Norman Russel: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNorman Russel: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 09 December 2008. Volume:651;Page:46. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party has a vision for Aotearoa New Zealand as a place where people respect each other and the natural world that we share. It is a vision for our country as a healthy peaceful and diverse place. We aspire to build an Aotearoa New Zealand in which we know our different histories and we are secure in our identity—an Aotearoa New Zealand that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The Greens are seeking to build a country in which our children our elders our families and our communities are at the centre of national life and where each person’s unique contribution is valued. The Greens come to this Parliament to strive for a future in which participation justice and quality of life for all are valued over the individual attainment of wealth. We come here to transform our economic system into one that enables people to meet their needs from the bounty of the earth within nature’s limits. We are here because we have seen the damage that is being done to our beautiful country and we believe that indigenous ecosystems need to be restored and replenished.We are here to support all New Zealanders so that life in our country is a celebration of diversity and creativity. We have a vision of a future in which all are able to participate meaningfully in the decisions that affect both them and future generations. Incoming to this House we recognise the rights and interests of those who cannot speak or vote for themselves and we will continue to be the voice for those who have no voice. The Green Party exists so that we can play our role in making these islands a shining light in the world for peace justice sustainability and democracy. That is our vision and that is the vision we will promote in this Parliament over the next 3 years.The Green Party has a tradition in this place of listening to the arguments of others. We have a tradition of working constructively where we find common ground with others in order to make progress towards our vision. These are traditions that we will hold on to in this new Parliament. We also have a tradition of being vigorous advocates for our vision and staunch opponents of those who seek to take our country and our planet in the wrong direction. We will continue to be a staunch voice and those who have come here to oppose sustainability peace justice and democracy will find us formidable opponents. We represent 160000 New Zealanders—about 7 percent of the votes cast—who expect us to behave respectfully in this House. But they also expect us to tell the truth about the state of the world. If that means upsetting some of those in the old grey parties then so be it.This Parliament is of course significantly different from the last: the old grey parties have swapped sides. To National I say congratulations on forming the new Government. National received the votes of 45 percent of New Zealanders; it is an awesome responsibility. We are fortunate to live in a democracy where we can change Governments peacefully based on the will of the majority. With our hearts we hope for the sake of the future of our country that National will use its new-found power wisely and judiciously. With our heads we have doubts as to whether it will have that wisdom. But if National puts up sensible proposals then we will happily work with National to improve them just as we promised to do before the election.To Labour I say congratulations on getting 34 percent of the votes. We had a difficult but sometimes productive relationship with Labour while it was in Government. The negotiations were often ruthless the Government sometimes lacked vision and truth be told many Labour MPs are in awe of the new right. But many Labour MPs are fine people trapped in what seems to us to be an old grey suit. Perhaps we should ask which party the young idealist Michael Joseph Savage would have joined if he had turned up here today. I hope the relationship with Labour can be productive but let Labour make no mistake; the Greens are an independent party of principle and we will not be participating in any shadow Cabinet unlike the Progressive Party.To the Māori Party I say congratulations on winning five of the Māori seats. I know those members wanted to win more seats and the Greens did our best to help them. But that is still a strong foundation. We have a disagreement about tactics with the Māori Party as those members have decided to hitch themselves to the National Government or what should now be called the National - ACT - Māori Party - United Future Government. Every time this Government does something stupid like opposing progress at the climate change talks in Poland its support parties will wear some of that. Time will tell whether the decision to go with the Nats was the right one. We hope the decision will help the land and the people of the land and we wish the Māori Party well.We have worked with ACT cooperatively and respectfully as an MMP party and I hope we can continue to do so. However the ACT ideology does really seem to represent the right wing of the US Republican Party in New Zealand as far as I can tell. The climate change denial the opposition to science the “three strikes” policy the taxpayers’ rights bill and the war for oil are all Republican Party policies that have failed in the United States and ACT is now trying to import them into our country. The US Republicans have just been ousted after the most disastrous presidency inmemory—a long long dark night. They left that country staggering from a financial crisis due to financial deregulation a massive prison problem a massive crime problem an unresolved illegal foreign war a massive debt and so much more. Surely it is time to move on from the policies of the Republican Party.I give greetings to the Hon Jim Anderton and the Hon Peter Dunne and I hope that we can have a constructive relationship with them.In the election campaign the Greens campaigned for our children’s future. The Greens come to this place to be a voice for generations to come and for those who do not have a voice—those who are yet to be born but who will bear the consequences of our actions. To paraphrase Shakespeare fromHenry V: “And some are yet ungotten and unborn that may have cause to curse the Government’s scorn.” Unborn New Zealanders will live to curse this Government if it decides to go into climate change denial. We have already had one ineffective Government on climate change—emissions increased by over 10 percent