Ward Mike: Budget Debate 
Ward Mike: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21100] 
MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 Dr Cullen’s Budget begins: “Budget 2005 is about securing the future. Securing the future for the nation as a whole and securing the future for New Zealand families and New Zealanders individually.” Securing the future is exactly what the business of Government ought to be about and elements in this Budget do just that. As Rod Donald said when he spoke in the Budget debate the homeownership deposit subsidy and the extra 1300 State houses are steps in the right direction. 
Lulu is my newest grandchild. She is just 16 days old. Does this Budget secure her future? I see that Dr Cullen is expecting the economy to grow at an annual rate of 2.5 percent. At that rate by the time Lulu is 30 our economy will be twice as big as it is now. I have to ask where the evidence is that such growth will make her future more secure. What would have grown and at what cost and how will those things that have grown benefit Lulu? At a recent forum on the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development Helen Beaumont the Assistant Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment pointed out that in the 20 years between 1981 and 2001 New Zealand’s population grew by 19 percent while its GDP grew by 55 percent. In that same period its energy use increased by 61 percent motorcar ownership increased by 67 percent and the amount of stuff Aucklanders threw away increased by an outrageous 131 percent. It is difficult to see how on a finite rapidly overheating planet any of those figures contribute to the security of my grandchildren. 
What does the 2005 Budget say about reducing our energy usage our motorcar ownership and our wastefulness? Will the additional goods and services that contribute to the doubling of New Zealand’s economy over the next 30 years be stuff that New Zealanders really need? Where will it be produced and will it be produced sustainably? Will the homes we build contribute to our already excessive energy demand or will they be warm comfortable and designed to take advantage of the heat of the sun? Will those homes be close enough to the places that the occupants need to be so that the people who live in them can get a little exercise by walking or cycling to some of their destinations thus avoiding the lifestyle diseases that threaten a blowout in our health budget in Lulu’s generation? How many of the new products are likely to be made in New Zealand and will they be made to last? My fear is that although there are glimmerings of the notion of sustainability in this Budget it is largely about perpetuating the status quo and the unsustainable. As important as the Land Transport Management Act and carbon taxes are they only begin to address the excesses of our profligate lifestyles. Although New Zealanders may be better placed to survive the risks of water and food shortages and all the threats that peak oil climate change and the other risks dealt with in the millennium report are likely to spawn prevention—as difficult as that may be—still provides the only possible protection. 
The pursuit of growth in the face of all the evidence that it is responsible for the risks that threaten our very survival has to be the ultimate foolishness. But should I be surprised? Ronald Wright in his book  
A Short History of Progress 
 writes that far from being unusual throughout history it has been normal practice for societies to pursue right to the end and with increasing enthusiasm the very practices that have been their undoing in spite of all the evidence that they would be well advised to desist. Did the Easter Islanders actually believe as they chopped down the last tree in order to construct and move their last great stone statue that by so doing their island would be magically reforested? Could anyone be so foolish? If Ronald Wright is to be believed such foolishness is the norm. We need look no further than our own civilisation and the actions of successive Governments all over the world to see that in spite of all our learning and 10000 years of civilisation we are no wiser than our predecessors. 
The evidence of the destructive consequences of growth is clearly visible for all to see. Our planet is dangerously overheated with overcrowded highways; dammed and polluted rivers; fished-out oceans; escalating oil prices; and looming food water and energy shortages. Here in New Zealand too many families working too many hours and accumulating too much stuff with too little time and energy for the activities that it takes to be a family. There is likely to be at least a doubling—and possibly a trebling—of carbon dioxide levels by the end of this century. Although we may be a little more protective of our own environment and our own forests these days we continue to import use recycle and dispose of vast quantities of wood and paper products from the two football fields of forest that are removed every second in other parts of the world. Even if we manage to attain the Packaging Accord 2004’s target of a 70 percent recovery rate for paper the bulk of that is likely to wind up in vast coal-fired recycling plants like those that leach toxins into the highly polluted Pearl River in China. 
