Graham Kennedy: Maiden Statements 
Graham Kennedy: Maiden Statements 
[Volume:651;Page:211] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 Tena koutou tena koutou tena tatou katoa. Mr Speaker I greet you and my colleagues in the name of our common spirituality humbled as we are in the sight of the divine whatever we each perceive this to be. I acknowledge the mana whenua on whose land this House stands. I honour my late parents Robert and Patricia Graham whom I and my brothers continue to miss 25 years on. I embrace my two sons David and Christopher and their families. And I acknowledge with tender love and devotion my wife my friend my partner-in-life Marilyn Moir Graham. I acknowledge the two predecessors in my family in whose footsteps I am proud to follow: the Hon Robert Graham who served this House with distinction a century-and-a-half ago and whose hei tiki lies here before me; and the Rt Hon Sir Douglas whose presence on the floor of this Chamber I acknowledge today who left such a profound legacy of dignity and vision in his ministerial career of more recent times with whom the fraternal bond remains forever unbreakable. May their contributions prove everlasting for the future of this nation. 
I am proud to represent the Green Party whose contribution to New Zealand is already considerable with yet more to come. I acknowledge my colleagues in the party whose collective endeavours laid the basis for our electoral success. I acknowledge in particular the peerless contribution to this country of Jeanette Fitzsimons. I pay tribute to the memory of Rod Donald. 
I enter this House imbued with respect for its history fortified by its many achievements. Let us all ensure that this forty-ninth Parliament honours this House not only with the dignity that is its due but with a foresight that empowers it to meet the far-reaching demands of our time. For it is our duty to pass on to the next generation a planet whose physical integrity enables them to advance their own part of the human story. 
To that end it is my belief that this country through a unified resolve and strength of purpose should aspire to the attainment of two related goals: to become a sustainable country and to act as a responsible global citizen. Our human tenure on this Earth is still young. With some five millennia of political experience behind us we stand on the shoulders of perhaps a hundred generations that have gone before whose courage and sacrifice enable us to glimpse the future from the strategic heights where we stand today. Our generation looks back with gratitude mindful of their accumulated trials and labour. Yet as we turn to the future we glimpse the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead. For ours is the first generation to confront problems of a planetary scale—daunting in their complexity seemingly intractable in nature. 
As our human numbers increase our Earth-share diminishes. As our materialistic lifestyle expands our ecological footprint grows ever larger. Humankind today casting precaution to the wind is recording an ecological overshoot beyond the planet’s carrying capacity anthropogenically inducing climate change of unprecedented magnitude and alarming danger. We are drawing down on Earth’s natural resources borrowing forward on the human heritage irretrievably encroaching on our children’s right to inherit the Earth in a natural and sustainable state. It is the uniquely dubious fate of our generation to have broken the eternal promise of intergenerational justice. 
We in New Zealand are part of the problem not yet of the solution. Our individual ecological footprints are three times higher than the global average our carbon emissions almost five times higher. If we offer the world a national ecological surplus it is not through prudent husbandry or modesty of habit on our part but because we are simply few in number. A sustainable world a sustainable country requires a change in mindset. That requires a new world-view a transformational change in individual lifestyle a refashioned approach to governmental management. It is time we measured national success not through mindless material growth but through genuine progress in human well-being. It is time we relinquished our feverish ranking within the OECD and began contributing to the true advancement of the emerging global society. 
Sustainability is the supreme political value of the 21st century. It is not a concept of passing political expediency—a clip-on word for post-economic environmental damage. It is now the categorical imperative of personal behaviour. Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living. The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow. 
With a sustainable economy New Zealand can aspire to be a harmonious society. That is the day we rediscover our egalitarian roots attaining true partnership between Pakeha and tangata whenua. That is the day we reach out to immigrant cultures welcoming their children to these shores where the future beckons in this still young land of ours. That is the day when Aotearoa comes of age. And with a harmonious society this country may then aspire to responsible global citizenship—by honouring our international obligations and never collaborating with those that do not; by thinking of tomorrow’s children and meeting our Kyoto targets today; by showing a true commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world not only through our national zone here at home but more critically in our voting pattern overseas and support for a nuclear weapons convention; by promoting fair trade and aid in the quantity and quality we once promised we would; and by respecting all civilisations and faiths around the world in a spirit of respect and due humility. 
Above all it is time we abided strictly by the global constitution of our times working within coalitions of the lawful rather than the unwilling. Sixty-three years ago our forefathers created the United Nations to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war that twice in their lifetime had brought untold suffering to humankind. Under the UN Charter “war” has been rendered unlawful. Today armed force may no longer be used by member States save in the common interest. By adopting the charter each member State including New Zealand undertakes never to commit aggression. It is time to ensure that we live up to our binding international obligations. It is time that the State responsibility New Zealand has assumed not to commit aggression is implemented in domestic legislation. 
Over the years we have translated international obligations into our own legislation—in 1946 to abide by economic sanctions of the Security Council and in 1987 to forswear nuclear weapons. In 2002 we made it a criminal offence for any New Zealander to commit genocide war crimes or crimes against humanity. Now is the time to take the next step: to make it a crime in domestic law for any New Zealander including its leaders to commit aggression as defined by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1974. This simply requires the adoption by this House of legislation to that effect. If any New Zealand Government were in the future to commit aggression in violation of its obligations under the United Nations Charter it would bring this country into global disrepute incurring unacceptable political shame to this House. In such a situation the moral legitimacy that underpins the jurisdictional authority of that Government will have collapsed with potentially far-reaching implications for its constitutional status. 
We shall not take the critical step towards the future global society until we rise above the constraints of our national sovereignty sharing our judgments our beliefs and our trust in one another as peoples of this world united by our common human values inspired by our common interests and resolved to pursue our common dreams together. Only through a “new patriotism” shall we free ourselves from the bondage of enmities past securing ourselves from the carnage of the kind that those enmities once inflicted upon us. 
Generations gone before have sacrificed for our cherished freedoms—freedom of speech and association freedom to practise our religions freedom from want and freedom from fear. The rights we proclaim—civil and political; economic social and cultural—are matched today by responsibilities that are comparable in scale and shaped for our times. It is the responsibility of each human endowed with reason and conscience compassion and concern to act towards one another in a fraternal spirit in pursuit of the planetary interest with which all legitimate national interests today are compatible. 
Mr Speaker I never knew my uncle. He lies to this day beneath the shifting sands of the Egyptian desert. Lieutenant Colonel Alec Greville 24th Battalion gave his life for his country that we might live in freedom and it was to be hoped secure in the promise of a better future. It is in his name in the exercise of that freedom that I advance these political beliefs that all New Zealanders might find their true destiny in a global unity with a common strength of purpose across all of humankind. I so pledge myself and all my future actions in this House to that end. 
Sitting suspended from 6.04 p.m. to 7 p.m.