Donald Rod: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Donald Rod: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:615;Page:10940] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I would like to begin by congratulating the Government on opening up Molesworth Station to year-round public access and on purchasing Birchwood Station so that the rare habitats it contains can be added to the conservation estate. Helen Clark was right to say that our clean green and beautiful image needs more than rhetoric to sustain it. 
Unfortunately these two conservation initiatives highlight the contradiction in the Government’s whole approach to the environment. It is prepared to preserve the black stilt habitat at Birchwood because that does not threaten its economic growth agenda but it is determined to destroy another black stilt habitat on the lower Waitaki River because it stands in the way of the Government’s idea of progress. Labour and National are very good at preserving pockets of nature but neither is prepared to tackle fundamental issues—notably the unsustainability of the current economic model. 
The crucial difference between the Greens and the other parties in this Parliament is that we recognise the need to transform our economy so that we can live within the natural capital of our country and this planet and we recognise the need to make the economy society’s servant not its master. When our forebears the Values Party started in 1972 these were radical concepts. Today they are mainstream. 
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Morgan Williams expresses our perspective extremely well in his latest report “See Change: Learning and Education for Sustainability”. He says we need learning that is focused on quality of life and the opportunities to design and craft more sustainable ways of achieving it. We need to redesign many of our institutional economic and business systems so that we can improve that quality without ever-expanding demand and ever-intensifying pressure on the environment to assimilate our wastes. 
Despite stating last year that current Government goals are unsustainable Morgan Williams remains optimistic. He believes that we could and should be the first in the world to become a truly sustainable nation. We agree but I would add “just” to sustainable because too many people even in our own country are denied the material well-being they need to have the quality of life they deserve. 
While our message often falls on deaf ears in this Parliament more and more members of the public are responding positively to the positions we take on a wide range of issues. It is pleasing to see our rise in the opinion polls since Christmas. While other third parties are dropping some below the threshold we are up to between 8 and 9 percent. What is more our rise is not built on cheap shots or divisive statements but on thoughtful coherent positions on issues such as the foreshore and seabed saving the Waitaki River waste minimisation opposing school closures and calling for the release of Ahmed Zaoui. Our stand on all those issues is different from the Government’s. In some cases we oppose it outright and in others we want to take it further and faster in the right direction. 
On the whole though we support what Labour is doing more often than not whereas the opposite is true of National especially after Don Brash’s speech yesterday. In fact there are times when we are the only party supporting the Labour-Progressive coalition Government. The Climate Change Response Act the Crown Minerals Amendment Act the Education (Tertiary Reform) Amendment Act the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Act the Health and Safety in Employment Act the  accident compensation Act the Maori Television Service Act and the Supreme Court Act all only passed because we voted for them. Two other bills—the Holidays Bill and the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill—were also opposed by Labour’s confidence and supply partner. The same is true of two of the Government’s major legislative priorities this year—the Care of Children Bill and the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill. In all cases we exercise wisely the influence we have by negotiating improvements to these bills. 
However our standout success in this Parliament is undoubtedly the transport legislation. As Jeanette Fitzsimons said in her speech our focus is now on making sure that all the green initiatives it contains are implemented. I sense that our work has only just begun. As Morgan Williams said in his report there will be strong resistance in some sections of society governance and business to any steps towards sustainability. I believe that resistance will diminish however as more and more people—especially in Auckland—recognise that the traffic congestion problems will not be solved by building more motorways and instead that better public transport for people and greater utilisation of rail for freight represent the way forward. 
In the same way that a strong focus on demand management and sustainable alternatives to the car culture are the Greens’ solutions to New Zealand’s transport woes this logic can also be applied to energy as well as trade and capital. The solution to our growing energy demands and winter power shortages is not Project Aqua or more coal-fired power stations. Meeting our energy needs lies in efficiency and conservation—equivalent to 20 percent of our current generation capacity—as well as ecologically wise alternatives such as wind solar and biomass. 
As the former leader of the Alliance used to say: “This stuff is not rocket science.” In fact it is good old-fashioned economics. It is worth remembering that one definition of economy is the careful management of resources. We seem to have lost sight of that basic truth in our consumer society where better often takes second place to more and quality loses out to quantity. It is time to turn that around and it is time to remember that the origin of the word “economy” is simply household management. 
This Government and its predecessors have done a shocking job of managing the house we live in. In one room we have Michael Cullen wallowing in his $6 billion Budget surplus in another room we have 30 percent of our children growing up in poverty and in yet another our talented young people are saddled with over $6 billion in student debt while trying to get an education that should be recognised as a public good. Meanwhile as a whole household we imported $3.4 billion more goods last year than we sold overseas and we paid for them by selling off a bit of the backyard a bit more of the family silver and the bach at the beach as well as borrowing a bit more—in fact $3 billion more taking our national debt to $102 billion. 
This morning Dr Cullen said that the economy continues to perform strongly. I do not see how he can say that when the trade deficit is the second largest it has ever been export receipts are down 2 years in a row and the current account deficit is heading towards 6 percent of GDP. He said that the solution to these problems lies in trying to boost exports even more. The Greens say why not strengthen our domestic economy by promoting import substitution rather than increasing our dependence on the increasingly fragile and volatile global economy. 
The same argument applies to New Zealand’s capital needs. Not only is it foolish for the Government to gamble superannuation funds on the roulette wheel of the overseas sharemarket but the prudent course of action would be to provide real incentives for people to consume less and save and therefore invest more. What we certainly should not be doing is what Dr Cullen has signalled he wants to do—that is remove any rules on foreign takeovers of New Zealand businesses. We should be stopping all land sales to non-resident foreigners. 
Cullen explicitly rejected import substitution quipping: “Do the Greens want New Zealand to make its own cars again?”. Perhaps we should given that we imported $3.3 billion worth of them last year. Seriously though what we should be doing is making more of our own buses—like the excellent electric ones built by Design Line in Ashburton—and more rail carriages as the Hillside workshops in Dunedin do. 
We certainly should be growing our own garlic instead of importing 730 tonnes of disease-ridden bulbs from China. We should be growing our own pork instead of importing it from Canada making our own pet food instead of importing chicken-based products from China—especially as it is one of the countries most affected by bird flu. We should be making our own biscuits and ice cream instead of importing them from Australia. Unless we do we will never be able to balance the household budget. No wonder our trade deficit with Australia is just over a billion dollars and over $1.4 billion with China. 
Meanwhile the Government’s last free-trade effort was a flop. That was the agreement with Singapore. We had a deficit there of $24 million before it started. It jumped to over $200 million in its first year and for last year it exceeded $300 million. I have to ask whether Labour and National will learn the lesson that free trade is not the answer. Both ought to have learnt that fact after seeing the deal that John Howard has just signed up to. He dangled a juicy carrot in front of the people of Australia but ended up buying them a lemon. Not only will that deal destroy jobs in Australia but it will lead to its current $9 billion trade deficit blowing out even further. It is a big price to pay just so it can be said that George Bush is your mate. 
There would be an even bigger price for New Zealand to pay if Labour signs up for the free-trade deal with China. It is time the Labour Government rediscovered its moral fibre and said “no thanks” to China. There is no way we should be opening our borders to a country that abuses human rights denies Tibet sovereignty and exploits children. Labour knows that China will not budge on any of those issues because it said so during the negotiations of the aborted Hong Kong free-trade agreement. If Labour really wanted to be a good neighbour to the developing countries it would lift New Zealand’s level of overseas development assistance to 0.7 percent of gross national income and we could feel proud of our place in the world again—as we did under the Kirk Labour Government when New Zealand’s overseas development assistance contribution was more than twice what it is now.