Fitzsimons Jeanette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the amendment to the amendment be amended by omitting all the words after “this House has no confidence” and substituting the following words: “in the Labour-led minority Government because of its determination to allow the release of genetically engineered organisms exposing our health our environment and our economy to significant risks; because despite there being some positive elements in the Government’s programme its economic policies fail to address poverty and inequality; because it has failed to demonstrate any significant leadership in its programme of action on sustainable development fails to invest in our young people with a tax funded tertiary education system continues to perpetuate treaty grievances in areas such as Ngawha; and continues to erode New Zealand’s sovereignty by using New Zealand forces to support US-led operations in the Gulf by trading away New Zealand’s rights through secret GATS negotiations and by supporting corporate globalisation policies which endanger our unique identity.  
As we sit here in the safety and comfort of this House all our debates and deliberations are overshadowed by the horror of an imminent attack by the world’s mightiest military power on what has become an oppressed poor and suffering Third World country. Yet while New Zealand and the world talk of war the Prime Minister remains fixated with abstract concepts like “growth”. What is not recognised is that this Government’s No. 1 goal of 4 percent cumulative annual growth in the size of the economy—a goal shared by all Western nations and many others as well—leads inevitably to resource wars of which this war to grab more oil is just one example. What is missing from the Government’s agenda today is a recipe for growth in human and ecological well-being. Surely that is the task of Government but instead it is replaced with an abstraction—growth in gross domestic product (GDP). A number has been placed on that abstraction—4 percent a year. Over the last 3 years that number has become the overriding goal of this Government. Improvements in human and ecological well-being reduction of poverty and sustaining the planet are now to be allowed only if they contribute to meeting that 4 percent.  
The transition has been very subtle. The incoming government in 1999 seemed to have a genuine desire to work for real social and ecological goals. Economic growth was a means not an end. That is why the Greens supported it on confidence and supply. That has subtly changed so that 4 percent annual cumulative growth in GDP is the end and everything else must serve it. GDP is both too narrow and too generalised to measure anything useful. It does not tell us whether the poor are getting poorer and if most of society’s wealth is held by a few. It does not tell us if we are paying more and more to control pollution and crime rather than for real goods and services. It does not tell us if we are plundering the environment to produce short-term monetary returns. That message on which Green parties around the world were founded and on which many eminent economists have written has been distorted by those who wish to ridicule it—including I am sad to say by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance. They claim that the Greens are anti-growth. We are of course anti the growth of poverty pollution war working hours child abuse diabetes heart disease and the rest. But those kinds of growth all contribute to the growth measured with the simplistic GDP ruler. The sort of growth all other parties are striving for is increased by oil spills smoking car crashes murders dog attacks and toxic wastes.  
Let me now tell the House about a Green recipe for growth. We need growth in education and training for our young people. We need growth in preventive health-care; in low-cost affordable housing and public transport; in the minimum wage; in the use of rail and coastal shipping for freight; in solar wind and wood energy systems; in a huge range of organic growing techniques to reduce the use of pesticides and add export value to our food products; in cleaner production technologies in industry; in waste recycling and reuse; in more diverse forestry species; and in clean and employment-rich ways of processing the wall of wood. These things will not happen as a result of a generalised goal to grow GDP. They will only happen if they are targeted directly. Alongside that growth we must accept that there needs to be shrinkage in some industries—fossil fuels pesticides long-distance trucking armaments tobacco one-trip containers and other products designed for obsolescence. There have been many attempts to quantify the effects of continued growth in resource consumption and pollution. They all show that we are near the end of the line.  
 A 4 percent compound growth rate gives a doubling time of less than 18 years. So unless we are very careful about what we allow to grow and what must shrink we are talking about twice our present demand for energy by 2020 and four times by 2038. Can we double our roading sewage and water systems in 18 years then quadruple them in another 18 years? Where would we put them? Can we double our use of pesticides plastics steel? What will our cities look like in 2020 with double the area of asphalt? What would they look like in 2038 with quadruple the present paved area? What do we do with the mountains of obsolete products and the myriad of useless plastic junk that plagues our lives? Do we seriously not care whether our garden grows weeds or vegetables so long as it grows fast? When we look at it like that it is patently absurd to focus solely on growing the physical economy. Even services use stuff. Twice as many lattes use twice as much water and detergent to clean cups. Quality of life is what matters and on some level we all know that no amount of television fast food or even good coffee can substitute for clean air clean water and safe food or for the sense that how we earn our livelihood is also helping create a better world.  
