09 Feb 2010
Address in Reply Speech
Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman
9-2-10
Final

Tena koe Mr Speaker
Tena koutou to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Introduction

Tena koutou to all New Zealanders who love our country and our people and who want to protect this place and look after each other. The Green Party shares that love, and we are here to serve you.

Today, the Prime Minister has foreshadowed the black hole budget. A black hole dug into the heart of our most precious land, and, a black hole opening up in our most vulnerable communities.

John Key told Kiwis that they will have to work harder and longer with fewer holidays, and pay more for everything. And in exchange for this effort we will have to give up the integrity of our most beautiful, precious and beloved conservation estate.

There is no vision for a smart economy that looks after the prosperity of people and the natural environment. There is only a corporate statement of intent.

On the bright side, this year there will be new heroes in Aotearoa. Kiwis will work together once again to protect our most vulnerable citizens. There will be new champions of the environment working together, alongside the Green Party, to stop the bulldozers from digging up our land.

Tax

John Key’s proposed reforms for our tax system may encourage GDP to grow but they will do little to promote prosperity.

While the Greens welcome the Government’s commitment to do something about speculation on housing. The fairest way to achieve this is through a comprehensive capital gains tax excluding the family home, just like nearly every other OECD country. The government’s failure to commit to this is gutless, and it will entrench inequality between those who work for wages and those who live off capital gains.

A capital gains tax is a broad, highly progressive tax which would help to reduce inequality. It would also raise an additional $4.5 billion giving the Government considerable scope to pay off debt, and invest in good things like health and education.

On the other hand, raising GST, as the government proposes, entrenches inequality and does not broaden the tax system. Those who are poorest are hit hardest.

This is using increased taxes on the poor for tax cuts for the rich.

Large scale tax avoidance is one of the reasons John Key is talking about tax reform this afternoon, yet he makes no mention of the most obvious response: strengthening tax enforcement.

Tax is the price we pay for living in a civilised society but it seems that a lot of extremely wealthy individuals and companies don’t want to pay their way, they want to bludge off everyone else.

The overseas owned banks were caught stealing billions from New Zealand taxpayers and yet not one of their executives or advisors is behind bars.

So, if a taxpayer steals a thousand dollars from a bank they get put in jail, but if a bank steals a billion dollars from the taxpayers then they just pay it back, if they get caught, and no-one goes to jail.

And now the Tax Working Group has reported that only one half of a sample of 100 of the highest wealth families in the country are paying the top tax rate. So if you are a wage earner on more than $70,000 you pay the top income tax rate but if you have millions in assets and an income of hundreds of thousands then you can avoid paying the top tax. That’s wrong.

National’s response to tax avoidance by the very wealthy isn’t to say that their donors should pay their share like everyone else, no it’s to say that we must be charging them too much tax, that’s why they’re avoiding it. And so we should charge less and cut the top tax rate - it’s a new kind of three strikes policy – get caught three times avoiding tax and we’ll cut the tax rate.

What we need is tax reform that moves our economy in a green direction. We need ecological tax reform like a resource rental on use of freshwater by irrigators so that we encourage the efficient use of water. We need tax reform that encourages genuine prosperity and equality rather than rewarding tax avoidance.

Kaimoana

Prosperity is what we seek. Last week I paddled the Taumarere and Kawakawa rivers as part of my dirty rivers rafting tour. As I made my way across those rivers, still degraded in spite of efforts of hapu and others to clean them up, I had pause to think – is this prosperity?

Is a river that is so full of silt and excrement that even mullet barely survive, is this prosperity?

Is it prosperity when the seagrass beds are smothered to extinction by silt, seagrass beds that are the nurseries of the snapper? Sure intensive dairying increases GDP and it’s been growing at 4% a year for a decade but what about those who can no longer catch a feed off the rocks because the snapper fishery is depleted by the killing of the seagrass?

Their loss is not counted in those GDP numbers showing great growth. If anything the fact that people now have to go to the supermarket to buy a snapper adds to GDP by adding to economic turnover – in fact the absurd truth is that people catching a fish for free are contributing nothing to GDP, they are a kind of economic traitor by refusing to participate in the mantra of GDP growth by refusing to purchase their kaimoana.

Polluted rivers increase GDP but do they make us prosperous? No they do not.

