Fitzsimons Jeanette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1071] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 It seems that the new parliamentary year is under way and not very much has changed. We have had the usual entertainment from our resident court jester and I have to say that a laugh is always better than a yawn. But if we were hoping for some indication about how our foreign relationships were to be conducted in the next 3 years we are still waiting. We have had a worthy outline of a Government programme that does some good things but is blind to the big challenges facing New Zealand that mean that the future cannot be like the past. 
We have had the new spectacle of Don Brash on steroids looking like he is enjoying himself for the first time since he came here. There must have been some training going on over the summer! But there are still no policies being offered as an alternative to the Government. We could I suppose at his invitation debate the question of whether being a history teacher is a good basis for being a Minister of Finance but I would just point out that those who know nothing of history are doomed to repeat it. And that may be a salutary lesson for his party. We have heard many cracks at whether the Labour Party spent parliamentary funding on the election but no reference at all to the half a million dollars from a narrow religious sect spent on behalf of the National Party without the party’s consent without any disclosure and with full attempt to hide that from the public. 
As we begin the new year we all ought to think about what we are really here for. The task of a Government is to provide security and opportunity for all its citizens. It is to provide collectively for those things that we cannot sensibly provide for ourselves. It is to provide the security that there will be a future and one that we want to live in. It is to provide the security that our way of life and our economy are sustainable. 
I want to introduce members to a little boy called Jasper who was born in Wellington almost a year ago. He happens to be my grandson but he could be any little Kiwi boy—crawling flat out eating voraciously and driven by curiosity to explore the world around him with a wicked grin and four teeth. All people have a Jasper somewhere in their lives whether in their family or among their friends. What we do here is about his chances in life his security and his opportunities. 
By the time Jasper starts school the gap between the demand for oil and the available supply will have widened and prices will be well above what they are now. By the time he is 7 the first Kyoto Protocol period will be ending and we will be having to account for our contribution to the disruption of the climate that he will live with. By the time he is halfway through high school Sweden if it achieves its goal will have made itself independent of oil. What will New Zealand have done by then? 
We know that Finland with a similar population and geography to New Zealand spends more than three times as much on research and development in renewable energy as we do. We also know that it gets 10 percent of its electricity from waste wood through cogeneration and we get less than half a percent. Perhaps there is a connection. 
The Prime Minister quoted President Bush as saying the United States needed to end its dependence on oil imports. That brings to mind the cartoon of the caribou and the polar bear in the Arctic wildlife refuge—quoting President Bush’s comments about independence from imported oil—and one says to the other: “I guess that’s the end of the neighbourhood then?”. President Bush’s plans for oil stop at nothing: no environmental bottom line will get in the way of the United States’ determination to keep its enormous gas guzzlers on the road. But the military adventures in the Middle East suggest that independence of oil is not actually part of his plan after all. 
At the moment Jasper needs food shelter love security and a chance to learn. He will go on needing all those things for the rest of his life. If he lives as long as my father that could last into the next century. As he gets older he will also need to know who he is as a New Zealander; he will need to belong to a society that he is proud of; he will need to be able to contribute to that society and to participate in it; and he will need the chance to find beauty and meaning in his life. All those needs and opportunities are threatened by the processes that we and recent generations have been putting in place. 
Jasper will not live in a reliable and stable climate as we have. He will never see a huia and he will be very lucky indeed if he ever sees a kaka or a kokako. He will not have an abundant supply of energy so cheap that he can waste it. He will not be able to drive a car just anywhere he likes any time. He will inherit streams and lakes that are too polluted to swim in and air in cities that kills a person every day with respiratory disease. We may be able to leave him money in the bank but what it can buy will be seriously degraded. And all that is only if things get no worse than now. 
As Jasper grows up he will realise that no generation again will be able to waste the Earth’s resources at the rate that his parents and grandparents have done because they have consumed his future. His generation will have the task of building a society that does far more with much less that makes things last for longer that localises production jobs and decision making. Will we make that harder or easier for him with the things we do in the next 3 years? Will we even leave him the tools to do the job? 
