Graham Kennedy: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: General Debate[Sitting date: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11062. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):Last Friday 7 June I convened a conference on climate change in the New Zealand Parliament. It was held in the Legislative Council Chamber the elegant chamber that has been mostly empty since the Upper House was abolished in 1951. It was the second conference of the kind—the first in November 2010 having focused on a sustainable economy. The reason I convene these conferences rests on an underlying philosophical view on the nature of democracy. In the debating chamber with green carpet MPs strongly debate things in an adversarial manner. This is defended and explained to horror-struck schoolchildren in the gallery as free and robust debate that is essential for the health of democracy. That may or may not be the case. My own view is that the rules of debate the Standing Orders might be strengthened for greater civility to the benefit of democracy. Be that as it may adversarial politics is the nature of the democratic pursuit in the New Zealand Parliament and I can live with that although I believe that to some extent the country is demeaned.But I also believe that adversarial democracy needs to be complemented with consensual democracy. We need an avenue even if an informal one where MPs can come together in a different atmosphere to exchange views in which we seek common ground—what unites us rather than divides us. Consensual politics is surely the most critically important issue when it comes to crisis situations. The Green view is that the world faces a global ecological crisis the importance of which transcends partisan politics. All the more reason then to have this kind of conference in the Legislative Council Chamber—red carpet and all. The idea was to see whether we could find common ground between the Greens Labour and National all of which were to participate on a political panel that day. Regrettably neither National’s Minister for Climate Change Issues Tim Groser nor Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues Simon Bridges was available. The seat was left vacant. Labour accepted and its climate change spokesperson Moana Mackey was there. Representatives from business groups including Federated Farmers the New Zealand Forest Owners Association and the New Zealand Wind Energy Association and also from an iwi Māori perspective offered some insightful points on what is required.Peter Weir argued that historic forest growth is the only reason New Zealand is able to meet its international obligations under the Kyoto Protocol but the price of this reprieve will be serious problems when the forests are cut down. The forest industry can give New Zealand much-needed time to adapt to the reality of climate change but only if the right policy settings are in place. Chris Karamea Insley emphasised that Māori are very involved in many aspects of the primary product industry partly as a result of Treaty settlements. He suggested that the strategic long-term orientation of the Māori world view helped to underline the imperative in his mind for stronger action on climate change. So much for the conference at which National failed to show.If we were to explore the differences between National and Greens on climate change what might they be? National opposes alarmism over climate change and will proceed with great caution and deliberation in national policy. Failure to do so it thinks threatens the short-term financial interests of established economic sectors. The Greens by contrast see the scientific evidence and UN policy prescriptions as requiring greater and faster national action by New Zealand and contend that failure to do so constitutes a breach of international responsibility—in short it would threaten the planet. These are the commonalities and differences in perception and policy between National and Green views as I understand them to be. I would not have thought that it would be impossible to have had a reasoned dialogue on this matter between the National Party and the Green Party. Failure to do this encourages polarisation of party politics and a lack ofpredictable national policy as a result on an issue that is simply too important to allow that to happen.