Te Awa issue 55

#55 Spring 2017

te awa

te awa

Cover image James Shaw and the Green Team Back cover Photo by Kate Fulton

Young Greens Elliot Crossan • 9 Greens on tour Bridget Walsh • 10-11 Rainbow Greens Geraint Scott • 12

greenparty@greens.org.nz Phone 04 801 5102 Level 2, 17 Garrett Street, Te Aro, Wellington PO Box 11-652, Wellington

The charter is the founding document of The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ko te kawenata te pukapuka whakaū o te Rōpu Kākāriki o Aotearoa, Niu Tireni.

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand accepts Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand; recognises Māori as Tangata Whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand; and commits to the following four Principles:

E whakaae ana te Rōpu Kākāriki ko te Tiriti o Waitangi te pepa whakaū (kawenata) o Aotearoa, Niu Tireni; e whakaae ana te Rōpu kākāriki ko te iwi Māori te tangata whenua o Aotearoa, o Niu Tireni, ā, ka mau pūmau te rōpu Kākāriki ki ngā mātāpono e whā e whai ake nei:

To have Te Awa sent to you as a pdf rather than as a paper copy, or for queries about distribution, greenparty@greens.org.nz

Information for Contributors Te Awa is published quarterly in Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer.

Before submitting material, please check with the Guidelines for Contributors, which you can obtain from the editor.

References do not appear in the print version of Te Awa, but are appended to the pdf of the magazine that is available online.

Opinions expressed in Te Awa are not statements of Green Party policy, but must not bring the Green Party into disrepute.

Remember please!

Copy deadline for the Summer 2017 issue is 15 October.

Te Awa is printed on FSC-Certified Paper

Ecological Wisdom The basis of ecological wisdom is that human beings are part of the natural world. This world is finite, therefore unlimited material growth is impossible. Ecological sustainability is paramount.

Social Responsibility Unlimited material growth is impossible. Therefore the key to social responsibility is the just distribution of social and natural resources, both locally and globally.

Appropriate Decision-making For the implementation of ecological wisdom and social responsibility, decisions will be made directly at the appropriate level by those affected.

Non-Violence Non-violent conflict resolution is the process by which ecological wisdom, social responsibility and appropriate decision making will be implemented.

This principle applies at all levels.

Tikanga Toi Potapotae Ko te putake o te tikanga toi potapotae ko te tangata he wahanga no te ao tuturu. Ko te ao nei he taparepare, waihoki, kihai e taea kia tupu haere mo ake tonu atu Me ukauka te tikanga toi potapotae koia ra te tino taumata.

Kawenga Papori Kihai nga rawa o te ao e tipu haere tonu. Waihoki, ko te mea nui ke ko te kawenga papori, e whiwhi ai tena ki ona tikanga ano ki era rawa, ki te wa kainga nei, ki tawahi ranei o te ao.

Whakarite Totika E oti tika ai nga tikanga toi potapotae, me nga kawenga papori, ma nga whakarite totika a nga hunga e pa pumau tonu ana ki era take, ara, ki nga hua hoki a era whakarite.

Aukati Whakarekereke Me aukati te whakarekereke, e kitea ai te huarahi tika, e eke ai nga tikanga toi potapotae, nga kawenga papori, tae noa atu ki nga whakarite totika, e tau ai te rangimarie. Ko tenei ahuatanga e pa ana ki nga tairanga katoa.

Our People Peter Hill, 1949-2017 Grace Taylor • 13

State of the Nation Climate change • 14-15 The state of our freshwaters Mike Joy • 16-17 Our fall to the bottom Dave Kennedy • 18-19

Greens have their Say Some bold ways of funding Green election promises Keith Locke • 20 The revolutionary potential of Green health policy Rebekah Jaung • 21 Sustainable logging? Kate Fulton • 22 Social (dis)investment Jan Logie • 23 Take me to the river Catherine Delahunty • 24 Assisted dying Hugh Thorpe • 25 Green Party AGM • 26-27

MP and Future MP Reports Gareth Hughes / Chloe Swarbrick • 28 Golriz Ghahraman / John Hart • 29 Hayley Holt / Teall Crossan • 30 Teanau Tuiono • 31 Leilani Tamu • 32

Green History Looking back, a reminder Dave Kennedy 33

Green World August 2017 Lois Griffiths • 34-35

Reviews The New Zealand Project Thomas Nash / Christine Dann • 36-37 The White Earth Janine McVeagh / The Whole Intimate Mess Simone Little • 38 No Way But This. In Search of Paul Robeson Lois Griffiths / A Killing in the Hills Janine McVeagh • 39 No Ordinary Sheila Christine Dann • 40