Let’s hang on to the things that make all of us prosperous, rather than destroy them to increase GDP and make a few people rich.

Kids swimming

On Saturday, up at Waitangi, the kids spent the day jumping into the water off the bridge leading to the Treaty grounds. They were having a wild time. They were enjoying a real and tangible form of prosperity and freedom, and contributing absolutely nothing to GDP.

Kids used to swim in our rivers and streams all over Aotearoa New Zealand, and in some places they still do. But in lots of places the rivers have been sucked dry for irrigation and filled with human and animal excrement. Those kids go to the local swimming pool instead of the local swimming hole.

Swimming pools cost money to build and maintain and they definitely contribute to GDP – the kids with polluted rivers and creeks, the kids without the freedom to swim in a river who are forced to go the pool for a swim, are definitely making a contribution to Labour and National’s dream of GDP growth, while those traitorous kids swimming off the beach at Waitangi were contributing absolutely nothing to GDP, they were simply enjoying the prosperity given freely by nature.

Let’s hang onto the things that bring us all prosperity rather than sacrifice them to the great god of GDP growth and while many will lose a taonga, a few will get rich.

Mining

Today John Key has confirmed the worst fears of thousands of New Zealanders – that his Government is gearing up to dig up our national parks.

His speech is about trying to increase GDP growth – not prosperity – and the only way he can pay for it is by digging up our conservation estate.

He is going to dig New Zealand into a hole that we can’t get out of. A hole of inequality and environmental destruction from which there will be no escape.

Our conservation land contains some of New Zealand’s most treasured places. We treasure it because of its water, forests, plants, birds, and animals, not because of what’s under the ground.

John Key’s government has consistently cut conservation funding and made it harder and harder to protect these places.

Now he has the gall to tell us that putting some mining money into a Conservation Fund – a fund just like the one the Green Party already established and he cancelled – “means that if there is an increase in mining activity, New Zealand’s natural environment will also be improved.”

That’s a line that only George Orwell could have written. “In order to save the environment we have to destroy it”. It’s not true. New Zealanders will see right through it.

Transport

Another growth industry in New Zealand is motorway building. Labour embarked on what Michael Cullen called New Zealand’s biggest road building project and the new National/ Act/Maori Party government is intent on building even more – over $10 billion on new state highways over the next decade.

As we grow the motorways we are also growing the kilometres travelled by car and trucks in NZ and hence New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions and use of imported fossil fuels. So not only will our children inherit the bill for all these monuments to this motorway obsession but they will also inherit high greenhouse emissions when we need to be cutting them and fossil fuel dependence in a world where fossil fuels are only going to get more expensive.

Security

Another leading growth industry in Aotearoa New Zealand is imprisoning people and building prisons. On a per capita basis we lock up more people than pretty much anyone except the US.

But does building more prisons and locking more people up make us safer and more secure? No it does not. Societies with higher rates of imprisonment do not have higher levels of security and a feeling of safety. The US is a daily example of this basic truth.

There is one thing we know which works to make our society safer and more secure and that’s to reduce inequality. Longer sentences don’t work to make society safer even though they may feel good.

If we took security and safety seriously we would invest in reducing inequality. How many people would be alive today if we hadn’t made our country so radically unequal in the ‘80s and ‘90s and generated so much crime and violence?

True prosperity is not having to do overtime in order to pay for a home security system.

Hours of work

Now, New Zealanders already work longer hours with fewer days off than just about anyone else in the OECD, that is hardly my idea of prosperity. Surely in a prosperous society we would have more time off not less – how many Lotto ads say “Hey if you win Big Wednesday you can take on a second job at night stacking shelves”. Every year we are told that growing productivity and GDP will mean more time for ourselves and yet every year the hours of work increase and more mums have little option but to rush back to work after childbirth because they need the money to pay the mortgage.

Making it difficult to spend time with your babies after their birth also helps GDP grow. When mums or dads have the option to take a few years off after childbirth and do their own childcare, it contributes absolutely nothing to GDP. Free childcare provided by a new mother or father at home has zero value to the great worshippers of GDP growth. But in a society like ours, where wages are so low compared to the cost of housing, many mothers go back to work as soon as possible which has a double benefit to GDP – mums in the workforce contribute to GDP and they have to pay someone to look after their newborn child, further increasing GDP, a double bonus for the GDP obsessives. But while taking away the option of allowing a new parent to look after the new baby might increase GDP does it increase prosperity?

