Q+A interview with Russel Norman
Sunday 6th November, 2011
Q+A interview with Russel
Norman.
The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be watched on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news
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RUSSEL NORMAN interviewed by PAUL HOLMES
PAUL In two hours,
the Greens officially launch their campaign in Wellington,
but already they look as though they’re riding the green
wave. In the latest TVNZ Colmar Brunton poll, the Greens
are on 9%, which equates to about 11 MPs, two more than they
currently have. If the poll were to translate into votes on
election day, what will the Greens be looking for? Well,
the Greens co-leader Russel Norman is with us live in
Wellington. Russel Norman, good morning.
Dr
RUSSEL NORMAN – Greens Co-leader
Good morning, Paul.
PAUL You were 10% at the same time in the last election. How are you going to stop the slide you experienced last time?
RUSSEL Well, sometimes
there’s a slide, but not every election. I think the
Greens are on a bit of a roll in this election, actually, so
we’ll see how it goes, but it’s looking
good.
PAUL Is
that because—? Is that because you’ve deliberately
pitched yourself as more acceptable to the middle, in other
words, dropping the tree-hugging image a bit?
RUSSEL (laughs) Well, I still
think trees are great things, Paul, but certainly, I mean,
you know, we’ve been pretty focused on cleaning up rivers,
getting kids out of poverty, green jobs. And, you know,
we’ve had a pretty disciplined campaign.
PAUL There was a number this
week – it must frustrate you, Mr Norman, 65% of people
think it’s good to have the Greens around, but they
probably won’t vote for you. What do you do about
that?
RUSSEL Well,
we’ve been slowly trying to translate that into a more of
a solid base by increasing the Green vote. I think we’re
making some progress on it, but it takes time to build a
third political force in politics, and, you know, we’ve
been at it for a few years, but we are making
progress.
PAUL You’re concentrating
this morning in your policy announcements on three policy
areas. First, 100,000 green jobs – now, where are they
going to come from over three years, please?
RUSSEL So, yeah, they’re
focused on direct government investment, which is the easy
stuff to measure, if you like, so the home-insulation
scheme, we extend that.
PAUL That’s 4000 to 6000
jobs, isn’t it?
RUSSEL
That’s right. And then we’re looking at the
riparian fencing and planting, which we fund from the
irrigation fund, which is easy to measure as well, but a
really good project. The big bulk of it is about the
clean-energy opportunities, and that’s where we focused
our efforts, because if you look at it internationally,
that’s where the big growth is.
PAUL You also want to
encourage SOEs to partner with clean-tech entrepreneurs, and
you say that if you can develop the right incentives and if
you can capture 1% of the global market for renewable energy
– it’s all very vague, isn’t it?
RUSSEL Well, if you want to
have a job-creation programme which is just spending taxes,
then I could give you— I could dot every I and cross every
T, because you can work it out precisely. But if you want
the jobs to come out of the private sector, which is where
they have to come from, then you can’t do that. You have
to project, which is what you do in the private sector.
We’re saying there is a great opportunity for New Zealand
in the clean-energy market. It’s growing rapidly. It’s
going towards $800 billion by 2015. We should aim to get a
chunk of that market because we have great natural
advantages in there, because of our SOEs and the way they
are at the moment.
PAUL Are you consciously
trying to project a more business-friendly image?
RUSSEL We certainly are, but
it’s also true that the business sector’s coming our
way, so there’s a bit of both going on, if you like. So
the Greens are making sure that we are well oriented to the
concerns of the business sector, but it’s also true that
there’s been a really strong growth in what you might call
green business or sustainable business. And that’s not
just happening in New Zealand, that’s happening
internationally, and we’re saying, ‘Look, we’re in a
great position to take advantage of that as a country.
Let’s grab that opportunity.’
PAUL
Well, are we? Sir Paul Callaghan, our New
Zealander of the Year, he says focusing on this green jobs
idea is a mistake. He said what we’re good at is not what
the Greens want us to be good at. We’re not good at green
business. What we’re actually good at is the weird stuff
– the electronics, engineering, pharmaceuticals, as well
as the dairy. But that’s what we’re good at.
RUSSEL Yeah, so Paul’s
strategy is, if you like, to focus on the
knowledge-intensive part of the economy. I mean, that’s
his winner, if you like, if you’re saying you want to pick
a winner. And we agree with him about that, which is why we
want to increase investment in R & D over three years – a
billion dollars – because New Zealand has only 1.31% of
GDP in R & D, which is very low by OECD standards. So we do
need to get into the knowledge-intensive sector like
Paul’s doing, but we also need to get into the green
sector because not only is it a great opportunity, it’s
also about ensuring our future, because we don’t want to
hand on a world that’s, you know, destroyed its
biodiversity and has out-of-control climate change and
neither does the rest of the world, so let’s grab that
opportunity.
PAUL
Now to after the election if we could for a moment.
If you wanted to get some of that 65% who like having you
around but are probably not going to vote for you, where are
you going to take their vote if they go with you on the
party vote?
RUSSEL What
we do is we try to use the votes we have to get good green
change as we see it, so that’s, you know, when we put out
our priorities, we’ve got the top three, and then we’ve
got this other group of about five or six or seven. And so
in post-election negotiations, we’ll try to get progress
on that. We’re working with National at the moment on the
memorandum of understanding, we’ve done 120,000 homes
retrofitted with insulation – I think that’s a good
project – the cycle path, but what we need to do then is
these priorities we’re identifying now, we need to take
them into the post-election negotiations.
PAUL So you’ve said before
– you’ve gone on the record that it’s highly unlikely
you’d coalesce with the Nats, but could you continue with
the National Party should they win the government, to
entertain a memorandum of understanding across a range of
issues?
RUSSEL Yeah, I
think we would. I mean, look at the irrigation. The
irrigation levy – we’ve asked National, ‘Would you
rule it out?’ Time and again, they’ve said no because
they know that putting a price on commercial water use makes
good financial sense, it makes good environmental sense, and
you can use that.
PAUL Right, so we’re not
opposed to that. Okay.
RUSSEL
Yeah, and you can use that money then to recycle it
back into improving water quality, which is all about brand
protection – clean, green New Zealand. We’ve got to
protect that brand.
PAUL Just a quick word –
the Nats yesterday – the National Party yesterday said
they were going to insulate every state house in the
country. Do you see that as they’re reaching out to
you?
RUSSEL Possibly.
It’s pretty small numbers. It’s only a few thousand,
whereas what we’re talking about is the private housing
sector. So the current scheme is into the private sector
– 120,000 private homes – and we want to extend that to
a further 200,000. National are talking about the state
sector, and there’s a few thousand there, but the really
big gains, because we’re talking for every dollar we
spend—
PAUL
There’s 70,000 state houses.
RUSSEL Yeah, but they’re
only talking about I think it was 5000. I think they said
an extra 5000—
PAUL
All right, just finally – if you could help the
Nats form a government, would you?
RUSSEL
If it comes to voting for confidence and supply,
what we’ve said all along is it’s highly unlikely, but
we look for policy common ground to work together to make
good green progress where we can.
PAUL If the National
Government or National Party were to offer you a ministerial
post, Russel Norman, would or could you accept it?
RUSSEL Well, again that would
have to be part of a confidence and supply agreement, and
again we’ve said that’s highly unlikely, so,
yeah.
PAUL All right, good luck
with your announcements this morning, and thank you very
much for your appearance.
RUSSEL
A pleasure.
PAUL
That’s Russel Norman.