Green Bites Letters Roy Krawitz / Barbara Sturmfels • 41

Craft Corner Weaver Extraordinaire Danna Glendining • 42

Flax Roots Action Campaign Trail • 44

Contents

Te Marautanga Kakariki

Authorised by Gwen Shaw, Level 2, 17 Garrett St, Wellington

Why there is an ‘SPFG’ Roland Sapsford • 6

Māori values are Green values Jack McDonald • 8

The Green Party Charter

Te Awa Board Elected members Ron Elder, Daisy Hsu, Philippa Stevenson Caucus Denise Roche Policy Nick Marryatt Te Rōpu Pounamu Rochelle Surendran

The consequences of boldness James Shaw • 4-5

Becoming the participant Julian Lumbreras • 7

Te Awa | The River

Copy editor Liz Gray Reviews Janine McVeagh Advertising Alex Matthews ads.magazine@greens.org.nz

Editorial Dave Kennedy • 2 Diversity, identity and visibility Debs Martin • 3

Our Networks

#55 Spring 2017

Editor Dave Kennedy 027 258 6686 editor.magazine@greens.org.nz

From the Party

01

02

Diversity, identity and visibility Debs Martin

In our last issue Jeanette Fitzsimons asked us to be bolder for this campaign, and she certainly got her wish. Two strong announcements at our AGM dramatically lifted the Green Party into the forefront of the election campaign. While our commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 was a robust one, it received less comment than Metiria’s revelation, which really stirred things up. That is the price of boldness, it challenges the status quo.

The very things that Metiria wanted to expose about the invasive and judgmental beneficiary system came out in force from the main stream media. Disappointingly, the majority of the energy was directed at Metiria herself.

When the focus shifted to questioning just how poor she really was and level of support her family actually provided, it became a step too far. Metiria’s resignation and the loss of two long-serving MPs was a heavy price to pay for starting a real conversation around poverty in New Zealand.

I also believe that while we may have lost some supporters, it has increased support from communities where we had previously struggled to have a presence. I believe we will come out of this period stronger and more determined. We also owe it to Metiria to continue her work on eliminating poverty with even greater determination.

The Jacinda factor has certainly changed the political landscape and makes a Labour/Green government a real possibility. It is really important that we redouble our efforts on the ground to ensure that the Green presence in that government is a strong one and we get as many Green MPs as we can.

This issue of Te Awa is designed to be shared even more so than those in the past. We have included supporting information for our campaign themes of Clean Water, Ending Poverty and Climate Action. To demonstrate the depth and strength of our party to deliver in a future government, we have contributions from past, current and future MPs. We also have some of our many networks represented, and our members’ contributions provide open discussion on some hard issues.

At Conference this year, two pivotal things happened for me. Firstly, I was replaced as Female Coconvenor by the fabulous Katy Watabe. Secondly, I was struck by the real growth of diversity in our Party.

I’ve had a truly invigorating two plus years as your coconvenor. Our Party grew exponentially in size, and our modes of governance and operation had to shift with it. I’m proud of the work done by the National Executive to bring about changes in structures and processes that help uphold our kaupapa and commitment to our Charter. They are too many to list, but key ones for me are the establishment of a political negotiation sounding group (ExPol), the revamp of the Strategic Planning Facilitation Group, our campaign preparedness, better and regular reporting from our operational groups, and – possibly most exciting for me – the recognition of Te Roopu Pounamu as the ‘provincial’ voice for our Maori branches. The latter signals the next step of change – movement in our constitutional dialogues, and change to the Party to better incorporate Te Tiriti within its governing procedures.

The other pivotal point was the appreciation of the growing diversity in our Party. At the report back from the various networks during Conference, one representative talked about visibility, and its counterpoint: invisibility.

We are a Party that celebrates difference and diversity – yet the challenges were put to us of a Party still steeped in patriarchal structures and ingrained ‘-isms.’ I think that’s natural for any party that arises in a predominantly western cultural setting. But it doesn’t excuse us from changing.

Our networks have established to help groups within our Party come together to share experience, provide support and engage in Charter-based challenges to our systems. When it came to caucusing time, I had a decision to make. Who did I identify with the most at that point in time? Was it the Spirit Greens, the Rural Greens, Green Women, or the Green Left? Identity politics is a ‘coming together’ of like groups within society that have been disenfranchised by the mainstream political system. They provide a voice that challenges the hegemonic discourse.

As well as coalescing around held views, our networks provide that opportunity for identities to come together.

For some that identity is highly visible, yet I was reminded at Conference that not all those who identify with a particular group are visible, e.g. those with mental illness. There is a dilemma in visibility – that of labelling and all the politics inherent in ‘othering’. There is also a dilemma in invisibility. For those of us whose identity is not visible, there are many reasons (physical, shame, or the perceived or actual need) to suppress that aspect of ourselves.