Jasper will need food that nourishes him not the pockets of giant companies that peddle diabetes with their sugar and fat-laden products. That is why the Greens have negotiated a nutrition programme for schools that we hope will see fresh fruit and sandwiches replace the sugary drinks and chippies sold in schools now. Sue Kedgley is working on this with the Minister of Health. 
Jasper’s food will need to come from local farms and from his own garden. There will be no cheap energy to bring it halfway round the world or to force its growth with nitrogen fertilisers made from fossil fuels and running into our rivers. That is why the Greens are working with the Minister of Agriculture on an advisory service for organic growers to help them take up the opportunity to go organic and also to provide a higher-value product. 
 Jasper will need a warm dry home but the energy to heat it is getting more and more expensive. That is why I am working with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and other Government agencies to speed up the insulation and damp-proofing of houses to design a programme to boost the uptake of solar water heating and to improve the building code so that houses we build from now on need much less heating and use less energy overall. 
If Jasper and his mates are to understand the world they find themselves in and how to live in it sustainably they will need an education system that teaches how the planet and all its systems work how our lives depend on it and how our activities are affecting it. That is why we have agreed on funding for environmental education—or education for sustainability as it is called these days—so that eventually every school has the capacity to deliver this vital opportunity to learn. Metiria Turei is working with the Minister of Education to bring this about. 
If our grandchildren are to be healthy they need more than just good hospital services. Good food and a dry warm home are part of it but they also need to breathe clean air and to drink and swim in safe water. The Greens will continue to advocate for those issues. 
Part of growing up a New Zealander has always been the great outdoors and with that comes an appreciation of our unique forests wetlands coastal environment and native species. Jasper has a right to stand in awe of the giant kauri forests to grow up in a country where there are still live kiwi tuatara and ancient land snails. That is why we have agreed that there will be additional funding for intensive habitat management on sites where endangered species are under threat. 
But that is also why 70 people camped for a weekend—and why 11 of them are still there now after 2 weeks and are planning to stay indefinitely—in a remote West Coast valley of pristine red tussock wetlands and beech forest that is home to the great spotted kiwi or roa and the giant land snail  
Powelliphanta patrickensis 
. It is a place called Happy Valley. It is happy still in its untouched state but destined to be very unhappy indeed if Solid Energy gets its way and turns the whole valley into a huge open-cast coalmine. That is about the starkest trade-off we could have—between nature and industry. Red tussock and the wetlands ecosystem under it are now rare. Great spotted kiwi are rare. The snails are very rare. This move would be a very significant loss of biodiversity that cannot be recreated. 
The coal would bring us a short-term financial gain from export to Japan as well as contributing even more to climate disruption. In around 10 years the coal would be gone—and so would the ecosystem forever. Jasper will still be a little boy with no chance to walk through that valley in awe as I have done. All the legal consents have been granted now. The Resource Management Act will not stop that destruction. Only public opinion and pressure on the Minister of Conservation who still has one approval to give can make a difference. 
The Prime Minister in her speech has just said: “New Zealanders do not want growth to damage our unique environment. Environmental and biodiversity protection and conservation of our wild and scenic places loom large for our Government in maintaining New Zealand as a special and unique nation.” Well I say to the Prime Minister that Happy Valley is the test. Will the Government allow a State-owned enterprise to destroy even more biodiversity and wild and scenic places just to disrupt the climate a little more? 
I want Jasper to grow up being proud to be a Kiwi proud that in his great-great-grandmother’s time New Zealand women were the first to win the vote and proud that his grandmother’s generation stood up against nuclear testing nuclear warships and nuclear power. I want him to be proud that his New Zealand has stood up for human rights the dignity of all people opposing discrimination against minorities accepting and welcoming our share of refugees giving our share of aid to countries in desperate hardship working internationally for peace and refusing to join President Bush’s wars for oil. 
