Turei Metiria: Address in Reply 
Turei Metiria: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:160] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 First of all I want to say thank you to all those members of the public who voted for the Green Party at the last election. It was a very difficult election for our communities and we sincerely appreciate the support. We will continue to do the work that we were originally elected to Parliament to do and have continued for a number of years now. 
I am very proud of the Greens and the negotiations that were conducted after the election. We played a very straight and fair game. We were one of the few political parties—indeed perhaps the only political party—that truly played a transparent straight and fair game. I am very proud that we did so. Although the results for us and for large numbers of New Zealanders who voted both for the Labour Party and for the Green Party were very disappointing nonetheless the Greens have obtained a good-quality agreement that has enabled us and will enable us to get real policy initiatives through. That is after all the point of our being here. I am very proud of us for what we managed to achieve under those circumstances. 
For me it is a real privilege to be responsible for the environmental education part of our agreement with the Labour Government and to be responsible for that project as a whole from the Green Party perspective. Environmental education is truly a transformative issue. This has been recognised in our country by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in his report  
See Change: Learning and education for sustainability 
 and also by the United Nations. This year is in fact the first year of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Therefore we are part of a global international movement to build environmental education truly into the curriculum and the activities of our young people so that we will have a real environmental sustainable future. 
That part of the agreement builds on a previous Green Budget bid that enables resource people in teachers’ colleges and colleges of education. It builds on not just the money that we achieved those few years ago but also the community volunteers who have a massive environmental passion for environmental education and local government support to provide support for schools to develop environmental education in their curriculum and with their children. Certainly the Enviroschools Programme which was established by the Enviroschools Foundation is enormously successful with many tens of schools involved in Enviroschools and increasingly kura kaupapa is being a part of that project as well. It is an enormously fantastic development and it goes to show that communities really can make real change. 
The Green Party wants to see in that project much greater and more secure support for schools teachers and children making sure that they have access to the financial resources to promote and support environmental education in schools. There needs to be much better coordination of the logistics and policy support for environmental education across the curriculum across schools so that all schools and all children can have access to quality resources. In particular a personal passion of mine is the development of reo support so that more kura kohanga reo and wananga are able to be part of the Enviroschools Programme to develop resources for them for environmental education that truly recognise and reflect kaitiakitanga—the tikanga of Maori the indigenous people of this country—in environmental education and for that to flow on into the mainstream schools as well so that those values are part of our environmental understanding. 
Children need information and skills if they are to grow into responsible caring adults who recognise the limitations on our planet. Environmental education is the No. 1 key way of making sure that happens. It is about building strong personal responsibility in every young person to make sure they understand their personal connection to the world around them. It is about them recognising the power of collective action—that together with their personal responsibility and that of others they can make a real difference to the world around them. Finally it is about instilling in them the deepest respect for the limits of our environment to provide for us so that they are able to ensure that our environment will continue to provide for us all well into the future.