Reclaiming an identity is a powerful statement, but for those who are ‘invisible’, it can also be a barrier. Many in the Party will not be aware that I was adopted out at

There has been a lot of interest in Max Harris’s The New Zealand Project, and it has been fascinating reading the reactions from different generations. There is no doubt that this will be a pivotal work in shaping many people’s thinking around the future of our country. For those who were around at the time the Values Party’s manifesto, Beyond Tomorrow, was being shaped, Harris presents nothing new. For those who have lived the majority of their lives under successive neoliberal regimes, the idea of having values-based governance is revolutionary. Michael Joseph Savage, the architect of New Zealand’s welfare system, used the values of his faith as a guide to governing; he called it “applied Christianity.” For those who will try to claim that nothing other than neoliberalism will work, there is ample historical evidence that proves otherwise.

I hope to have a regular feature in Te Awa on the history of the Green movement in New Zealand to remind us all about our achievements in the past and those who led them. Every generation has its own battles for social justice and protecting the environment and I believe it is important to recognise that the achievements of today are only possible because of the battles won before.

Our charter and policies continue to be our foundation and will carry us through. Kia kaha Apologies and corrections I wish to apologise for the following errors in Te Awa #54: • Pg 17 - In Pasifika Greens, Trish Tupou’s name was spelled incorrectly.

• Pg 26 - Modern Day Land Grab or Treaty Settlement?

The correct title of the bill was the Point England Development Enabling Bill.

Where it stated that 7500 new homes would be built “within the reserve”, it should have read “within the vicinity of the reserve.”

The photograph of the endangered NZ Dotterel was taken by Shaun Lee. • Pg 34, top photo - Peter van Sabben is standing beside MP Eugenie Sage.

birth and that my father’s family is from Rarotonga . As a ‘love child’ of the 60s, no-one wanted me. Not the Pakeha family, nor the Cook Island one. I carry a deep yearning to understand who and what I am – but my pale skin and obvious English ancestry make my need less visible, and I struggle even within this Party to reach out.

In 2010 I had a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer. I have a prosthesis, affectionately called “-ess”, that enables me to either be visible as a cancer survivor or not, depending whether I choose for her to return my feminine shape, or to leave her at home and allow my misshapen form to be seen.

So my outgoing message to you all is that if you hold tight to the Green Charter and the principles that underlie it, then we have a strong chance of retaining and strengthening our diversity and appreciation for each other. We all have stories that aren’t visible, yet for some Great Green Reason we’ve ended up in the Party.

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou, thank you for the honour and privilege to serve in this role.

From the party

Editorial Dave Kennedy

Debs Martin is the Party’s outgoing female Co-covenor

03

From the party

Kia ora. It has obviously been a difficult time for us recently, so I want to start by saying thank you to you, our Green Party members. You are the people who knock on doors, make phone calls, put up hoardings and keep our party running. No matter what is happening in Wellington, from what I’ve heard about the record efforts that you’ve been making around the country, I know that our campaign to change the government is in the best hands possible. With your efforts, we have the most organised and driven election campaign we have ever had.

I also want to thank Metiria, who has changed the way we talk and think about poverty in this country. She has been an exceptional Parliamentarian for 15 years, and I have been so proud to work alongside her as Co-leader.

Together, we will continue her work to end poverty, and to change the government.

04

The shape of this election campaign may have changed recently, but the fundamentals remain the same – and it is more important than ever that the Green Party is at the heart of New Zealand’s next progressive government.

Many of us are involved in politics because we love New Zealand, and we want our country to be the best it can be.

You know as well as I do that the Green Party is the only party that has the values, ideas and vision to make that happen.

We are the only party that is committed to real action on climate change and to transforming New Zealand into a zero carbon economy by 2050. I first joined the Greens in 1990 – and got into politics – precisely because I wanted to protect our planet and take action on climate change. I won’t stop until the work is done. Aotearoa can lead the way in showing the world what this looks like; a thriving economy with well-paying, secure jobs, fuelled by clean energy, and with New Zealanders sleeping in warm, energy-efficient and healthy homes, connected by public transport. We have the power to make it happen.

We are the only party with a credible plan to clean up our dirty rivers and guarantee access to clean water. We will impose a fair charge on water bottlers, who make enormous profits from our water, and redistribute the funding back to iwi and local government. The money will be used by them to clean up our polluted rivers and guarantee safe, clean drinking water.

And we are the only party that is committed to ending poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand, with our plan to ensure that people who need income support get what they need to make ends meet. A decent government does not use the threat of poverty as a weapon against its own people, and with the Greens at the heart of a progressive government we will put a stop to it.

The challenges we face as a country are numerous, but so are the opportunities we are presented with. We need to change the government and to be in government to tackle those challenges and grasp those opportunities.

But it’s not going to be easy.

That’s why I’m asking you to dig even deeper. By the time you read this, there will be less than a month until the election. This is going to take all of us and it’s going to take everything we’ve got.