If we target all the social and ecological improvements we need and ensure that all of them can occur within the limits of the biosphere to produce resources and absorb wastes we will have a sustainable development strategy. This Government cannot have a sustainable development strategy because it has specifically made it subservient to that abstract goal of 4 percent. Instead the Prime Minister talks about sustainable growth which means growth that never stops rather than growth that sustains human society and ecological systems. So I was deeply disappointed but not at all surprised to read the document that purports to be an action plan for sustainable development released at the end of January. It is basically a rewrite of existing documents like the growth and innovation strategy. It has no time frames no targets no practical steps and no plans to change the culture of the public service to understand and practice sustainability.  
We are pleased to see some targeting of good growth in the Prime Minister’s statement. We welcome statements about making more students eligible for the living allowance help for low-income families more information and opportunities for education about the treaty and more funding for mental health but they are broad statements with no specifics and we will have to wait to see whether they mean anything real. So many aspects of our well-being will be denied the growth they need while the dominant goal is just to make the economy 4 percent bigger every year. The list is long—the rights protections and opportunities that New Zealanders are being denied and will be further denied as this Government continues selling out the country’s right to control its own destiny to the transnational corporations that pull the strings behind the scenes at the World Trade Organization. The Prime Minister makes much of the success of the film festival in making triumphs like  
Whale Rider 
 possible. What a great film yet her Government secretly negotiating further giveaways in the latest General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) round may be about to give foreign film companies the same access to State assistance for film making as New Zealanders. That is what the National Government did in the 1990s when it refused to make GATS reservations on radio and television services. That means that the current Labour Government is not able to implement the Labour Party’s policy on local content quotas for broadcasting because it would breech our GATS obligations.  
The current round of GATS requests made of New Zealand includes the whole category of environmental services. That includes nature biodiversity and landscape protection services. In other words foreign corporations are seeking the right to replace our Department of Conservation and gain control of and profit from the care of our natural heritage. That would be truly selling New Zealand’s birthright and for what? Every time we give a foreign corporation the right to provide and to profit from providing public-good services like water supply education conservation research and development health and broadcasting on an equal footing with New Zealand public providers we effectively deskill and disempower ourselves. We also worsen our economic situation as these corporations repatriate surpluses that were once available for reinvestment in New Zealand. We further narrow an economic skill base that has already been shrunk by our obsession with exporting agricultural commodities because we can batter open markets for them via the World Trade Organization rather than diversifying into knowledge-based primary and secondary production and producing quality rather than quantity and high-value rather than high-volume exports.  
The Green Party will continue its efforts this year to prevent the release of genetically engineered (GE) crops and animals into our environment our farms and our food supply. We will also continue to explain to the people of New Zealand why this Government cannot see the obvious economic truth that New Zealand’s future prosperity lies in supplying what the world market wants and that is GE free clean and natural food. As the Prime Minister has just said it is repositioning up the value chain as a supplier of highly desired and high-value goods and services except that the Government is about to close the door to that opportunity in October by lifting the moratorium on the release of genetically modified organisms. It cannot see it because in its pursuit of perpetual growth it has set its sights on a free-trade agreement with the United States and it knows that a precondition of that is free entry for US GE crops and products and no labelling of GE foods. The New Zealand public has made it clear in survey after survey that it does not want our farming our exports our food or our environment compromised in this way but that is non-negotiable for this Government because of its prior commitment to pleasing a foreign power.  
