as before and the spectre of Douglas sitting around the Cabinet table is terrifying to many.
I do know how ever if you are going to win a historic forth term you probably are going to need the Greens. I personally like the idea of saving a Labour Government
because I hate the idea of John Key as my Prime Minister, but more especially the likes of Brownless, Sowry, and Nick Smith becoming Ministers. I hope the Greens hold the balance of power and can be a powerful force in a Labour Government. I hope we get at least ten percent so I have a chance of getting in. We’ve shown we can do a lot with 6 MPs –imagine 12! I have to say we were hurt at the last election by Labour switching to the UF and NZF, and I know the numbers weren’t good enough from us, but I really wished the champagne I drank on election night 2005 for a Green-Maori-Labour Government wasn’t in vain. Can we work together? To quote Jeanette “We will, however, be asking a high price of our co-operation. Because this planet is worth a high price. Because a decent future for our children and grandchildren is worth a high price. Our price is real action, not greenwash.”
What is my advice to Labour? It is to go back to the past for inspiration. I like what Russel says about Michael Joseph Savage, he said he “…had the courage and determination to challenge the international economic orthodoxy in order to overcome the social crisis of the Great Depression. He did not abolish the market but changed the way it worked to make it socially sustainable. They did not abolish the market system, but they placed rules on it and replaced dog eat dog with opportunities for underdogs. They created a world in which people like John Key could gain access to decent affordable housing, health and education so that he had the opportunity to follow his dreams, whatever one may think of the morality of currency trading and financial speculation.” They put people before profit.
So in summary I don’t have a clue what is going to happen in 2008 but I hope Helen is still PM or maybe Shane Jones, or better still, Sonny Thomas.
What Labour needs is action - not just rhetoric but action. Real change in 2008 would see tertiary students valued – and paid a fair universal allowance, the environment protected from the likes of more cows, cars and coal; New Zealand kicking the carbon habit and seriously addressing climate change; and more GE-free, healthy, organic food.
Thanks very much.