over the course of the last Government—and we cannot afford to have another one. So New Zealanders as yet ungotten and unborn will curse this Government’s scorn if it continues to stand by as the last one did while our rivers lakes and beaches are polluted. The Resource Management Act is so weak that it provides little protection. Yet this Government so far bleats the mantra of industrial agriculture that it says we must weaken the Resource Management Act and cut out community participation in decision making. The weakening of environmental protection is not in the interests of our society or our economy.The Greens are the voice for the brand of New Zealand—clean and green 100 percent pure. It is a brand that is worth upwards of $1 billion a year in export earnings according to a study commissioned by the Government in 2001. Let us think of the millions of dollars spent on promoting “100% Pure New Zealand” and of the generations of New Zealanders who fought to achieve a nuclear-free New Zealand—our nuclear-free status being the underpinning of the clean and green branding. Why are we trying to throw it all away? It will not work as a tourism strategy to say: “Welcome to New Zealand but don’t swim at our beaches or you’ll get a case of diarrhoea or a skin ear or eye infection.” How can it possibly be in our long-term economic interests to lose our clean and green brand?The problem with the last Government was that it was too scared to take on Federated Farmers and industrial agriculture in order to clean up our rivers and lakes and constrain greenhouse emissions. Is this Government similarly scared? Will this Government sit on its hands while things get worse? Economics and the environment are joined at the hip. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: “It is the environment Stupid.” When we think about where the next wave of innovation and jobs will come from we realise New Zealanders will either lead the world in developing innovative ways to protect the environment or find themselves once again being technology takers—paying for technology developed overseas to reduce greenhouse emissions and clean up rivers.The Republican “Governator” of California talks about the green revolution—the economic transformation that is creating millions of green-collar jobs around the world. New Zealand can be part of the green revolution or we can once again fall prey to the laissez-faire anti-science brigade who say that the market knows best. Well the “market knows best” brigade has just collapsed the global financial system. Smart green solutions that face the science honestly and use innovation and the creativity of ordinary New Zealanders will be our future if the Green Party has anything to do with it. Bright green ideas that deal with the environmental challenges while building new businesses that employ New Zealanders in worthwhile occupations will be the future that the Greens offer to our country.There are those who say that the Greens should speak only about what they call environmental issues but there is no simple division between social and environmental issues. Climate change is the biggest social-justice emergency that this country faces. Millions and millions of inhabitants of planet Earth will die if we do not act. It is an environmental issue; it is a social-justice issue. Protecting our children from violence has been a Green priority from the beginning and it will continue to be so. We make no apologies for that. Sadly the referendum that is coming up on so-called parental discipline will add little to the debate. Poverty will continue to preoccupy the Greens. Even the Treasury briefing to the incoming Government acknowledged that poverty is an obstacle to economic development because the abilities of poor children are never utilised as they never get the chance to do so. Our Prime Minister got a hand up through the welfare State and State housing and now he says he wants to cap that opportunity for others. We need more social housing not a cap on social housing. A society that is divided on itself a society that treats people as a means to an end for the sake of someone else’s profit and an unequal society where the rich eat the future of the poor is not a society that will be able to deal with the challenges of environmental sustainability. By dealing with the environmental challenges we can have a more prosperous society with a better quality of life. That is the virtuous circle.We will also continue to campaign in this Parliament for safe food and country-of-origin labelling just like that of our trading partners. If we do not know where our food comes from how will we avoid a Chinese melamine scandal?Lastly I want to talk about our democracy. The Greens are now firmly established as the third party in our democracy. There are those who would silence the voice of the Greens. During the campaign we saw a shameful collaboration between Labour and National to keep the Greens out of the televised leaders’ debates. The result was a rather uninspiring debate. There are those who are frightened by what the Greens have to say and there are those who are threatened by our truth-telling about the state of the planet and the state of Aotearoa but we will not be silenced. There are those who want to try to silence the Greens by abolishing our proportional voting system and replacing it with some form of undemocratic elected dictatorship like the supplementary-member representation system. If the last election had been run under that system then the Greens would have one seat or possibly two seats in Parliament instead of nine and that is exactly what the enemies of proportional voting want. It is not very different in that sense from first past the post.MMP brings not only a diversity of views but a diversity of people into Parliament. We have more women more members from a Māori background more Pacific Islanders and more Asians in this Parliament as a result of MMP. The enemies of MMP and proportionality want to return us to a time when Parliament was made up of white men in suits. But I warn those with aspirations to silence dissent and diversity that their attempt to get rid of proportional representation will fail. Enough people remember what happened last time. We had an elected dictatorship. Our economy was wrecked and our society was ripped asunder.The Greens have come to this place to progress our vision of an Aotearoa New Zealand that is peaceful just democratic and sustainable. We will be both constructive and staunch as we need to be in order to achieve those goals. It is indeed as Shakespeare would say a case of “Once more unto the breach dear friends once more”.