Norman Russel: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Norman Russel: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 21 December 2011. Volume:677;Page:42. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 In a few days we are about to break for Christmas. Christmas is a time for family sleeping in barbecues trips to the beach and spending time with our mates and families. Our Christmas holiday has its roots firmly in the Jewish and Christian traditions. It is based on a pretty amazing story about the birth of Jesus Christ—God in the flesh as many Christians believe.  
The story of the incarnation of God in a baby born in a stable is remarkable even to me an atheist because it is a story about the distant God of heavens coming down to live amongst us on earth. It is a story about that God decreeing that tyranny on earth and utopia in the afterlife is not acceptable and that freedom and equality must characterise life here on earth as well as the afterlife in heaven. It is the story about the birth of new hope.  
The Christmas story tells us that a saviour of humanity came not as some great warrior or prince but wrapped instead in swaddling cloth a baby born amongst farm animals and in absolute poverty. You know the rest: the shepherds in the field saw a bright star and followed it; three wise men turned up with expensive-sounding gifts. The baby grew up a carpenter in ancient Palestine. He stirred up a lot of trouble later as a young man and was executed by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar as legend has it sometime around 30 AD.  
But the story does not end there. After his death the new hope that sprang from the stable in Bethlehem started to gather steam. Religious and political elites were threatened by the wild growth of a new religious sect committed to living out here on earth the values of their God once worshipped from afar.  
The early Christians shared their resources and lived with greater equality amongst themselves than had earlier been known. They believed that the world here on earth could be a better place for ordinary people. Countless Christians were martyred for their faith such was the threat that they posed to the ruling political and religious elites. By 112 AD even the farmers cursed Christ’s influence. Christian beliefs on idolatry were causing a slump in agricultural markets as people challenged the need to buy animals for ritual sacrifice to Roman emperors and gods.  
Two thousand years later the story of the brief life of Jesus Christ still resonates. That is why Christmas is such an enduring part of our culture. Christmas was the start of some very unlikely trouble and the start of new hope.  
I am not a Christian and there is not historical certainty about the records in the Christian Bible but what I admire about the Christmas story is that it speaks to values that I share including some that make me a little uneasy when speaking from this place of privilege and power. I think you will agree that we are pretty far away from a Palestinian stable. But like all parents particularly those newly acquainted with the role the story of change arriving in the form of a baby has resonance in my life. Whether we are parents grandparents aunties or friends in our children we find our own awe at the beauty of the planet. They show us what it is to be truly open-minded and in their ferocious capacity to learn and grow and change we see that things could truly change and things could truly be better.  
This Christmas we wish for all our babies to have their unquestioning need for love generously met. We wish that all our children be treated with patience and understanding trust and commitment and we wish that all our parents have the time support and resources necessary to give our children the best start in life. For us here in Parliament I wish that we have the intelligence and compassion to choose to make things better for those who depend on us to make the right calls.  
Mahatma Gandhi said this about Jesus Christ: “I believe that Jesus belongs not solely to Christianity but to the entire world to all races and all people.” Gandhi was right: the hopes and values Jesus Christ articulated during the course of his short life are too important to belong only to Christians. They belong to us all believers and non-believers alike. They live within us; they are embedded in our culture. They are reflected in most of the world’s major religions. These are the values that helped lay down the essential nature of what it means to be human and guide us to live a good life—good to ourselves good to one another and good to the world in which we make our livelihoods.  
I identify with the Christianity that teaches love and compassion towards each other especially the most vulnerable: the widows the orphans the sick those in prison. Those values inspired some of the world’s first hospitals orphanages universities and reforms to the way that we treat those who have broken the law.  
 I also identify with the Christianity that demands that we live with truth and justice between one another. Those values challenged the status quo on slavery in Great Britain and moved Martin Luther King to march for equal rights for African-Americans. Here in our home it was through applying those same values that Michael Joseph Savage turned the State on its head in an attempt to provide cradle-to-grave security from poverty and despair. In fact the very first act of the new Savage Government was to grant a special Christmas bonus payment to the unemployed. Now there was a true moment of Christmas in the New Zealand Parliament. It gave birth to new hope that our political economy could be bent to protect the vulnerable. That was applied Christianity.  
Finally I identify with the Christianity that teaches an awe and respect for the natural world—the Christianity that says to tread sacredly through nature because God incarnated himself in the world through the person of Jesus Christ. St Francis of Assisi wrote sermons for the birds and taught us to live simply and value nature for its own sake. Listen to the dying words of Father Zosima a character in the last work of Dostoevsky the great Christian novelist. He said: “Love all God’s creation the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf every ray of God’s light. Love the animals love the plants love everything. If you love everything … you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.” 