Although we may have been spared having to breathe polluted air the planet that those coal-fired boilers are overheating is our planet. Although we may feel virtuous each time we toss another page into the recycling bin we might like to ask whether we needed to print it off in the first place whether it was printed on both sides and whether we actually read it. Although it may be possible to reclaim the fibre in the paper it is quite possible that the land cleared in order to make the paper is already sliding into an ocean somewhere and that the energy that was used to produce it is already overheating the planet—and that is certainly not recoverable. So what does this Budget do to minimise New Zealand’s mountains of waste? New Zealand has an admirable waste strategy and last year the Government signed a voluntary packaging accord with business and local authorities. Most New Zealand councils have signed up to a policy of zero waste and many have implemented kerbside recycling schemes but although we are recycling more stuff are we less wasteful? If the burgeoning skips wheelie bins and profits of the waste companies are any indication it would appear that we most certainly are not. 
I would like to thank now the people who have made us aware of waste—the Zero Waste people the WanakaWastebusters the Nelson Environment Centre the innovative waste people in Kaikoura the people in Kaitaia Raglan Ashburton Alexandra Waiheke Island and a host of other community organisations and people up and down the country who have spent many years collecting sorting and composting waste finding markets and educating their councils and communities about waste. My thanks go to all the people who have beavered away in the waste sector over many years many of them volunteers and all of them passionate. We have never been so aware of the issue of waste or so conscious of the need to recycle. It is now time to move to the next phase: to move up the hierarchy and to reduce and to reuse. It is time to avoid producing and taking home products with an extremely limited shelf life wrapped in vastly more packaging than is necessary. It is time to turn New Zealanders into careful consumers and to tackle finally the cargo-cult mentality that has made shopping the preferred recreational activity and over-indebtedness and extreme waste the norm for far too many New Zealanders. It is now time for the Government to get behind the community sector and put teeth and commitment into the New Zealand waste strategy and the Packaging Accord 2004. 
As important as encouragement and education may be they have not slowed down the creation of a vast waste industry with a vested interest in the production of more waste. New Zealand needs a dedicated waste authority funded out of landfill levies on residual waste to administer landfill bans on the many other products that we already have uses for and the extended producer responsibility measures that will provide a cash flow for the community sector and level up the playing field for all those responsible companies that genuinely want to reuse or minimise their packaging cut their waste and produce and market products that are made to last and that can be repaired.  
The Minister for the Environment ought to find the Green plan for minimising waste extremely attractive—and I am pleased to see the Minister in the Chamber—because it is an excellent example of “the polluter pays” model. Although the Government may have some distance to go before it adopts triple bottom line accounting practices that is no reason why even the Minister of Finance should not be delighted with practices that reduce the degradation of the environment and produce real social benefits at the expense of the wasteful. The measures we are advocating are not cutting-edge. They are already employed in other enlightened countries and states. The community waste sector has been asking for them for many years and they have been endorsed by the staff dealing with waste in councils throughout New Zealand. Some of the measures will already be familiar to older New Zealanders; for example the container deposits that once kept broken glass from our roads and beaches provided pocket money for generations of New Zealand children Scouts Guides Brownies and sports teams. If similar but somewhat larger subsidies and deposits were paid on the purchase of new motorcars would that put an end to abandoned motor vehicles? Maybe. 
I spoke earlier about the futility of mindless growth. Reducing waste while providing opportunities for good economic activity also has the advantage of reducing costs in other areas. There are obvious costs in the collecting and disposing of ten million kilograms of waste every day in New Zealand but there are the environmental benefits of reducing resource use and energy consumption there are the social benefits of putting people to useful work and there are the quality-of-life benefits that accrue to communities and families who are not working every waking hour in order to pay for stuff—clothes furniture appliances toys and things they frequently do not need and probably will not get a lot of pleasure out of—and packages where no packaging is necessary. 
Some people are concerned that if we consume less we will work less and they wonder what we will spend our time doing. I have to ask them what they would like to spend their time doing. Perhaps we could go back to working fewer hours and having time to spend with the people we like. I come back to the Budget. If it really is about securing the future of Lulu and her sisters Brodie and Ashley her cousins Laura and Jessie Rose and all our children and about reducing the amount of stuff we throw away it is just the beginning of the kinds of initiatives we must pursue.