If you have any friends or whānau leaning on the fence, now is the time to have a chat with them about why this election is so important.

If you have any friends or whānau who are Green supporters, but have never volunteered or donated to the Green Party before, I encourage you to talk to them about giving time or making a donation to the campaign.

These are critical moments for our party. Join me in making sure that we have a strong Green presence in the next government. A strong party vote for the Greens will mean the Greens will be at the heart of the next government.

Bring on September 23 – I’m ready, and I know you are too!

From the party

The consequences of boldness James Shaw

05

Why there is an ‘SPFG’ Roland Sapsford

06

The latter two have been the focus for the last 18 months; for example, SPFG curated discussions around members’ views on policy and portfolio priorities at the 2016 AGM and subsequently at provincial meetings. In 2017 we have been reviewing work done in 2014 around how to organise internally, and in relation to other parties, if we are in a position to be part of Government. Details of this work are necessarily sensitive; they were discussed in a

little more detail in our annual report to the 2017 Greens AGM. We have also finalised recommendations for threeyear Operational Priorities, which have been approved by the National Executive, Policy Committee and Caucus.

Facilitating conversations to update that will be part of our post-election work.

Post-election, whatever the outcome, the Party will be kicking off its first long-term strategy discussions since the early 2000s. This will be a participatory, party-wide exercise that will run through to the 2019 AGM, when we hope the Party will be in a position to sign off a new long-term strategy. Besides face-to-face conversations at conferences, provinces and branches, we also hope to make extensive use of online discussion tools to engage as wide a range of members as possible.

We look forward to weaving anew the strands which bind us together, and helping us all to collectively define the Green kaupapa. Our Charter is the bedrock of our Party, and our members are its lifeblood. Together these will shape the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand’s long-term strategy.

Becoming the participant Julian Lumbreras

I moved to New Zealand in 2001, following the love of my life and the mother of my two gorgeous girls, all the way to her home in the Hawke’s Bay. Shortly after arriving, I decided to go back to university, where I worked on a degree in marine biology. I guess it was at that time I started on my crusade for the environment and solutions to the problems that have been, are and will be plaguing the human species for some time.

Since then, I have gone through several iterations of my career, including MAF Quarantine, high school science teacher, active unionist and lobbyist for better education for the youth of Aotearoa.

My family has always been politically active. Both my parents were members of the Labour Committee in Toronto and New York, and it is from them that I developed a deep and unshakeable sense of social justice. It is this moral compass that has led me to the Green Party of Aotearoa. While I realise that the Party shares my deep love for the Earth, it is the progressive way in which it carries out its politics that I find most exciting and engaging.

So, I finally took the plunge and decided that it was time to stop spectating and become the participant I am always encouraging my students to be. And here I am, nervous and more excited than I have been for a long time.

Looking forward to helping out and doing my part for our Party and our beautiful country.

The Policy Network is currently made up of a great bunch of people who are eager to help sculpt the framework that gives our membership a voice. I look forward to the challenge of ensuring that we are engaging the membership and ensuring that our leaders have the policy they need to make our voice heard. I hope that I am able to do the job justice, and I am grateful for the opportunity that has been given to me.

From the party

From the party

Like some languid and long-lived Loch Ness monster, the Strategic Planning Facilitation Group (SPFG) periodically rises to the surface of Party consciousness before dropping again below that emerald sea. New members can look surprised, confused and even excited, while older ones nod sagely. But what is SPFG, and why does it exist?

Back in the early 2000s, the Party undertook a partywide, long-term planning exercise. SPFG was created to facilitate that process and generally provide a mechanism to facilitate member discussion on long-term strategic issues for the Party. Conversations about the Party’s longterm direction and health will be a key part of the postelection landscape.

Policy conversations occur through the policy process, with provincial Policy Networkers and a national Policy Committee. Ongoing organisation and decisionmaking as to how we work are managed through National Executive, national officeholders and the Executive Networkers who are embedded at both province and national level. As a Party we’ve learned a lot since 2002 (and have much better acronyms now e.g. FunMark).

At times we still need to have conversations about the strategic direction of the Party and SPFG is often called on to facilitate those. SPFG is not a decision-maker, rather it is a facilitation, planning and analysis body; it periodically makes recommendations jointly to the National Executive, Policy Committee and Caucus.

Like the rest of the Party Committees, SPFG members are volunteers. SPFG only periodically crosses members’ views because we generally work on a longer-term cycle than the electoral cycle. SPFG members typically serve for three to five years and our work needs to fit around the day-to-day operations of the Party. The SPFG brief, last reviewed in 2015, sets out its key tasks: • Reviewing and developing three-year operational priorities in conjunction with the rest of the Party; • Co-ordinating periodic reviews of the Party’s longterm plan; • Consulting with members around their views on working with other political parties each electoral cycle (“political positioning”); and • Providing advice around the structural and strategic issues to consider in political negotiations (“fit to govern”).