Our record here is mixed. We do have a lot to be proud of and I look forward to sharing that with Jasper one day when he is old enough. But our record for freedom tolerance human rights and peace making is always under threat. That is why Keith Locke will continue to stand up on our behalf to speak out about our contribution to US war-making through spy bases like Waihopai our disgraceful treatment of Ahmed Zaoui our mean contribution to international aid—only a third of the UN agreed level—and against the currents that from time to time run through our society targeting immigrants and people of other religious beliefs. It is also why we continue as Greens to speak up for the Treaty as a partnership between peoples on which this nation was founded. 
Those who feel proud of their society want to contribute to it and meaningful work is the birthright of all who seek it. New Zealand judged against the rest of the OECD in 2006 is a shining example of low unemployment. But judged against the standards of my childhood there are still far too many people who for whatever reason cannot find suitable work and are marginalised or who cannot and who should not try to work but who as a result are in desperate poverty. It will get worse as the high growth rate stalls. So many jobs are disappearing as our manufacturers close in the face of cheap imports from countries with cheap labour and lax environmental standards or countries that covertly subsidise their exports to undercut us. 
The list of jobs lost through closures and redundancies due to cheap imports or the high dollar is already long: Swanndri; Guthrie Bowron; Jack Link’s beef jerky; PanaHome who make wood products; Click Clack plastic suppliers; Ion Automotive; Renaissance Furniture; Fisher and Paykel Ltd appliance manufacturers; Skeggs Group frozen peas; clothing firms making clothes for the iconic brand Icebreaker; Feltex Carpets; Air New Zealand maintenance staff; and Debonair Furniture. The total jobs lost from those redundancies over just the last 6 months is at least 1139 and depending on the Air New Zealand outcome it may be over 1600. We cannot afford to lose 1600 jobs every 6 months. 
The Greens’ Buy Kiwi Made proposal which Sue Bradford is now running as a Government programme is designed to give New Zealanders the information they need to support Kiwi businesses and Kiwi jobs by spending their dollars here. At the same time it will reduce the balance of payments deficit which is the largest it has ever been. While Buy Kiwi Made is designed to save good jobs in manufacturing and other Kiwi businesses our energy efficiency and solar hot water programme will generate new jobs in every community insulating homes and installing solar heating. 
If Jasper is to participate in our society he will need fair wages and working conditions and I urge the House to pass Sue Kedgley’s Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill so that parents can juggle parenting and work without too much stress to either. We are also urging the House to support Sue Bradford’s Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill and pay all workers doing the same job the same wage regardless of age. 
If children are to grow up reaching their full potential unafraid and confident they need to be in an environment free of violence. Sadly that is not the case for so many kids today. Jasper is lucky that his parents know there are many ways to encourage good behaviour and discipline children without beating them. But he is likely to come into contact at school with children who have become bullies because physical force is the only discipline they have known at home. I urge members to support Sue Bradford’s bill to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act and remove the only State-sanctioned right for civilians to assault people merely because they are children. 
The Government’s role is to protect our future security—Jasper’s security and that of all his generation. That security is most seriously threatened by the climate disruption that has already begun driven by the way we and recent generations have used our resources especially energy. We could argue seriously that climate disruption is child abuse. It is putting our wants ahead of their needs and leaving them to take the consequences. In April the Government will release its plan B for climate change. If not the carbon tax then what? I would urge the Government to be bold be visionary and to keep our little ones in mind. 
Jasper is not some abstract future generation. He is a real live person now—as real and live as you and me. His needs are simple. He does not demand much of us just a chance to grow up to reach his potential in a world where we have not stolen his opportunities. So our task here is simple too. 
We all have a common interest in keeping our world habitable. We all have a common interest in protecting our children. These issues transcend left and right. They transcend party politics. Let us work with new dedication to a future for all the Jaspers we all know and for those still to come.