Norman Russel William: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Norman Russel William: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:653;Page:2069] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I speak to the Budget Policy Statement 2009 and I acknowledge Craig Foss as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. In the Green Party’s opinion this Government’s Budget Policy Statement lacks a vision and a plan for the way New Zealand can address the two crises facing our country and our planet—the economic crisis and the sustainability crisis. If we are to respond to these twin crises we need to understand them. The economic crisis is the result of the conflation on the one hand of the global financial crisis due to lack of regulation of the financial sector especially the non-banking sector and on the other hand there were spiking commodity prices especially in oil due to the limits of growth on a finite planet. 
The first factor the global financial crisis due to deregulation of the non-banking sector cries out for stronger regulation. We need much stronger regulation of that sector. But I will leave it there. The second factor—spiking commodity prices—is directly linked to the sustainability crisis which is the other problem we have. There is only so much oil there is only so much nitrogen fertiliser made from natural gas there is only so much phosphate that we can mine in Western Sahara and import into New Zealand and there is only so much arable land on which we can grow food. The atmosphere has only so much capacity to absorb our greenhouse pollution until the stable climate in which our civilisation evolved is seriously disrupted. There is only so much water under the Canterbury Plains and the Waikato River has only finite capacity to absorb our waste before it becomes dangerous even for stock to drink from as is now the case in 75 percent of the catchment. 
These twin crises—the economic and the ecological—must be addressed together. But this Government and sadly much like the previous Labour Government still does not get it as evidenced in this Budget Policy Statement. It is to address these twin crises that the Green Party has proposed a Green New Deal for New Zealand as an alternative to the Budget Policy Statement. If as the Prime Minister states we are to borrow $40 billion from our children—the ones who will have to pay it back—then we should invest wisely. We should invest wisely with our faces looking towards the future that those children will inherit rather than the past. The Greens believe that the economic stimulus should be invested in clean energy generation. We should look at smart meters combined with smart tariffs research and development more State housing fixing up our cold damp houses a modern public transport system reafforestation high-speed broadband low-input sustainable agriculture cleaning up rivers education and more. These initiatives would create jobs and start to make the transition to a sustainable economy and society. Our children will thank us for these investments and they will understand why we put them into debt. They will inherit green jobs in sustainable industries that will be profitable and export to the world. They will not be locked into a dinosaur economy of fossil fuels greenhouse emissions and putrid rivers and lakes. 
One of the issues addressed in the Finance and Expenditure Committee report on the Budget Policy Statement is the issue of oil dependence. I think that this is important to address because it is a good example of one of the key problems with the Budget Policy Statement. The Minister of Transport the Hon Steven Joyce put up the argument that we currently travel to work by car therefore the Government will borrow tens of billions of dollars to build more motorways. Now there is an element of honesty and clarity in this argument and I appreciate that. But it does not mean that the argument is right. Just because we currently do things one way does not mean we will always do things that way. Once upon a time the National Government passed the Building Act 1991 which resulted in the building of tens of thousands of houses that did not keep out the rain. That does not mean we should always build houses that do not keep out the rain. Just because we currently do something does not mean we should keep doing it that way. So the main argument put forward by National is not right. Just because our current transport system is dependent on roads cars and oil does not mean that it should stay that way. We are human—we have the capacity to change direction if we see a good reason to do so. 
So is there a good reason to change? I would argue that there is. Oil is a finite resource. It will get more expensive—just ask the International Energy Agency which has been very clear about this. As the world economy recovers oil costs will increase again. We spent $7.5 billion importing oil last year—$7.5 billion that we had to find from somewhere. It adds to our trade deficit and to our current account deficit which is ballooning. It adds to the cost of congestion which may be $750 million a year in Auckland alone. Of course burning all this oil adds to the GDP and economic activity but that does not make it good. This oil dependency is a major structural weakness in the New Zealand economy and it does not have to be so. We also have a major problem with greenhouse emissions which have increased by 25 percent over 1990 levels. They increased under the former National Government and then increased dramatically under Labour. It is very expensive for us as a country to buy carbon credits—it may be half a billion dollars to cover this increase in emissions. 
So we have three good reasons to question the wisdom of deepening the current transport model—congestion oil import costs and greenhouse emissions—and the costs of the three are both economic and human. Public transport walking and cycling all relieve congestion reduce oil dependence and reduce our greenhouse emissions. These are all of tremendous benefit to the New Zealand economy. So is it good enough for the Minister to say that this is the way we have always done things in transport and this is how the Government will keep doing them. Of course it is not. The Government appears to be pragmatic but the reality is that it is the slave of a defunct 1950s theory about transport. It is a deeply unsustainable theory. The apparent pragmatism of this Government is one of its attractive elements. It has adopted some measures from the left that have wrong-footed some on the other side. But is it really pragmatic to throw all our precious borrowed money at new motorway projects across the country? Or is the Government in the thrall of the pro-road pro-oil theorists but does not even realise it? 
John Maynard Keynes—a man who is coming back into vogue in current times—had something very important to say about the issue of ideology and pragmatism. In 1935 he wrote: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority who hear voices in the air are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”—so said Keynes. This Government as seen in the Budget Policy Statement remains in the thrall of the ideology of exponential growth—growth in the use of resources like oil and growth in the production of pollution like greenhouse gases. It is hardly surprising that it remains in the thrall of the theory of the growth ideology; it has after all dominated our culture for two centuries or more. But the problem with this ideology is that we live on a finite planet. We simply cannot continue to indefinitely increase our use of resources on a finite planet. The growth ideology is the academic scribbler that stands behind this Government’s Budget Policy Statement. That is the ideology that this Government is a slave to. The growth ideology is the defunct economist to which this Government remains ideologically committed. It is not pragmatic; it is not wise; and it is not in our children’s interests. 
It is time for a Green New Deal. It is not too late there is still hope. Let me finish with a quote from one of New Zealand’s great ecologists Geoff Park—a true patriot who had a message of hope for us who died last week and who wrote about the loss of our lowland forests and his hope that one day we will understand what we have lost. Geoff Park said: “The plains forests have come within the final few acres of vanishing—tragic in one sense yet magic in another. We still have a chance. The last embers of the verdant country that drew our first comers ashore must lead us towards a concept of survival for ourselves: that we must live with the rest of nature or die with the rest of nature.” The Greens want a Budget Policy Statement that will let us live.