Photo Co-convenors Julie Anne Genter and Roland Sapford addressing the Green AGM Roland Sapsford is a Co-covenor of the Strategic Planning Facilitation Group

Julian Lumbreras is the Party’s male Co-convenor of the Policy Committee

07

Young Greens Elliot Crossan

The Green Party has received a lot of criticism for the decision to abstain on the Point England Development Enabling Bill.

There are many genuine concerns from committed local groups, including Party members, that we didn’t oppose it. But during the course of the debate I have become increasingly frustrated at how much of the opposition is being framed, and how the voices of Ngāti Paoa, and Māori environmental leadership, have been lost.

This Bill was flawed and I share many of the concerns.

It overrode the Reserves Act and local decision making processes in the RMA. Government should have followed due process and brought the community with it.

However, the Greens’ fundamental Charter commitment to the te reo Māori text of Te Tiriti o Waitangi requires us to recognise the tino rangatiratanga of Ngāti Paoa and their right to settle historical claims with the Crown, and have land returned to them that was originally alienated through duplicitous breaches of Te Tiriti.

In May 1841 the Government purchased the Kohimarama block - about 6,000 acres including the Pt England Reserve - from Ngāti Paoa. This included all the waterfront land from Kohimarama to the Tāmaki estuary.

They were paid an absolute pittance for some of the most valuable land in the country; £100 in cash and goods worth £258.

The Bill gave partial legislative effect to a settlement that aims to address historical breaches of the Treaty that alienated Ngāti Paoa from their land, undermined their traditional social, political and economic structures, and left them virtually landless.

Ngāti Paoa are clear that this deal is an essential part of their Treaty of Waitangi settlement with the Crown. In the words of the Kaihautū (CEO) of the Ngāti Paoa Iwi Trust, and co-negotiator of the iwi’s treaty settlement, Hauauru Rawiri: “The Bill is Treaty settlement legislation - for Ngāti Paoa to regain ownership and control of significant customary land at Te Tauoma is central to the historical Treaty settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Paoa.

Without this land there will be no Treaty settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Paoa.”

The Greens have previously only ever once abstained on one bill that gave legislative effect to a Treaty settlement, and never opposed one. It would have been unprecedented to oppose.

This is not, and should never have been, an ‘environment vs the Treaty’ debate. It’s a false dichotomy that does not help strengthen connections between Te Ao Māori and the environmental movement. Māori values stand hand in hand with Green values.

Ngāti Paoa are committed to preserving and enhancing the mauri of the local environment. This is their right and

The following is the speech given on behalf of the Young Greens at the Green Party AGM by the male Co-Convener, Elliot Crossan, adapted for Te Awa.

responsibility, a cultural imperative as kaitiaki and mana whenua of the rohe. Their connection with the land, the water and the ecology is centuries old, and their wisdom and whakapapa require them to care for it.

According to Ngāti Paoa, the endangered dotterels originally nested on a shell bank of the Tāmaki River, and moved to the reserve land in recent times. They are looking to repatriate through restoration and revitalisation.

Monitoring and protecting birdlife through mitigation is entirely possible. In other developments, the bird population was unharmed and continued to live in the area. Ngāti Paoa are also undertaking significant restoration work on the Ōmaru Creek.

They are planning to significantly improve open space and community amenities to make the reserve more userfriendly and accessible. This includes opening up reserve land currently used for herd grazing, upgrades to sports fields and an overall increase in useable open space.

72% of the current Point England Reserve remains reserve, including waterfront and estuary areas, as well as open space. Only 11.69 hectares of 45.43 hectares will be returned to Ngāti Paoa for housing development, with an additional hectare for the establishment of their marae.

Treaty settlements are always flawed and limited; so was this Bill. Nevertheless the Greens have a duty to recognise Te Tiriti and Māori rights to environmental protection and management.

This was Ngāti Paoa’s only opportunity. We should have supported them.

Photo Marama Davidson and Jack McDonald Jack McDonald is 11th on the Green Party list and a member of Te Ropu Pounamu. He is standing in the Te Tai Hau-ā-uru electorate

Tena koutou katoa. I am Elliot Crossan, the male Co-convener of the Young Greens for 2017. The Young Greens network is stronger than ever; we are a vibrant community of activists brimming with dedication and determination who believe that a better world is possible. We are proud to be part of the most progressive parliamentary movement in Aotearoa, a movement that emphasises member-led democracy and the inclusion of a diversity of voices.

