Norman Russel William: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Norman Russel William: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8656] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Tena koutou to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. Tena koutou to all New Zealanders who love our country and our people and who want to protect this place and look after each other. The Green Party shares that love and we are in this place to serve those people. 
Today the Prime Minister has foreshadowed the “black hole Budget”. It is a black hole dug into the heart of our most precious land and a black hole opening up in our most vulnerable communities. John Key told Kiwis that they will have to work harder and longer with fewer holidays and that they will pay more for everything. In exchange for this effort we will have to give up the integrity of our most beautiful precious and beloved conservation estate. There is no vision for a smart economy that looks after the prosperity of people and the natural environment. There is only a statement of corporate intent. 
On the bright side this year there will be new heroes in Aotearoa. Kiwis will work together once again to protect our most vulnerable citizens. There will be new champions of the environment working together alongside the Green Party to stop the bulldozers from digging up our land. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I apologise to Dr Russel Norman. I ask members please to show a little courtesy to Dr Norman. There are so many loud discussions going on in the House that I am struggling to hear him. It is unfair. I ask the House to show a little more respect. If members want to hold loud discussions I ask them to please move into the lobbies not hold them on the benches. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN 
: John Key’s proposed reforms for our tax system may encourage GDP to grow but they will do little to promote prosperity. Although the Greens welcome the Government’s commitment to do something about speculation on housing the fairest way to achieve this is through a capital gains tax excluding the family home—just like nearly every other OECD country. The Government’s failure to commit to this is gutless. It will entrench inequality between those who work for wages and those who live off capital gains. A capital gains tax is broad and it is a highly progressive tax. It would help to reduce inequality. It would also raise an additional $4.5 billion thereby giving the Government considerable scope to pay off debt and invest in good things like health and education. 
On the other hand raising the rate of GST as the Government proposes entrenches inequality and does not broaden the tax system. Those who are poorest will be hit hardest. That is using increased taxes on the poor for tax cuts for the rich. Large-scale tax avoidance is one of the reasons John Key is talking about tax reform this afternoon yet he makes no mention—no mention—of the most obvious response: strengthening tax enforcement. Tax is the price we pay for living in a civilised society but it seems that a lot of extremely wealthy individuals and companies do not want to pay their way. They want to bludge off everyone else. The overseas-owned banks were caught stealing billions from New Zealand taxpayers yet not one of their executives or advisers is behind bars. So if a taxpayer steals $1000 from a bank he or she is put in jail. But if a bank steals a billion dollars from taxpayers then the bank just pays it back if it gets caught and nobody goes to jail. 
The Tax Working Group has reported that only one-half of a sample of 100 of the highest-wealth families in the country is paying the top tax rate. That is wrong. National’s response to tax avoidance by the very wealthy is not to say that its donors should pay their share like everyone else. No it is to say that we must be charging them too much tax. That is why they are avoiding it. Therefore we should charge them less and cut the top tax rate. It is a new kind of “three strikes” policy. If one gets caught avoiding tax three times then we will cut the tax rate. 
What we need is tax reform that moves our economy in a green direction. We need ecological tax reform like a resource rental on the use of fresh water by irrigators so that we encourage the efficient use of water. We need tax reform that encourages genuine prosperity and equality rather than rewarding tax avoidance and prosperity is what we seek. 
Last week I paddled the Taumarere and Kawakawa rivers as part of my Dirty Rivers Rafting Tour. As I made my way across those rivers which are still degraded in spite of the efforts of hapu and others to clean them up I had pause to think: “Is this prosperity?”. Is it prosperity when we have a river that is so full of silt and excrement that even mullet barely survive? Is it prosperity when the seagrass beds are smothered to extinction by silt—seagrass beds that are nurseries of the snapper? Sure intensive dairying increases GDP and it has been growing at 4 percent a year for a decade. But what about those who can no longer catch a feed off the rocks because the snapper fishery is depleted by the killing of the seagrass? Their loss is not counted in those GDP numbers showing great growth. If anything the fact that people now have to go to the supermarket to buy a snapper adds to GDP by adding to economic turnover. In fact the absurd truth is that people who are catching fish for free are contributing nothing to GDP. They are a kind of economic trader by refusing to participate in the mantra of GDP growth by refusing to purchase their kai moana. 