It was that desire to please President Bush that committed us to joining a war against the people of Afghanistan—a fruitless war in terms of its supposed objective of catching Osama bin Laden. Now the focus has shifted from Afghanistan and the promised reconstruction is not happening. A destroyed country is largely being left to rot while US adventurism turns elsewhere. The obsession not just of New Zealand but also of other countries—particularly the US—with growth is about to plunge us into yet another and worse war against an already impoverished and suffering people. There are two reasons for that. First there is nothing like war to boost the economy. There is no activity that wastes stuff as fast as war does. It wipes out buildings water supplies farms communications systems ships and aircraft and uses up weapons that are nearing their use-by date. That stuff has to be replaced and replacing it will grow the economy. It is no surprise that some economists have concluded that the United States economy cannot keep growing without war to fuel that growth.  
Secondly I want to refer to a very insightful comment by US energy guru Amory Lovins. He said: “If we had put our kids in energy efficient cars in the seventies we would not be putting them in tanks today.” He said it in 1991 about the Gulf war but it is just as true now. The US economy serving 4 percent of the world’s people uses a quarter of the world’s oil. That is not just because Americans are rich but also because they are wasteful. If the US had used state-of-the-art energy efficiency technology in its vehicles the US would still have been self-sufficient in oil and would have had no need to try to control Middle East politics. The so-called leader of the free world is a man who apparently would rather accept hundreds of thousands of dead children than drive a smaller car. Put as starkly as that our moral compass ought to be clear. We should make no mistake this proposed invasion—I refuse to call it a war it takes two to fight—is about control of oil. It is about a refusal to adopt a sane energy policy to use it more frugally and develop renewables. Why else would the US treat Iraq so differently from North Korea? Even by the Bush administration’s own surreal standards this sends a bizarre message to rogue States: disarm at least partly allow inspection and be invaded; acquire weapons of mass destruction and be treated with kid gloves. 
 The brutality of Saddam against his own people and his possession of horrendous weapons was simply not an issue when the US was funding and arming him against Iran. What has changed? The weapons search and the demand for evidence has become a charade. It must be intensely frustrating for the US not to be able to say publicly to Saddam: “Look we know you have the weapons because we have the receipts.” John Pilger points out that the reason the US wanted to edit Iraq’s weapons declaration to the UN is that it contains the names of 150 US British and other Western companies that supplied Iraq with its nuclear chemical biological and missile technology—many of them in illegal transactions.  
So where should New Zealand stand? Let us remember for a minute what is really going on here. A few men in a room on the other side of the world have decided to drop 800 Cruise missiles on Baghdad in 48 hours. There are not 800 military targets in Baghdad. It is blanket-bombing—carpet-bombing—they are planning. The World Health Organization has estimated that that will produce half a million injured needing hospital treatment which will not be available—and that is not counting the dead. More than half the Iraqi population is under the age of 14 so that is a quarter of a million primary school children and babies burned mangled and shattered. Those men making the decision and the pilots of the planes will not have to look at them; neither will our TV screens dare to show them. Instead people will talk of “collateral damage” and “unfortunate civilian casualties”. Those in this House who do not want to think graphically about what that will mean should leave now as I intend to read a sentence from John Pilger’s personal experience of a village bombed out by B52s: “The children’s skin had folded back like parchment revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood while the eyes intact stared straight ahead. A small leg had been so contorted by the blast that the foot seemed to be growing from a shoulder. I vomited.” Those were not Arab children. They were Vietnamese. They were the reason our Prime Minister and many of the present Labour Government marched in the street against another US attack on a third world country. Where will they stand now?  
I have been puzzled at the Prime Minister’s stance so far. We can be relieved that she has not supported Howard’s rush to war alongside Bush and Blair but neither will she condemn it. We have not even seen a condemnation of President Bush’s stated intention to use first-strike nuclear weapons. She has behaved more as a media commentator assessing the likelihood of war than as an actor in the drama capable of influencing it. It is not enough to say that we will go with the UN. Even if the US can arm-twist another eight nations—four of whom themselves possess weapons of mass destruction and four of whom may be dependent on the US for aid or trade—that is not international endorsement. It is a breach of the UN charter and it does not make an immoral war moral. There is still no concrete evidence that the weapons exist. The sole grounds for attack seem to be the breach of the UN resolution in terms of cooperation with the weapons inspectors. Israel has been in serious breach of a UN resolution for a very long time and the five permanent members have themselves been in breach of UN disarmament resolutions but no one is suggesting invading any of them.  