I would like to raise the voice of the Young Greens today, and share some of our thoughts and feelings with you. I would like to thank James for the graceful apology he recently gave for his limiting interpretation of our policy on immigration. Many Young Greens felt very strongly that we could not stand by the statement about having a 1% cap on immigration. New Zealand First, Labour and National seem intent on turning this election into a competition on who can dog whistle the loudest. We felt that the Greens, as the voice for young and progressive people, should be standing up, not standing by, and fighting for the inclusion of migrants in Aotearoa. It is 33 years of neoliberalism that has caused Aotearoa’s inequality crisis, not migrants.

Now that that statement has been apologised for, we feel that there is a chance for the Greens to fight back against xenophobia in this election. We challenge the Party to do so, and to fight in solidarity with migrant communities, come what may.

There is an urgency that informs the politics of my generation. If I could communicate one thing on behalf of the Young Greens, it is this: climate change is poised to make the planet uninhabitable for human beings within our lifetimes. We cannot afford houses; we can barely afford rent; we are saddled with debt; we have to work long hours for low wages. This is why young people do not have time for establishment politics or establishment economics.

This is why young people will not accept pandering, a conservative approach, or arbitrary constraints on the political imagination that crush any hope of the systemic changes society needs simply for humanity to survive. Young people have to be radical if we want a future worth living in.

Now is not the time to limit ourselves to rightwing economic vision and framing. There is an idea that permeates the Greens and Labour that the Left can only win power if we constrain ourselves and our arguments in order to “move to the centre ground.” Martin Luther King would’ve called it “the tranquilising drug of gradualism.”

The theory is based on the premise that New Zealanders cannot think beyond this world of profit and greed at any

cost. This is a premise that young people reject, because we know that our generation has the imagination and the will for a new political and economic system that puts people and planet before corporate interests. Left-wing politics win when people are inspired, and when a vision of genuine change is given. It is the Right that benefits from hopelessness. If the Greens buy into the narrative of the Right, then we allow the terms of debate to be defined by a crushing cynicism - and young and disenfranchised people will not turn out to vote.

There has been discussion in our circles lately about why exactly we are seeing the unexpected rise of left-wing politicians Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, and why young people rallied to their campaigns in unprecedented numbers. The most resonant analysis that gets to the heart of it, I think, is that young people saw, for the first time in their lives, the politics of hope. They finally saw a chance for real, sweeping change.

The Green Party is uniquely placed to see this happen in Aotearoa; our kaupapa is based on being able to deal with the crises of the future, climate change and inequality.

John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor, proclaimed at an anti-austerity demo after the recent UK election, “We have campaigned for years on that slogan ‘another world is possible.’ But I tell you now: another world is in sight! Let’s seize this moment!”

The opportunity is there for the Green Party to seize the same moment, to capitalise on the enthusiastic radicalism of young people, and to change Aotearoa for good.

Another world is possible – if, and only if, we have the courage to fight for it.

Photo Elliot Crossan (2nd from left) with Marama Davidson and young greens at the AGM Elliot Crossan is the male Co-convenor of the Young Greens

Our Networks

Our Networks 08

Māori values are Green values Jack McDonald

09

10

It’s been a pretty interesting and tricky few months for me, and no doubt for many of our other candidates, trying to strike the balance between our “civilian” lives and the “call to serve” of being a candidate.

For someone who has spent the majority of her adult life moving around the planet making music, bringing New Zealand politics to the forefront has involved temporarily putting aside a few things that are generally core components of my life and purpose.

Probably the one I’m feeling the most is touring. As a musician based overseas, touring is a huge part of how I make my living. Living out of a suitcase is pretty common practice for me, and the concept of “home” continues to be fluid and responsive, depending on where the people (and animals) I love are, where I lay my head, and where I get to cook myself a warm meal. My life is bananas (b-ana-nas) and I’m humbled and grateful for the privilege to be able to do what I do. And is I’ll be honest: this is the first European summer since 2012 that I haven’t played a festival and I’m having SERIOUS tour withdrawals.

I knew when I put my hat in the ring at the end of last year that 2017 was going to be a new adventure. If I was serious about doing everything I could to help Kiwis around the world get engaged in our election this year, I was going to have to give up a European season of summer shows, tours and performances.

And here we are, right in the thick of it. It was Glastonbury a couple of months ago. Many of my friends are out on the road in the USA, Europe, Asia and the UK. Thankfully, I’m channelling my musical energy into my new album, which I can do from anywhere and is, in itself, super exciting.

But the best part is I’ve now worked out how to get overseas Kiwis inspired, while at the same time getting my fix on the road… and thus has been born: GREENS ON TOUR! On my recent trip home, Aaron Brunet (one of our members and former Masterchef champion) and I hosted a plant-based, pop-up event at The Workshop, a co-working space in Auckland. It was the first of a string of global events we’re doing this year, creating new and interesting social spaces with food, art, music and conversation to get people inspired and involved… that just so *happens* to be brought to you by the Greens.