Those values of love generosity and a reverence for nature should not sound so out of place in this Parliament but talk in here is dominated by a different kind of worship: one of economic growth at all costs. We heard this mantra yet again today in the Speech from the Throne. Today the Government said that “A strong economy in turn provides the resources necessary to protect the vulnerable …” and the environment. But compassion and sustainability cannot be conditional. The protection of the vulnerable and the environment are necessary preconditions for a successful fair and sustainable economy. The economic and political agenda announced today undermines some of those values that we celebrate so much at this time of year.  
What is worse we still have a virtually universal agreement in this House that mindless economic growth is the overriding purpose of Government if not the purpose of society itself. There is little discussion about the quality of that growth the costs of that growth or how we might share the benefits and costs more fairly. There is precious little discussion of how we could possibly have never-ending growth in resource use and the production of pollution on a planet that is ultimately finite.  
Other parties in this House continue to represent the elite economic and social consensus of the 1980s and 1990s Labour and National Governments in which we aimed to maximise GDP growth and hoped that trickle-down would mean that those at the bottom got a few crumbs. But 30 years later many of our families are still waiting for the trickle-down.  
Even our private banking system can bring the world to its knees and escape largely unchanged from the meltdown. The Westpac chief executive officer earned a $5.4 million salary this year which included a $260000 tax cut—an early Christmas present from the Government. Why is this Government giving taxpayer-funded Christmas bonuses to the obscenely wealthy and not the poor? Is that not an agenda turned on its head? Is that not the Christian values turned on their head? Christ did not accept that gross inequality is inevitable and neither should we. Is it not time we turned the money tables over in the temple once again?  
Our current political and business world view has become so focused on endless growth that it has to conveniently ignore the increasing social and environmental collateral damage that comes from mindless growth without values. This Parliament has for the last 30 years conveniently ignored things like runaway climate change increasing inequality declining water quality and growing debt. The unqualified pursuit of growth of any kind is no longer delivering the kinds of advantages it once did—at least not to most people. We need to grow renewable energy not inequality greenhouse emissions and polluted rivers but that is what we are doing. And international organisations like the OECD the IMF and the United Nations are starting to reflect this change of heart as they increasingly document and question the environmental sustainability of economic growth at any cost and the growing inequality within developed societies as wealth is further concentrated even as our economies grow.  
We know that better outcomes in health education happiness and social trust are no longer correlated with growing levels of GDP in developed countries. If the Government’s measure of progress was expanded from simple changes in GDP to include social and environmental indicators it would be pretty clear that in nearly every other measure of progress we as a society have gone backwards. Our problem is not so much about earning more; it is about sharing more fairly what we do earn. We could earn more as a country but still be poorer. We could be poorer even though we are earning more because if the wealth is not shared around many of us will be poorer. The evidence is striking. A less unequal society means that we tend to live longer healthier safer lives. And that is true for all of us not just for those at the bottom of the heap. More sharing—the Christian sharing—is actually good for everyone. It is the big differences in wealth within our society that drive many of the major problems that now bedevil us. It is not just about equality of opportunity although that is important; it is actually also about equality of outcomes.  
It is not surprising that societies that allow their economic systems to produce great inequality are socially dysfunctional. How could a society be anything other than dysfunctional when our society and our social values are so deeply at odds with the outcomes that we are getting from our economic system? On the one hand our economic system is producing vast differences of wealth and massive inequality; on the other hand the holiday we are just about to celebrate is a holiday all about sharing and looking after each other and compassion. When those at the very top earn closer to what those at the very bottom earn suddenly everyone is better off. We live longer we suffer less from mental illness we are less violent we trust more we lock up fewer people we have better health and we have higher levels of social mobility. There is an extraordinary fact: societies that are more equal have more social mobility than highly stratified societies and we live with less fear. I would like to live in a society with less fear. I believe in a society like that—one where we trust one another and look after one another; a society where we are our brother’s keeper not their bitter rival.  
Societies with low inequality have simply found ways to share wealth more fairly. It is as simple as that and their economies do better. It is something we have implicitly understood before. The post-war consensus from the 1940s to the 1970s was a time when New Zealand enjoyed some of the lowest rates of inequality in the world. The neo-liberal agenda of the 1980s and 1990s largely destroyed that.  
This Christmas the Government could help turn growing inequality on its head by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Such a gift would help 275000 New Zealanders currently trapped in very low-wage jobs. The Government could extend family payments to families out of work instead of punishing them. The Government could offer new hope at Christmas to hundreds of thousands of New Zealand kids.  
That is what a Green Government would do. Our plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour is one of a number of costed initiatives we laid out before the election as part of our plan to address child poverty. All up we could raise about 100000 children out of poverty by committing around $680 million of additional Government spending to this endeavour and we costed how we would pay for that. One-quarter of all New Zealand children are growing up in poverty—that is one in every four children—through no fault of their own. They are living in poverty in New Zealand right now. That is a quarter of a million kids who will go without this Christmas.  