This afternoon Helen Clark has called on Iraq to move rapidly to cooperate with the weapons inspectors to prevent war. That is fine but why does she not also call on the US to follow the spirit of the UN charter? Why does she not call on Israel to comply with UN resolutions? Why does she not call on the nuclear states to comply with UN disarmament resolutions and the non-proliferation treaty? What sort of one-sided message is New Zealand sending? Germany and France are using some imagination and trying alternatives. A greatly stepped-up inspection backed up with UN peacekeeping troops has the potential to disarm Saddam without killing the Iraqi people. We should support their initiative. What the US wants is our moral support for invasion and whether the people we send are military or medical does not matter. Only strong and public diplomatic efforts to prevent an attack and complete condemnation of it if we fail will uphold the values on which Helen Clark and the Labour Party campaigned in the Vietnam days. It would be great to see the Prime Minister join us in the streets on Saturday when in most New Zealand cities and many countries of the world massive public protest about a brutal and unnecessary war will erupt. Let us hear it now from our Government—an unequivocal condemnation of this proposed butchery a refusal to have any part in it a refusal to see it as inevitable a commitment to peace and justice and a recognition that unless we develop our economy in a sustainable way war will always be inevitable.  
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I too want to begin my comments this afternoon by talking about the situation in Iraq not because I agree with the sentiments that have just been expressed but because I profoundly believe that whatever the course of events in that troubled State over the next few weeks and months the impact on the dreams and aspirations that have been expressed by various leaders in the House this afternoon for this country will be influenced by that course of events.  
I want to make United Future’s position clear with regard to this issue. We do not favour unilateral action against Iraq by any State. We believe very strongly that any action should be on the basis of a specific and fresh UN mandate dealing with the issues at hand. I have no doubt at all about the evil the treachery and the savagery of the Hussein regime. I have no qualms at all about saying that it needs to be removed in the interests of democracy and of the freedom of the people of Iraq. But since 1945 our world has been developing a rules-based approach to international conflict to try to avoid a repetition of the horrific events of 1939-45 and 1914-18. Because we live in a rules-based system under the aegis of the United Nations it is appropriate that every State from the biggest and most powerful to the smallest and the weakest abides by that structure. Otherwise if we accept the point of view being advanced by for example the leader of the ACT party—the Donald Rumsfeld of the South Pacific—that the United States has some moral superiority to be able to embark upon an unsanctioned invasion simply because of its power and its prestige we are one very short step away from saying that we sanction in effect a return to international anarchy.  
I think that would be an extraordinarily retrograde step for this country. New Zealand was there at the birth of the United Nations. The great role that Peter Fraser played looms large in the history of that organisation. The contribution we have made over the years through the work of successive New Zealand diplomats foreign ministers and Prime Ministers to the work of the General Assembly and the Security Council makes us a United Nations State. We are proud of that and we ought to be confident enough now to say that we place our faith and trust in the structure we have had so great a part in establishing and in the place in which we have reposed so much confidence over the years.  
If there is a specific mandate issued now by the United Nations Security Council and / or its General Assembly in the light of the Blix reports or other reports about the situation in Iraq then yes as a good United Nations member we have a responsibility to play a part. But that part needs to be in relation to our traditional capacities in medical aid or the provision of logistical support or in the areas that we have shown in recent years we do very well—peace making and / or peacekeeping such as we did in Bosnia and East Timor. But having said all that it now seems patently obvious that all of us are uttering mere words because the decision has been made. An invasion is imminent regardless of the attitude of the United Nations General Assembly and regardless of the attitude of other States. When reputable European States can be dismissed as “old Europe” I think we are at the start of a very deliberate slope towards international conflict.  
Two issues loom large from this potential crisis even assuming that the most optimistic assessment is correct that a quick—I think the term is “surgical”—strike can be made the offending parties removed and life returned to a semblance of order in that troubled State. 
