Kedgley Sue: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Kedgley Sue: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:651;Page:1026] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 On behalf of the Green Party I congratulate you Mr Speaker on your new role. I thank the Clerk’s Office for its excellent management of this House. I thank our brilliant and hard-working staff everyone who supported the Green Party this year the activists we work with on many issues and all of the staff in Parliament who support us in this place—the travel office security staff select committee staff Hansard reporters messengers Bellamy’s staff cleaners and of course the wonderful librarians in the reference library. We wish them all a wonderful and well-deserved Christmas break. 
On behalf of the Green Party I welcome all new MPs who have joined us in this House. We welcome the commitment and passion they bring. Parliament feels energised by their presence here. The Green Party has already signalled its intention to work constructively with all parties in this House wherever we can find common ground. We intend to be a positive principled political force in this House focused on the future and the world our children will inherit rather than the next election cycle. 
But we have been alarmed frankly at some of the undemocratic goings-on in this House over the past few weeks—bills tabled in the dead of night introduced before MPs have had the opportunity to read them and rammed through the House without any select committee scrutiny. We hope this does not signal a new and unwelcome pattern of undermining democratic processes of this House that former colleagues fought jealously for. We need to remember that our Parliament does not have the safeguards and checks on the abuse of power that other Parliaments have. We do not have a written constitution a second House or formal separation of powers between the executive and legislature. That is why under the old first-past-the-post electoral system many democratically elected Parliaments ended up as elected dictatorships. MMP with the presence of a range of parties in Parliament is a safeguard against a Government’s ability to ram its agenda through Parliament in an undemocratic way. So the Green Party will vigorously campaign to keep MMP next year. 
The year 2008 has been a good year for the Green Party. We have emerged strengthened and invigorated by the presence of three more MPs in the House and pleased to be the third-largest party in our Parliament. We have clocked up many impressive achievements this year such as the passage of the Waste Minimisation Bill and of course we had five members’ bills passed into law in the last term. 
But we are worried at the continuing focus of the House this year on short-term issues at the expense of long-term threats to our very survival. We are worried that this was a year when the global financial meltdown crowded out debate on all other issues and put climate change on the backburner when the reality is that the meltdown of ice on the North and South Poles will have far more impact on our future than any banking collapse. The American Government has spent more than US$4 trillion this year in response to the financial crisis but meanwhile 40 million more people have been plunged into chronic hunger this year as a result of the global food crisis. The money that Governments have pledged to bail out the banks would have financed the world’s Millennium Development Goals many times over but instead of meeting them many Governments have failed to meet even the commitments they pledged at the World Food Security Conference this year. 
Earlier this week I attended a conference in Asia on climate change and food security along with three colleagues from this House. It was a chastening experience to represent New Zealand at a conference on climate change. Our clean green image is pivotal to our identity as New Zealanders as well as being worth billions of dollars to our economy. It was frankly offensive and embarrassing to have to admit that our Government was backtracking on climate change and has not even decided whether it is real and that our much-cherished clean green image is fast becoming something of a sham. 
Let me assure this House that Asian parliamentarians are not sitting around debating whether climate change is real; many Asian countries are experiencing the reality of climate-induced natural disasters on a routine basis. Floods have destroyed crops in many countries this year Indonesia and Viet Nam are experiencing six to seven major climatic disasters every year and the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly receding which is affecting rivers and water supplies throughout the Asianregion. The Viet Namese Government is well aware that climate change could devastate the most fertile food-producing areas of Viet Nam and affect 20 million people living in its low-lying coastal areas. Bangladesh knows that a 1 metre rise in the sea level would inundate 17 percent of its country destroy much of its food bowl and displace 15 million people while people from the Maldives islands told us that climate change will cause their low-lying country like many Pacific nations to disappear off the face of the Earth. 
Asian parliamentarians are not sitting around discussing whether climate change is real. They know that once global warming really kicks in no country will be immune from its effects and they know that millions or more likely billions of poor people living in developing countries will be the hardest hit. They will suffer the terrible consequences of a problem they did not contribute to and they will have no choice but to continue to live in disaster-prone areas. 
There was an interesting debate at the conference about the idea that countries with high per capita emissions such as New Zealand—with the sixth-worst carbon footprint in the world—should have added global responsibilities for combating climate change and assisting low carbon emitting countries and a special obligation to take in the millions of climate change refugees who will need somewhere to live. So even if we were to follow the advice of Rodney Hide and put our collective heads in the sand we would not be immune from the devastating global effects of climate change. We will be called to account by future generations and we will be called on to assist the billions of people who will suffer if we do not respond quickly enough not to mention the large numbers of climate refugees who may turn to New Zealand as a safe haven to escape to. 
But instead of thinking about these issues we are debating in this Parliament whether climate change is real. How embarrassing! Our Government is trying to weaken the post - Kyoto protocol regime systematically overturning all the progress we have made on sustainability issues and climate change undermining our renewable energy industry and our biofuel industry and getting rid of the billion-dollar home insulation fund to name but a few. Frankly I cannot understand why the Government is doing this. Members of National and ACT have children so why are they condemning their children to an uncertain and perilous future? How will they explain to their children that when they were in Government they procrastinated and dithered in the face of the greatest threat the world has faced? 
Let us face it: the world is in a precarious state. The glaciers are melting the oceans are becoming more acidic the bees are disappearing and everywhere there are signs of ecological collapse. Our forebears did not realise the environmental consequences of many of the actions that they took. They did not realise that pesticides would poison our earth and our rivers or that chlorofluorocarbons would destroy the ozone layer. But we do. We know that all too well. We are fully aware of what will happen if we do not reduce the impact of climate change. We will have no excuses to fall back on. Let us hope that after our much-needed Christmas break when hopefully we will all be refreshed this Government will have a change of heart and that 2009 will see New Zealand back on track again able to hold its head high in global conferences and meetings around the world meeting our global obligations and our obligations to our children and facing the challenge of climate change head-on.