Polluted rivers increase GDP but do they make us more prosperous? No they do not. Let us hang on to the things that make us prosperous rather than destroy them to increase GDP and make a few people rich. On Saturday up at Waitangi the kids spent the day jumping off the bridge leading to the Treaty grounds and into the water. They were having a wild time. They were enjoying a real and tangible form of prosperity and freedom and contributing absolutely nothing to GDP. Kids used to swim in our rivers and streams all over Aotearoa New Zealand and in some places they still do. In lots of places the rivers have been sucked dry for irrigation and filled with human and animal excrement. Those kids go to the local swimming pool instead of to the local swimming hole. Swimming pools cost money to build and maintain and they definitely contribute to GDP. The kids who live in areas that have polluted rivers and creeks the kids without the freedom to swim in the rivers who are forced to go to the swimming pool are definitely making a contribution to Labour and National’s dream of GDP growth. Those traitorous kids swimming off the beach at Waitangi were contributing absolutely nothing to GDP. They were simply enjoying the genuine prosperity given freely by nature. Let us hang on to the things that give us prosperity rather than sacrifice them to the great god of GDP growth where many lose a taonga and a few get very rich. 
Today John Key has confirmed the worst fears of thousands of New Zealanders—that his Government is gearing up to dig up our national parks. His speech was about trying to increase GDP growth not prosperity. The only way he can pay for it is by digging up our conservation estate. He is going to dig New Zealand into a hole that we cannot get out of—a hole of inequality and environmental destruction from which there will be no escape. Our conservation lands contain some of New Zealand’s most treasured places. We treasure them because of their water forest plants birds and animals not because of what is under the ground. John Key’s Government has consistently cut conservation funding and made it harder to protect those places. Now he has the gall to tell us that putting some mining money into a conservation fund a fund just like the one that the Green Party already established and that he cancelled means “If there is an increase in mining activity New Zealand’s natural environment will be improved.” That is a line that only George Orwell could have written. It is not true that in order to save the environment we have to destroy it. New Zealanders will see through it. 
Another growth industry in New Zealand is motorway building. Labour embarked on what Michael Cullen called “New Zealand’s biggest road-building project” and the new National - ACT - Maori Party Government is intent on building even more. Over $10 billion will be spent on new State highways in the next decade. As we grow the motorways we are also growing the kilometres travelled by cars and trucks in New Zealand and hence New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions and use of imported fossil fuels. Not only will our children inherit the bill for this motorway obsession but they will also inherit high greenhouse emissions and a very high dependence on fossil fuels just when we need to be cutting greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel prices will increase. 
Another leading growth industry in Aotearoa New Zealand is imprisoning people and building prisons. On a per capita basis we lock up more people than pretty much anyone except the United States. But does building more prisons and locking up more people make us safer and more secure? No it does not. Societies with higher rates of imprisonment do not have higher levels of security and a feeling of safety. The United States is a daily example of this basic truth. There is one thing that we know works to make our societies safer and more secure and that is reducing inequality. Longer sentences do not make societies safer even though they may feel good to people of shallow minds. If we took security and safety seriously we would invest in reducing inequality. How many people would be alive today if we had not made our country so radically unequal in the 1980s and 1990s and generated so much crime and violence? 
True prosperity is not having to do the overtime in order to pay for a home security system. New Zealanders already work longer hours with fewer days off than just about anyone else in the OECD and that is hardly my idea of prosperity. Surely in a prosperous society we would have more time off not less. How many lotto ads say that people can take on a second job if they win Big Wednesday? There are none. Every year we are told that growing productivity and GDP will mean more time for ourselves yet every year the hours of work increase and more mums have little option but to rush back to work after childbirth because they need the money to pay the mortgage. 