 The two issues that remain—and no one is really talking about them—are firstly what actually happens then. Who will lead the recovery in Iraq? Will it be an American-led mission—a sort of General MacArthur of the first years of the 21st century imposed as a proconsul because that worked in Japan after the war—to bring Iraq back to the path of democracy and freedom or will there be a role for the United Nations in forging a new tradition in that country? I believe there is a role for New Zealand to play in arguing strongly forcefully and effectively for a concerted United Nations effort to lead the rebuilding of Iraq not for a supporting role to be played in retreat of an American position.  
The other question—touched on briefly I think by the previous speaker but then moved away from—that has been utterly untested during this whole crisis is whether the United States which has taken such a strong and definite leadership position in respect of the horrific situation in Iraq will be prepared to take an equally strong and definite position in respect of the fundamental issue that underpins all the strife we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the fears about al-Qaeda and its links to international terrorism etc. Will the United States be prepared to use its influence power and prestige to bring about a lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis? It is that tension—that festering sore from whatever perspective one views it—that is giving rise to a whole range of other issues that we now confront firstly in the aftermath of September 11 secondly in Afghanistan and now by association in Iraq.  
I say that if we were really serious if we were really determined to bring this thing to an end we would be using our diplomatic persuasion in New Zealand and the United States would be using its political power and prestige to ensure that that fundamental issue was addressed and resolved and that we do not spend our time fighting around horrific side issues in the future—as I fear this one is about to become. It is sobering to think that we might be a few short days away from conflict but there is still time for people of goodwill common sense and clear heads to have some influence in terms of preventing horrific tragedy and also ensuring that the problems in Iraq in the first instance and in the wider international community in the second instance are dealt with.  
Turning to the remainder of the statement this afternoon I have been intrigued to note that already this year we have seen a great deal of comment about political direction. A move to the right an end to welfarism or our getting back into the top half of the OECD have all been slogans paraded around as offering the vision and the hope for this country and the direction for its future. But I have to say that every single one of them misses entirely the point. A political vision only has relevance if it is achievable and if it actually relates to the immediate reality of people’s lives.  
The vision that United Future has—of “home” being a great place to live in—is relevant because it talks to people about a common experience for all of them not just an abstract concept that floats through the media airways. We know that strong and successful families do lead to strong and successful communities and from there to strong and successful cities and nations. By recognising in that way the critical role of families we also more importantly recognise the type of country that they deserve and thus we set the climate for the way we will act and the policies we will seek to follow over a whole range of areas. For too long we have actually put the cart before the horse: we have worried about the policy and the point we are trying to get to before we decide what we are trying to achieve.  
I say that our challenge for New Zealand is to make this country one that every single Kiwi whatever his or her origin status age or gender is proud to call home. Wherever Kiwis may be in the world and whatever stage of their life they are at this is their home because of the values it espouses. We will therefore back any policies that will achieve that sense of purpose amongst New Zealanders and contribute to building that sense of home being important and the family being critical and we will oppose measures that do not give effect to that.  
Against that background I want to consider a few specific issues that have been raised already today because they all impact upon our ability to have strong and effective communities and a strong and effective nation. The first one is the issue of transport. New Zealand’s transport infrastructure is not just a mechanical thing but is about the way people live their lives and do their business; and—as I think the Minister would be amongst the first to acknowledge—it is horribly out of date and stretched to its limit at the present time. Our roading network is inadequate and the debates we saw over the summer period about funding levels priorities and everything else simply reinforced the point that significant change is required. The road transport legislation on which we have cooperated with the Government and which is before the House at the moment will go part of the way to achieve that. But also we need to be much more proactive locally in terms of determining what the visions are what the priorities might be and how they might be achieved. We need to look both locally and nationally at more innovative solutions for bridging the funding gaps.  
The crisis we perceive with our rail system is another issue that needs to be addressed not just in terms of the issues about who owns the track or the network or whether we renationalise Tranz Rail—something that United Future does not support incidentally—but also in terms of the critical role of urban passenger transport in allowing people to commute and go about their daily lives safely efficiently and effectively. That package must also be brought to pass this year.  