In a prosperous society new parents would have the option of choosing to stay at home or go back to work.

Inequality

John Key says he is worried about an underclass emerging in New Zealand. But how can we believe this - when everything he is doing promotes inequality. His plan to cut support for sick and out of work kiwis and parents will drive the growth of an underclass and mean more of our children go to bed hungry.

His plan for hard working New Zealanders is to take away their holidays and their employment rights. His plan for better public service is to cut them. His plan for accident victims is to cut the support they can receive.

He believes in tax cuts for the rich while poor New Zealanders are being forced into the streets, where is the big increase in state housing we need.

This is not a plan for a better and fairer society. This is a scam that will only benefit the very wealthy while leaving everyday New Zealanders worse off.

The Green Party believes in a fair go for all New Zealanders, sadly it seems our Prime Minister does not. Even if he succeeds in creating GDP growth, we will not see a growth in prosperity, we will not have a fair society. This society will not magically appear somewhere down the line by forcing vulnerable people to suffer now.

John Key’s Government is creating the underclass that they worry about.

Colonisation and te Tiriti

The Prime Minister talks about his commitment to Maori but everything he has done will create poverty and inequality where Maori will suffer unfairly because they have already been marginalised.

Maori deserve more than high words, new flags and arbitrary settlement deadlines – they deserve change and a fair society that respects their rights. We call on the Government to respect Maori rights in the foreshore and seabed and not repeat the mistakes of the previous Government.

The Te Reo version of Te Tiriti did not cede sovereignty to the Crown, why would they give away their land and sovereignty to the new comers. Actual sovereignty was achieved by the colonial government through the New Zealand wars from 1843 to 1872 and after. This historical truth is not well known in mainstream circles but it is very well known in Maori circles and until we acknowledge this truth we will not heal the wounds of colonisation. Until we recognise the truth that the sovereignty of this parliament was won through force of arms then we will continue to feel the pain of the land wars.

We need constitutional evolution, and we need to look forward, but we cannot do that without acknowledging the truth of the past and the suffering and pain and anger of that truth.

A prosperity of the heart cannot grow on the suffering of others and the denial of that suffering.

Green tech

New Zealand is facing a great opportunity and challenge, and that is to embrace the green economic revolution.

In a world in which carbon is constrained, fossil fuels are increasing in price, water is globally polluted and exhausted, and clean and green is increasingly valued by consumers, New Zealand has a real opportunity to embrace the green technology revolution.

The sooner New Zealand moves towards a low-carbon economy, the sooner we will start producing the innovative products and services the low carbon world will be calling out for; and the sooner we will cut the cost of higher carbon prices to the New Zealand economy.

The sooner we implement a serious domestic price on carbon the sooner we will begin the transition. Never forget the US car makers that ignored warnings about climate change and oil prices and then when the world moved and no-one would buy their cars they had to be bailed out by the US taxpayer. The modelling on carbon pricing is clear – the sooner a price is introduced the more jobs are created – those governments like the current one that put their head in the sand and delay a price on carbon will cost thousands of New Zealanders their jobs in the long term.

The sooner we embrace the green technology revolution the more prosperous will be our future. Because it is prosperity we need, it is the smart economy we need, not simply dumb growth in economic activity or GDP.

Conclusion

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand recommits itself in 2010 to working for a prosperous country and a smart economy.

A prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where people have work that is productive and decently paid.

A prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where people have time - time to spend relaxing, enjoying life and being with their friends and family, time to dig a vege garden, time to get to the beach before summer disappears.

A prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where we share our beautiful country with the other species of this place, where we act as guardians of the mountains, the plains, the sea, the rivers, the wetlands, and all the plants and animals that live there, and we stop destroying ecosystems and start to repair them.

The Green Party recommits itself in 2010 to working for a prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand where the gap between rich and poor actually narrows instead of widening as it has done for decades.

A prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand which honours te tiriti o Waitangi.

A prosperous Aotearoa New Zealand which contributes to peace and which helps out its neighbours in need.

That is our vision of prosperity and smart economy and that is the vision that the Green Party will work for in 2010.

ENDS

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