Locke Keith: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Locke Keith: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:659;Page:8622] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 First of all on behalf of the Green Party I extend to all members in this Chamber our best wishes for the season and I extend best wishes particularly to the Speaker. I think our Speaker has really put his heart and soul into the job—probably more than any other Speaker I have seen since I have been here. We certainly appreciate his efforts to get Ministers to answer the questions at question time rather than to talk around them. 
The Green Party like the previous two speakers also wishes to send its greetings to all those many people in this complex who help us to do our work including ushers security staff police messengers travel office people Bellamy’s workers librarians and everyone in the Clerk’s Office including all the select committee staff. That is not to forget of course our own personal party staff executive assistants out-of-Parliament people and administrative research and media staff. Finally this Christmas we should not forget those largely unseen but hard-working people who clean our offices at night and who as Phil Goff just mentioned are underpaid. The Green Party is also concerned at the underpayment of the security staff and we strongly support them in their negotiations and collective action through the New Zealand Public Service Association to get a better deal. 
Christmas is a time of goodwill to all men and women and I think we should be thinking particularly of those poor families who will not have the wherewithal to have a sumptuous Christmas dinner or to buy much in the way of presents for their kids. Unfortunately New Zealand is becoming a more unequal society with serious levels of poverty and flowing from that we have a serious crime problem. However at Christmas we should have compassion both for the victims of offences and for the criminals in jail and for the families of both of them. It was estimated on Radio New Zealand this morning that there are 20000 children of prisoners and we should remember them because they will not be having a very good Christmas with their father or mother in jail. 
This year Chief Justice Sian Elias gave us a strong hint that we should be looking at ways of reducing crime other than just locking up more and more people for longer. The decade-long battle between Labour and National about who can be the toughest on criminals has resulted in New Zealand having one of the highest imprisonment rates in the Western World. Only the Greens and the Maori Party have argued for a better approach focusing more on restorative justice and rehabilitation than on punishment. Mind you there is one crime that the Greens are thinking of adding to the statute book and that is a crime against the climate. But that might not get a majority in the House because some of the current members here might end up being incarcerated. 
That brings me to Copenhagen. Our MPs on the spot Jeanette Fitzsimons and Kennedy Graham say that the rallying cry on Copenhagen streets this week has been “climate justice” which means that rich countries with higher per capita emissions have to take the prime responsibility for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and also make a huge financial contribution to poorer countries to allow them to move to a lower-carbon economy. 
The need for climate justice shows that we cannot solve fundamental environmental problems—and climate change is the pre-eminent one—without addressing the social and economic inequalities between nations and within nations. This also highlights why the Greens are so strong on international human rights. Countries that are not democratic are generally despoilers of the environment. In this respect we are disappointed that John Key has followed Helen Clark in keeping Ministers away from the Dalai Lama when he visits in order to satisfy the political mandarins in Beijing. 
Four Green MPs did meet the Dalai Lama when he visited this month. His comments on what was happening on the Tibetan Plateau were alarming. The massive deforestation by Chinese loggers can only increase greenhouse gas emissions and it can also reduce rainfall on the plateau. When we combine that with global warming melting the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau we are looking at an environmental and social catastrophe because almost half the world’s population in South Asia East Asia and South-east Asia relies on water coming from the Tibetan Plateau. The one-party dictatorship in China is simply not up to solving such a vital ecological problem which is why we must strongly support all the democratic forces in China be they harassed Chinese human rights campaigners or those wanting more rights for the Tibetan and Uighur people. 
The urgency of massive expenditure by rich countries to combat climate change is one reason why we should be against wars such as that being prosecuted by the United States in Afghanistan unfortunately with the assistance of our SAS. About $1.4 trillion is currently being spent annually on military equipment and fighting wars. Would it not be a better use of that money to spread renewable power generation in poorer countries rather than use it to drop bombs on them? 
Next year the Green Party will be continuing to challenge the largely “business as usual” economic policies of National and Labour. We know that this unsettles those wedded to economic orthodoxy where the dominant measure of economic health appears to be the growth of GDP largely through producing more consumer goods and further drawing down on the world’s scarce resources. We are confident that next year even more New Zealanders will be agreeing with the Greens about the need for a more intelligent approach towards a more sustainable economic future. 
This year has been a year of transition for the Greens with nearly half of our caucus being first-term MPs including David Clendon who replaced Sue Bradford when she left recently. Sue Bradford achieved so much for us during her 10 years in Parliament and won huge public respect. We have also been lucky to have Russel Norman and Metiria Turei so capably step into the shoes of our founding co-leaders Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons. 
Here is a sample of what we in the Green Party have achieved this past year. We have put a lot of work into what we call the Green New Deal and that is a green answer to the combined economic and environmental crises we face. We were able to advance some of the items under the Green New Deal under our memorandum of understanding with National to work together on issues where we can agree. This includes the $323 million home insulation scheme to make 180000 homes warmer and drier. Another project that is consistent with the Green New Deal has been the national cycleway where our MP Kevin Hague has been working closely with John Key. Mind you most of what National has done is not socially or environmentally friendly and has increased greenhouse gas emissions such as the focus on new motorway construction in and around Wellington and Auckland which will only encourage more travel by car. 
Much of National’s programme has eroded gains of previous years often through reduced funding. This includes the accident compensation levy rises cuts to night school funding less support for community organisations and amendments to the Resource Management Act. But even when we have not been able to defeat a bad bill we have sometimes been able to moderate it. In the debate over the Resource Management Act amendments for example Russel Norman teamed up with community and environmental groups to ensure that Kiwis still have some say over our water land and wildlife. Russel has been a champion of progressive tax and banking reform and he blew the whistle on proposals for factory dairy-farming in the Mackenzie Country. 
Metiria Turei has shone light on National’s plans to allow some level of mining in our conservation estate. We say we should love our national parks and protect them not mine them. Catherine Delahunty has battled for New Zealanders to be given information about toxic sites which took a big step forward with the introduction of new rules that require councils to make public what they know. Sue Kedgley has kept up the good fight for consumers to know where their food comes from.