Now, I’m no expert on economics, the justice system, human rights law, or the deep-level science of climate change. We have candidates and experts far more talented in those fields, who continue to amaze and inspire me every day. (SERIOUSLY, what a bad-ass SQUAD we have!) But what I am good at is bringing people together, creating positive experiences, and helping to inspire a little magic.

To give you some very general, ballpark statistics, there are said to be about one million Kiwis based abroad.

ONE MILLION. I’m not kidding - we have one of the highest proportions of our population living overseas. Last election only 40,000 odd turned out to vote, which isn’t a huge number. But that was an 86% increase on the 2011 election, given that 2014 was the first year overseas voters could vote online. Online voting is a HUGE plus!

The overseas voting process is really easy. People just need to register online like everyone else, print off a form, tick it, photograph and upload it and they’re done. AND the overseas voting window is two whole weeks to do a five minute job, opening up on 6 September. To be eligible, people only need to have been home to visit once in the last three years (even for, like, hours) if they’re citizens, or in the last 12 months if they are Permanent Residents. If they prefer it old-school, they can still fax their forms, or rock up to one of the overseas posts or embassies and vote in person.

Historically, overseas Kiwis are twice as likely to vote Green as Kiwis based at home, so if we can just make sure people are enrolled and switched on and ready to vote, the rest should take care of itself. We’re spreading that Green kaupapa across the globe, whilst also having the goodwill of being the only party who is actively engaging with our overseas community. And we’re making sure everyone has a good time and Great Conversation to boot!

And so, this election year, as your global candidate, I am doing what I do best and going ON TOUR! I’m hitting the road to get as many overseas Kiwis engaged as possible, and bringing as many of our Green volunteers as possible along with me. Our wonderful International Committee and Crew are working together to make every stop as productive and positive (and fun!) as possible. So far we have Auckland and Los Angeles under our belts (shout-out to Two Guns Espresso who hosted us in LA, owned by Kiwis who you should DEFINITELY go visit if you’re ever in town). We have dates in the pipeline for New York, Toronto, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin and London. Keep an eye on social media (@nzgreensglobal and @missbdwalsh) so you can help us spread the word around the world. We’ll be inviting volunteers to join us at all our stops, and of course any and all Kiwis (and their crew) will be welcome.

The goal is simple - make sure people are registered to vote. And the message is clear: #votefromanywhere, proving that we are Great Together, wherever we are in the world.

Photo Some of the beautiful LA-based kiwis who made it along to our pop-up at Two Guns Espresso, thanks to the lovely Nat and Stan, both Kiwis based in California

Our Networks

Our Networks

Greens on tour Bridget Walsh

Bridget Walsh is the Greens global candidate, supporting the international campaign

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Peter Hill 1949–2017 Grace Taylor

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Kia ora! The Rainbow Greens are your network of queer-identifying people within the Party – that is, the Rainbow community of transgender, non-binary, bisexual, asexual, lesbian, gay, and otherwise queer or questioning people. Your co-convenors for this network are Scout River and Geraint Scott.

Our network is always bound to be relatively small, but we are also relatively new – at least, the network has been working to establish itself more since the departure of Kevin Hague from Parliament, given he previously carried a large share of the workload of advancing Rainbow issues and policy in the Party.

However, we are definitely growing and have established an online presence for ourselves, which includes a public Facebook page, a private Facebook group akin to Good Green Party Conversation for internal discussion, and we are conducting Zoom meetings with each other to discuss issues.

An important part of the work we are currently doing is improving how the Party engages with and intends to support transgender and gender-diverse people. This includes devoloping more concrete policy, and also looking at internal Party structures and processes to see how they interact with the lived experiences of trans party members.

One example of this is the binary male/female co-convenor

model. We are actively discussing alternatives to this model that will continue to uphold the values of co-leadership and ensure representation for women whilst also opening these roles up to gender-diverse members.

We are also extremely concerned about suicide and homelessness. Globally, these two issues are worse for queer people than they are for the population at large, and this is especially true for trans people. Given we now know that Aotearoa has the worst youth suicide stats in the OECD and a growing homelessness crisis, it is safe to assume that those issues are even worse for queer youth in Aotearoa.

Currently Jan Logie is our sole flag bearer in Parliament.

She does fantastic work, but she is also busy across other issues, such as domestic violence support services, so we are keenly aware of the need to reinvigorate Rainbow policy discussion at the flaxroot level.

If you are a queer-identifying member, please contact geraintmusic@gmail.com or scoutbarbourevans@gmail.com or look up Geraint Scott on facebook to be connected with us.

Photo The Greens’ Auckland Office stands in solidarity with LGBTIQ students on the International Day of Silence (18 Aug). This day brings attention to the silencing effect of bullying and harassment of these students in our schools Geraint Scott is the Co-convenor of Rainbow Greens

Photo top Peter Hill, clean water advocate

Our People

Our Networks

Rainbow Greens Geraint Scott

Peter Hill of the Selwyn Electorate passed away, suddenly, in his sleep, on 19 April. He was 68.