Given the scale of the problem is a poverty committee all the Government can do about it? When there are already practical effective solutions to child poverty supported by a wide consensus amongst those who work with kids why would you waste another 3 years of our children’s lives talking about it on a poverty committee? Will the poverty committee for kids be what the Job Summit was to the unemployed? The Green Party promises to keep standing beside our kids promoting practical principled solutions for eliminating child poverty. We will offer new hope based on some very old values of caring and compassion that date back at least two millennia.  
One group in New Zealand enjoying boom times is the dairy industry. The dairy industry makes an important contribution to the wealth of the New Zealand economy but it has come with significant cost. Our sparkling rivers and lakes are a key part of what makes New Zealand such a beautiful place to live. We love to swim and fish in our rivers kayak on them or just picnic nearby. Rivers are a vital component of Maori whakapapa and are important to the identity of all New Zealanders.  
Healthy rivers are also essential to a healthy economy. Our primary sector relies on access to clean water. Our clean and green brand underpins our tourism sector and our agricultural exports. Our prosperity depends on protecting our natural environment—no environment no economy. But outside of our national parks our rivers and lakes are under threat. Over half of our monitored rivers are unsafe for swimming one-third of our lakes are unhealthy and two-thirds of our native freshwater fish species are at risk or threatened with extinction. Some waterways suffer toxic algal blooms others are choking on sediment and faecal contamination while others are drying up from over-extraction for irrigation. Our rivers are dying before our very eyes.  
The way we have treated our rivers and lakes betrays another poverty of values when it comes to modern industrial farming and its methods. Most farmers love the land but those dairy corporations that pollute our rivers and streams have lost the love of the land that gives them their livelihood. Their indefensible practices continue to be protected by powerful lobby groups and no Government to date has been courageous enough to stand up against these destructive practices that are killing our rivers.  
New Zealanders value clean water. Surveys show that water quality is our No. 1 environmental concern. We want healthy waterways that we can swim in and fish in. It is possible. All it takes is political courage. This Christmas the Government could start the clean-up of our rivers and lakes by raising a levy on the commercial use of water and introducing some basic minimum standards for water quality and intensive farming practice. A levy would promote the wise use of our precious water resources while raising money to contribute towards riparian fencing and planting programmes and a contestable fund for councils to improve their sewerage. Instead of a fair charge on the commercial use of water the Government intends to massively subsidise further irrigation schemes that will lead to further dairy intensification and water quality reductions. Today’s speech from the Government highlights its plan to degrade our water even further. In contrast the Greens offer new hope based on an old value of love of the natural world in our quest to clean up our rivers.  
I want now to talk about the Green economy. We need a strong resilient economy and no society is socially or environmentally sustainable if it is not economically sustainable as well. The Greens spent a lot of time this year designing an economic strategy that offers both a clear vision to navigate through these uncertain times and a vision that faces the immediate challenges we face. In response to the devastating Christchurch earthquakes we designed a way to pay for the rebuild that did not put us further into debt which would increase the chances of a credit downgrade—that actually happened. A temporary levy on income would have been the fairest way to pay for the Christchurch rebuild without adding further to record Government debt.  
Labour’s adoption of our capital gains tax policy this year was another welcome step towards its eventual introduction. A comprehensive tax on capital gains excluding the family home would raise revenue to help balance the books but more important it would close the largest remaining loophole in our tax system. A comprehensive tax on capital gains will start to address the growing inequality in New Zealand and make homes more affordable for first-time home buyers. It would also give the productive sector a much-needed injection of capital seeking out better returns once the tax advantages of property investment are neutralised.  
We have proposed a job-rich alternative to the National Government’s plan to sell off the last of our best State assets. By partnering our State-owned energy companies with cleantech entrepreneurs they could become large-scale exporters of renewable energy technology. Our plan would keep our State-owned enterprises in public ownership ensuring that their profits their headquarters and their research and development all stay right here in New Zealand.  
Instead of steering our economy towards a sustainable prosperous and job-rich future the agenda set out today by the Government keeps us trapped in a failing past. We are to relive the problems of privatisation all over again. Instead of embracing clean-energy production and then putting our State-owned power companies to work by exporting our know-how to the rest of the world the Government is selling our best chance of having a slice of the clean-energy future.  
New Zealand needs a pragmatic economic strategy to help us succeed in a competitive global economy—a global economy that is increasingly turning green. The sale of our State-owned power companies is wrong for many reasons but for the Greens the closing of the door on a coordinated clean-energy future driven by assets owned by all of us and delivering benefits to everyone is the worst offence. If the assets are allowed to be sold we kill off the best chance of a place in the new clean green global economy that is beckoning on our doorstep. For that reason the Green Party plans to take all steps necessary inside and outside Parliament to try to stop the asset sales.  