The issue that will become a big one over the next couple of months is the question of the future of our international airline. I know that submissions to the Commerce Commission on the Qantas – Air New Zealand proposal will close this week and the implications of that decision whichever way it goes are massive. Are we to have a genuinely competitive international aviation environment in the Trans-Tasman market and domestically or are we to be bound to a high-cost monopoly that may well provide efficient services but at huge costs and with a lack of competitive opportunity for New Zealanders? That issue is one that we will need to focus on particularly strongly this year.  
In recent days an associated issue is becoming clear: what is our strategy to be post the Maui gasfield era? I was somewhat worried this morning to hear the Minister of Energy speaking I thought quite effectively on radio—maybe it was yesterday morning—about some of the issues that will spin off from that. When he talked about the fact that in order to meet the shortfall in Maui production over the next few years till its phase-out we will be looking at something like a 7 percent net increase in electricity costs I began to wonder about the implications of that not just for the well-being of families but for our whole social infrastructure.  
 It seems to me that in the critical area of transport and energy we have a huge amount of thinking to do in terms of what the future picture will look like and how we will get there and also in terms of both the trade-offs that will be necessary between transport modes and energy sources and the capability of taxpayers and individuals to meet any additional cost impositions. I think that that will have a huge impact in the medium term on what we might loosely describe as social cohesion community unity and our ability to deliver effectively for New Zealanders.  
A related issue—of a short-term nature I suspect but equally important—is the continuing run-down of the ambulance services in rural and provincial New Zealand. Mention was made by an earlier speaker of the relevance of the health issue for many New Zealanders. For many people that is not so much in terms of the big issue but how the system responds to a particular crisis. If the ambulance service is not available to whisk someone to the accident and emergency department when he or she needs it—and for many people that is the level of their involvement with health—our failure to be able to deliver that will impact upon that person’s perception of the achievement of the health sector.  
Time will run away from me but I want to pick up one issue that was touched on in the statement from the Prime Minister. I was very pleased to hear the reference late in the speech to the work the Government intends to do this year on what is described as the work-life balance. I think that also goes to the heart of the way in which our communities will be structured—the relevant worth of work and leisure time how that balance can be effectively struck its impact on families and communities and the consequent need for resources. I believe in terms of future thinking that that will be a particularly critical area of our society.  
One issue of community safety that is contemporary today is the issue of dangerous dogs. I support the move that was foreshadowed by the Government to refer the legislation back to a select committee. But I want to put a somewhat novel solution forward that we might consider. It seems to me that muzzling dogs is fine but we should treat dogs in the same way as for instance we treat a motor vehicle in the possession of a drunk driver and say to the owner of a dog that maims a little child that he or she not the dog has perpetrated a serious assault and that that is the charge he or she will face for owning a dangerous animal and not having it on a leash or whatever. If the owner is charged with assault with intent to injure or something of that status then maybe we will start to deal with the problem. It is easy to destroy a violent dog—I have no problem with that—but that lets the owner of that animal escape relatively scot-free. We could shift the onus to say just as we say to a drunken driver who drives a car into someone that he or she has effectively committed a serious assault or manslaughter then so too the same parallel applies in the case of the dog owner. Maybe then just then we might start to get some action and maybe we might start to see an end to the nonsense we see every time there is an horrific attack of this nature of a public clamour for tougher action and a knee-jerk reaction from people who say things like it was a poor dumb animal that did not know any better and we should not be mean to the dog. I think we have to put this issue into a much greater perspective if we are serious about our need to promote community safety.  
My final observation is this. United Future has committed itself to a confidence and supply agreement with this Government to last a full 3-year term because the last thing this country needs is another MMP hiccup. I believe that the arrangement we have made has worked effectively thus far. We will continue to do what we can this year to make the arrangement work effectively in order to ensure that New Zealanders get not only the Government that they voted for at election time but a Government that is stable and is able to deliver on its commitments. In the process of doing so we do accept the challenge of therefore having the obligation of keeping the Government honest. I see the Minister of Social Services and Employment looks anxious at that. But he knows that we have worked amicably to achieve that end over the last few months and we will continue to do so in the future. When the next election comes New Zealanders will be able to test this Government on its full 3 years of achievements and on the extent to which all the members of this Parliament have made our MMP system of Government work effectively. We are determined to play our part in achieving that and we look forward to fulfilling that objective in the year ahead.