Hague Kevin: General Debate 
Hague Kevin: General Debate 
[Volume:653;Page:2708] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. In the last sitting week my colleague Kennedy Graham identified the magnitude of the challenge that faces humanity in the 21st century and the place and role of New Zealand within that. It is our conviction that the problems we face today are the direct result of our traditional political and economic beliefs. By clinging to an increasingly obsolete world view humanity has not only generated serious global problems; it is unable to perceive them for what they are let alone solve them. In New Zealand the National Party owes its heritage to the Western liberal tradition which responded to the strictures of absolutism and tyranny. Those concerns evolved into the politics of individual liberty and economic freedom. The Labour Party’s heritage lies in the Western socialist tradition which responded to the misery and injustice of inequality and insecurity. That evolved into the compassionate politics of State welfare and communal responsibility. 
For its part the Green Party owes its heritage to a new and modern tradition that responds to the ecological crisis and the politics of survival and sustainability. Born of an awakening concern about the silence in spring the environmental movement took political form in the Green parties of the 1980s and in our case descended from the visionary Values Party. Those parties entered Parliaments in the 1990s and are strengthening in the early 21st century. Today the Green Party exists to respond to the concerns of the contemporary world. Having earlier foreseen the onset of those problems it now works to develop a strategic policy response. 
The ecological overshoot is the product of individual freedom run amok. We in the West have carried economic growth to the level of addiction; we have geared our economic systems to require continual economic growth for any kind of stability. Because the resources on which continual growth feeds are finite it is not sustainable in the long run—nor in the short run as recent events have demonstrated. The planet simply cannot sustain the equation of numbers multiplied by greed. Policy makers who tinker with fiscal and monetary policy in order to restore an outmoded notion of economic growth do not provide the answer; they are the orchestra on the  
Titanic 
. The ecological overshoot can no more be remedied through an intensified pursuit of individual liberty than a drunk can be sobered through a trip to the liquor store. Pretending that exponential growth on a finite planet is possible through technological progress is a delusion. The self-evidence of this fact is screened only by powerful interests that are intent on short-term gain at the expense of long-term sustainability while the rest of us are desperate to believe what we wish were the case. 
But the politics of compassion are also inadequate to deal with the problems we face. Redistributive justice can remedy the inequality of wealth and poverty but it can no more reverse the ecological overshoot than a bird can fly backwards. 
In New Zealand National and Labour have philosophically merged into a conjoint political establishment with the same broad underlying beliefs: self-perpetuating economic growth corporate dominance and unfettered international trade and finance. Their combination is disastrous. The political struggle between the relative priority of individual freedom and equality is reflected in the left/right spectrum that is used today to analyse politics. But the tension between sustainability and profligacy cannot be placed on the left/right spectrum. A second and new axis is required: the sustainability axis. Without this we lack an accurate compass for navigating through the 21st century. 
As the contemporary generation matures so do its politics. It is apparent that the Green Party in this country as elsewhere carries the underlying beliefs that are relevant to our age and the party is maturing to the point where it is able and ready to lead. We welcome that challenge.