Making it difficult for mums or dads to spend time with babies after their birth also helps GDP growth. When they have the option to take a few years off after childbirth to do their own childcare it contributes absolutely nothing to GDP. Free childcare provided by a new mother or father at home has zero value to the great worshippers of GDP growth. But in a society like ours where wages are so low compared with the cost of housing many mothers go back to work as soon as possible which has a double benefit for GDP. Mums in the workforce contribute to GDP and they have to pay someone to look after their newborn child further increasing GDP; it is a double bonus for the GDP obsessives! Although taking away the option of allowing a new parent to look after a newborn baby might increase GDP does it increase prosperity? Are we a more prosperous society? Surely in a prosperous society new parents would have the option of choosing to stay at home or go back to work but that is an option we have taken away from so many people. 
John Key says he is worried about an underclass emerging in New Zealand but I ask how we can believe this when everything he is doing promotes inequality. His plan to cut support for sick and out-of-work Kiwis and parents will drive the growth of an underclass and mean more of our children go to bed hungry. His plan for hard-working New Zealanders is to take away their holidays and their employment rights. His plan for better public service is to cut it. His plan for accident victims is to cut the support they receive. He believes in tax cuts for the rich by reducing the top rate while poor New Zealanders are being forced on to the streets—and where is the big increase in State housing that we really need? This is not a plan for a better and fairer society; this is a scam that will benefit only the very wealthy while leaving everyday New Zealanders worse off. 
The Green Party believes in a fair go for all New Zealanders; sadly it seems that this Government does not. Even if it succeeds in creating GDP growth we will not see growth in prosperity and we will not have a fair society. This society will not magically appear somewhere down the line by forcing vulnerable people to suffer now. John Key’s Government is creating the very underclass that it says it is concerned about. 
The Prime Minister talks about his commitment to Maori but everything he has done is creating poverty and inequality and we know that Maori suffer even more. Maori deserve more than high words new flags and arbitrary settlement deadlines. They deserve change and a fair society that respects their rights. We call on the Government to respect Maori rights in respect of the foreshore and seabed and not repeat the mistakes of the previous Government. The te reo version of Te Tiriti o Waitangi did not cede sovereignty to the Crown. Why would people give away their land and sovereignty to the newcomers? Actual sovereignty was achieved by the colonial Government through the New Zealand Wars from 1843 to 1872 and after. Until we recognise the truth that the sovereignty of this Parliament was won through force of arms then we will continue to feel the pain of the Land Wars. We need constitutional evolution we need to look forward but we cannot do that without acknowledging the truth of the past and the suffering and pain and anger of that truth. 
A prosperity of the heart cannot grow on the suffering of others and the denial of that suffering. New Zealand in 2010 is facing a great opportunity and a challenge and that is to embrace the green economic revolution. In a world where carbon is constrained where fossil fuels are increasing in price where water is globally polluted and exhausted and where clean and green is increasingly valued by customers and consumers New Zealand has a real opportunity to embrace the green technology revolution. The sooner New Zealand moves towards a low-carbon economy the sooner we will start producing the innovative products and services that the low-carbon world will be calling out for and the sooner we will cut the cost of higher carbon prices to the New Zealand economy. The sooner we implement a serious domestic price on carbon the sooner we will begin the transition. 
We should never forget that the US car makers that ignored the warnings about climate change and oil prices had to be bailed out by the US taxpayer because nobody would buy their gas guzzlers. The modelling on carbon pricing is clear: the sooner a price is introduced the more jobs are created. Those Governments like the current one that put their head in the sand and delay putting a price on carbon will cost thousands of New Zealanders their jobs in the long term. The sooner we embrace the green technology revolution the more prosperous our future will be. It is prosperity we need and it is the smart economy we need not simply dumb growth and economic activity for the sake of it. 
The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand commits itself in 2010 to work for a prosperous country and a smart economy: a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where people have work that is productive and decently paid; a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where people have time to spend relaxing enjoying life being with their friends and family and time to get to the beach before the summer is over; and a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where we share our beautiful country with the other species of this place where we act as guardians of the mountains the plains the sea the rivers the wetlands and all the plants and animals that live there and we stop destroying ecosystems and start repairing them. 
The Green Party recommits itself in 2010 to working for a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where the gap between rich and poor actually narrows instead of widens as it has done for decades; a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi; and a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand that contributes to peace and helps out its neighbours in need. This is our vision of prosperity and a smart economy and that is the vision that the Green Party will work for in 2010. Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa.