Kedgley Sue: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Kedgley Sue: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:614;Page:10768] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 On behalf of the Green Party I would first like to thank you Mr Speaker for the impartiality and fairness that you have always displayed in the House even when you are under intense pressure from the shouting match that often characterises this House. I would like to thank the largely invisible army of people who support MPs who oil the wheels of Parliament—the security staff the messengers the people who take care of our travel who feed us and so forth. I would like to express a debt of gratitude to the Green Party staff inside and outside Parliament who do an outstanding job often under considerable pressure and to Green Party members all around the country for their commitment and support. 
I pay tribute to my Green colleagues for their passion commitment and courage. The Green Party brings a new perspective a new vision a new set of agendas into this House. Indeed we bring ideas that many would regard as radical right into the heart of this political establishment. So it is hardly surprising that some of our colleagues find some of our ideas a little unsettling. 
When my colleague Jeanette Fitzsimons put genetic engineering on the political agenda 6 years ago it was alternatively ridiculed or ignored in this House. Now it is a passionate mainstream concern of New Zealanders which the Government and this Parliament have chosen to ignore at their peril. It has been sad to see that the Labour Party—a party that in the past was praised worldwide for its courageous opposition to evils such as apartheid and the nuclear arms race—is now so freely embracing the perils and dangers of irreversibly releasing genetically engineered organisms into our precious environment. 
The Government may be congratulating itself on pushing genetic engineering off the political agenda but let me assure it that genetic engineering is simmering away just beneath the political radar and it will not disappear. 
The Green Party brings a long-term perspective into this Parliament which works most of the time to a short-term electoral calendar. Where others focus on a prospective energy crisis next year we are equally concerned at the depletion of the world’s oil reserves and the consequences that this will inevitably have for our oil-dependent economy not just next year but for the next decade and beyond. While others fret about whether we will have a 3 percent or 4 percent growth rate next year and whether Australia or Singapore is growing at a faster rate than us we are equally concerned or more concerned about the long-term impact of unsustainable growth and rampant consumerism on our magnificent environment and our quality of life. 
We bring a social agenda as well as an environmental agenda into the House. We will continue to push for far-reaching changes to the way in which we treat low-paid workers and beneficiaries women and children. We simply do not accept what seems to have become the norm that children must live in poverty indefinitely and we hope that there will be cross-party support—certainly support from the Government—for my colleague Sue Bradford’s member’s bill to introduce a universal child benefit. We will continue to support workers and unions across the board in their bid to improve our quality of life through such things as 4 weeks’ leave pay equity flexible working hours and greater protections in the workplace. 
 The Green Party has noticed a disturbing trend during the past year for the Government to put the interests of other countries ahead of the interests of ordinary New Zealanders. Annette King justified—or attempted to justify—her inexcusable decision to ride roughshod over a parliamentary select committee inquiry by saying that she could not possibly keep the Australian Government waiting for another few weeks. That is astonishing. The democratically elected Algerian politician Ahmed Zaoui has been holed up in prison in solitary confinement for over a year because the Government does not want to offend our overseas intelligence partners or expose the shallowness and bias of much of their so-called intelligence. 
The Labour Government has sent soldiers into the Iraqi war zone to try to curry favour with the Bush administration and lifted the moratorium on genetic engineering against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders for presumably the same reason because there does not appear to be any other. 
As the year draws to a close and we reflect on what we have achieved in this House I confess to being deeply disappointed by the report of the Standing Orders Committee debated earlier today into the rules governing behaviour in this House. Is it because the Standing Orders Committee is one of the last all-male bastions in this House that it dismissed in such an offhand manner both Ross Robertson’s excellent submission that the House adopt a code of conduct for MPs and the submission by Wellington High School students that was made over a year ago that called for an end to the hostile aggressive and at times abusive behaviour—the shouting match in fact—that too often passes for debate in this House? 
Just as it took a boy to point out that the emperor had no clothes so it took a bunch of high school students to point out the obvious truth: that we have come to accept as normal behaviour in this House a level of unpleasantness aggression and verbal abuse that would not be tolerated in a classroom in a playground in the workplace or in the home. “Our leaders legislate against violence in the community yet behave in an aggressive and even violent way themselves.” the students pointed out in their report. “MPs are supposed to be leaders and good role models; don’t they understand that there are young people and children watching them in the gallery every single day?” The students issued a simple plea: “We ask parents not to hit their children students not to bully their peers sportspeople to show sportsmanship people to respect their work colleagues and now we are asking a simple plea that our leaders lead by example.” 
But what did our all-male Standing Orders Committee do? While insisting on something as deeply and profoundly superficial and offensive as saying that women as well as men should dress in business attire—whatever that means—for the decorum of this House the committee sidelined all the suggestions to the committee for improving behaviour in this House. No wonder MPs are held in such low esteem in the community as Ross Robertson observed in his submission! 
We may be an MMP Parliament but we continue to operate as if this were a quintessentially male place of old-style old-fashioned aggression competition and point-scoring. Like many MPs I take deep personal offence at the level of abuse and intimidation that so often occurs in this House. On a number of recent occasions such as when I was interrupted eight times by points of order during a 3-minute speech I felt as if I were the yard of an all-male boys’ school being intimidated by a gang of playground bullies. 
I have tried to cope with this behaviour as I am sure many other MPs in this House have by attempting to ignore it. But the truth is that by remaining silent we are tolerating and condoning this unacceptable behaviour. I therefore appeal to colleagues to help change the unnecessarily negative environment in this House by challenging unacceptable behaviour insisting we adopt a code of conduct and incorporating that into the Standing Orders of the House. 
It is equally unacceptable for MPs to make racist remarks in this House and it is a source of frustration to the Green Party that  
Speakers’ Rulings 
 prevent us from identifying racist statements in this House and we hope that this will change too for we cannot take leadership on this issue unless we are able to name and identify racism. 
 I suspect that women MPs will need to take a lead in bringing about a cultural revolution in this House. Many of us had high hopes that with women comprising one-third of the membership of Parliament a woman Prime Minister women Ministers and a woman co-leader of our party we would be able to create a more cooperative working environment in this House. But the truth is that we and the Standing Orders Committee have abjectly failed thus far to bring about a cultural change in this House. As Indira Gandhi once said “You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.” I urge all MPs to reflect on this over the Christmas break. Perhaps in 2004 we can make a difference not only to the life of all New Zealanders but to the life of this House.