Kedgley Sue: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Kedgley Sue: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:659;Page:8635] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 It is that time again when we all look back on the year that has passed and make wishes and predictions for the year ahead. I will spend a few minutes sharing my New Year wishes. 
My first wish is that we stop endlessly boringly comparing ourselves with Australia. It is obvious that the purpose of the Government’s endless tedious comparisons with Australia is to make us all feel so inadequate and so poor compared with our Australian cousins that we will somehow buy the idea that we need some radical right-wing surgery in the form of “Rogernomics Part 2”. But the truth is that in terms of our equality of life Australia does not begin to compare with New Zealand. Australia is so short of water that many Australians are able to shower only once a week in the middle of the night and wash their clothes about once a month. They are in the process of banning open-plan offices as a result of that. When Australians are not fleeing from snakes droughts or raging bushfires they risk being killed by jellyfish—if they are brave enough to go swimming—and that is if sharks have not eaten them first. Let us stop drooling with envy about Australia and acknowledge that our quality of life is far superior to that of Australians. Our magnificent landscapes pristine national parks and native forests are the envy of the entire world not just Australia. At least they would be if we can keep the bulldozers away from our national parks and stop the Government’s insane plan to mine some of the most treasured parts of New Zealand that make us unique. 
My second wish is that the Government will announce on Christmas Day that the minimum wage is increased to $15 an hour. People cannot live decently on $12.50 an hour; everyone knows that. Thousands of New Zealand families cannot afford food for their children. They cannot pay their bills they are staving off their creditors and in the meantime we have chief executives of Government entities like Television New Zealand (TVNZ) earning more than $800000 a year. It is obscene. 
My third wish is that we are spared by some Christmas miracle from “Rogernomics Part 2” and that it turns out that Roger Douglas wasted his time coming back to this Parliament and that Rodney Hide’s plans to corporatise the Auckland Council and start selling off its $28 billion worth of assets are somehow thwarted and stopped in their tracks by some sort of divine intervention or maybe a popular uprising. 
My fourth wish is that we will not allow a factory farm for 18000 cattle to be built on the pristine Mackenzie Basin or anywhere else in New Zealand and that we will finally put an end to the hideously cruel practice of keeping animals in cages. But I am not holding my breath. I predicted that the pig code would not be released for consultation this year and sadly I have been proven right. The pig-headed Pork Industry Board is holding a gun to the Minister of Agriculture’s head endlessly delaying the release of the code by the threat of legal injunction. This is pork-barrel politics at its worst. 
My fifth wish is that the Government will stop using failed 1970s roading policies and stop its plans for a four-lane motorway from Levin to Wellington airport which will sever entire communities increase congestion undermine public transport and encourage more and more cars into Wellington’s already narrow and congested streets and ruin the Basin Reserve. It is ironic that on the day the Prime Minister leaves for Copenhagen to hobnob with world leaders and try to explain why we intend to do nothing—absolutely nothing—to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions the Government announces a huge new motorway that will vastly increase our carbon emissions as well as our dependence on oil. If the International Energy Agency is right oil prices will be so high in 10 years’ time that when the motorway comes on stream few people will be able to afford to travel on it anyway. 
I have many many more Christmas wishes. I wish that we will stick with MMP and that we do not go back to the elected dictatorships of first-past-the-post politics. I wish that we would finally begin to regulate the financial sector. Finally since I have run out of time I wish all of my colleagues a very merry Christmas and give my thanks to the Green Party staff to the Green Party supporters to all of the people who work in this House and to you Mr Speaker for your fantastic chairmanship of this House over the past year. Thank you very much.