One option for trying to stop the sale of our assets is a citizens initiated referendum. Such a campaign would require a broad coalition of those who want to protect our assets. We are prepared to be part of such a coalition. We have already spoken to some organisations about this idea and there is preliminary interest. We would be keen to work alongside other parties in this House NGOs unions community organisations and anyone else who wants to get involved in a citizens initiated referendum. The people of New Zealand want to keep our assets in public ownership. Working together we can mount a campaign to do just that. It is time for the voice of the people to override the voice of the Government on this issue.  
The Speech from the Throne identified only one initiative to improve our savings record: an automatic enrolment exercise for KiwiSaver but only if the books return to surplus. The Green Party has proposed changes to KiwiSaver that are not conditional on the Government’s books being in surplus and they will have big benefits for savers. Our plan to incentivise saving has picked up recommendations from the Government’s Savings Working Group to provide a public KiwiSaver option utilising the economies of scale that already exist in the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to lower fees. This would be at no cost to the taxpayer. Likely fee savings of up to 40 percent compounding over the life of a typical KiwiSaver investment would boost KiwiSaver nest eggs by up to $140000 on retirement. By ensuring that there is a value-for-money public provider in the market we can do for superannuation savings what Kiwibank has done for home mortgages: provide some real competition.  
Taken all together we offered voters a comprehensive economic plan to create jobs add resilience to our economy and protect our natural environment. It is a plan for clean green prosperity for all New Zealanders as we campaigned on in the election. I believe we can have a country with a smart economy that protects our natural capital and shares our prosperity fairly. Our work towards this vision of a compassionate yet highly dynamic economy is only just beginning. We offer new hope for a clean economy based on some old Christmas values of caring for each other and caring for the natural world.  
Looking ahead to the next 3-year term of Parliament the Greens will stay true to our values including those found in a manger 2000 years ago. We will work constructively with others where we find common ground and we will be a vigorous Opposition to the Government where we disagree. The Greens will offer a new hope of a different more compelling vision for a richer New Zealand—a richer New Zealand where we value all our people and our environment while having a prosperous economy. Our place in this Parliament as the third-biggest party and our success in the election campaign reflect the truth that we represent a movement whose time is coming. We are offering leadership on the things that matter the most. We are about putting values back into the heart of politics.  
The Green Party approach for the 50th Parliament is fourfold. Firstly where we can find agreement we will work with the Government through our memorandum of understanding to continue good projects like the home insulation fund the cycle network identifying toxic sites and cleaning them up pest control and supporting natural medicines. New Zealanders are better off as a result of these projects and we hope we can extend the range of work into new areas relating to our work in the election campaign.  
Secondly on important issues where we fundamentally disagree with the Government we will lead opposition both inside and outside Parliament. The Greens have a proven record inside Parliament of keeping the Government accountable and we will work with other Opposition parties to achieve this. But we will also campaign outside Parliament. In the last Parliament we were part of the successful public campaign to stop mining of our beautiful national parks.  
Thirdly we will set the agenda on issues that matter. Ideas matter in politics and the green movement has moved the public debate a long way from where it was even a decade ago. People are looking to Green parties to offer solutions the old parties have failed to deliver on. We are a movement whose time has come because our ideas are relevant. We think New Zealand should be a proud leader of the global green transition. We have a history of leadership.  
Fourthly we will be a party that gives voice to those who need it. I am enormously proud that Mojo Mathers has joined our caucus and become the first deaf MP our country has had. Seven hundred thousand New Zealanders have a hearing impairment and they deserve representation. I am also proud that six of our seven new MPs are women and that over 50 percent of our caucus is made up of women. It is disappointing that the representation of women in this Parliament outside the Greens has actually declined. We will also provide a voice through means other than direct representation. We are active online and elsewhere and we want Parliament to change and modernise to be more relevant in order to deal with some of the issues of low voter turnout. One part is modernising the oath and the prayer. We need to recognise the Treaty of Waitangi as our founding constitutional document and incorporate it in our oath.  
This Christmas the Green Party wants to put hope back into the lives of all those who have not done so well over the last 30 years and include those who believe in a more sustainable more compassionate way to live together. Michael Joseph Savage sought to unite as many people as possible behind a common dream of a better and fairer society. We share this dream. Christmas is the season of new hope. The Greens bring new hope that the Christmas values of love and compassion truth and justice and an awe and respect for the natural world can rise to the top of Parliament’s agenda again.  
I want to wish you all—members of Parliament the members of the Government the Opposition the gallery and all those cleaners messengers security guards and staff who get up each day and make Parliament happen—a happy Christmas. I want to thank the people of New Zealand in whose service we are and wish you all a very happy and a hopeful Christmas. The Greens will work hard and smart to repay the faith you have put in us to deliver a richer New Zealand with a smart Green economy that works for everyone.