Peter was an outspoken doer, a kind man, who cared passionately for the natural environment. He was also my neighbour, give or take a paddock or two.

I first made his acquaintance in 2010, when E.coli bugs polluted our local Dunsandel township water supply.

Peter had started making noise, writing to the local papers to raise awareness of the issue.

We got together with a few others and started a ginger group, Dunsandel Water Watch.

Peter was our voice, pushing the Selwyn District Council to investigate the source of the E.coli, which included getting the regional council compliance team to do spot checks on local effluent discharge consents.

Eventually, the councils determined the culprit was a ruminant, with a Selwyn Council water engineer suggesting the guilty parties could be sheep, goats or even llamas! Then Green Party Co-leader, Russel Norman, came to town to help shine a spotlight on the nonsense.

Peter continued to be outspoken about the injustice of it all, as the local ratepayers now had the burden of a targeted rate to cover the cost of more frequent water testing and the installation of UV water treatment systems.

At this time, the water quality of our local rivers was also deteriorating. Peter became politically-charged, and was elected to the Selwyn District Council in 2010.

Peter did two terms on the Council, continuing to be the voice for those opposed to the council’s $8 million ratepayer loan to private shareholder-owned irrigation company, Central Plains Water Ltd; advocating for indigenous plantings for council reserves; supporting the Canterbury Astronomical Society in their quest to make West Melton a dark sky reserve; and other good green things.

Throughout this period he was an active member in the Selwyn Greens, being our representative on the Aoraki Provincial Executive, and in 2014 he stood as the candidate for Selwyn Electorate. Coming second to Amy Adams in the electorate vote, he was the only Green candidate in 2014 to reach a second placing.

Peter was a good Kiwi bloke, active in the community, a decent, principled man who stood for green values. He made a difference in Selwyn.

Peter leaves behind his beloved Kathy, his mum, daughters and granddaughters. He is missed.

Photo bottom Peter Hill with Russel Norman and Catherine Delahunty

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Prof. Kornelis Blok, Ecofys, 13 July 2015

Climate Change Mr Speaker, I’m always fascinated to listen to government members speak about their balanced and sensible approach. Where they’re just weighing up expanding the economy and jobs versus destroying the planet - and coming down somewhere in the middle - so that you’ve got a sensible balance between half the jobs against burning half the planet, and that somehow gets the balance right.

State of the Nation

Let me give the government members just a quick insight into how this works: jobs happen ON THE PLANET.

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So when you have an enormous drought, like the one we had in 2013, that wiped $1.5 billion of our economy, jobs were lost. That is the cost of climate change!

When the worst storm in 70 years happened, there were small businesses going under because they didn’t have electricity. That is jobs that are lost!

Last year Whanganui and Dunedin South were under water; huge floods. Every single year there are increasing droughts and storms and fires and floods - and all of those come at an enormous cost to the economy, and to these jobs that you say you are protecting while taking this somehow balanced approach to destroying the atmosphere!

James Shaw, Parliament, 7 June 2016

Net emissions have increased by 63.6% since 1990. This is due to the increase in gross emissions and higher harvesting rates in planted forests.

A student’s bid to sue the Government over its climate change position may be the public’s only chance to scrutinise current emissions targets, her lawyers say.

Waikato University student Sarah Thomson said outside the High Court at Wellington on Monday, “I feel a lot of people have their hopes on this, because a lot of people want to see change.”

Ged Cann, Stuff, 26 June 2017

In documents released under the Official Information Act, a briefing to Judith Collins on her first day as Energy Minister says the cost to the economy of buying international carbon units to offset our own emissions will be $14.2 billion over 10 years.

New Zealand has the 19th worst levels of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the world. In 2014, 48.8 per cent of our gross GHG emissions came from agriculture, and 39.8 per cent came from energy - which includes manufacturing, electricity production and transportation fuels.

Late in 2015 the Government said agriculture would continue to have the benefit of not having to pay for its greenhouse gas emissions. It had no idea when that might change.

As Westpac noted, the exclusion of agriculture placed the financial burden of reducing emissions on the other half of emitters.

Isobel Ewing, Newshub, 22 May 2017

Michael Daly, Stuff, 20 March 2017

New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990-2015, Ministry for the Environment, 26 May 2017

State of the Nation

New Zealand’s climate policy is projected to head in the opposite direction from the world’s biggest emitters such as China, the United States and the European Union. It has taken little or no action on climate change since 2008 – except for watering down its ETS, and we can find no evidence of any policies that would change this.

15

The state of our freshwaters Mike Joy

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Human health There are risks to human health caused by the intensification of agriculture from the contamination of fresh water by pathogens (such as cryptosporidium) and toxic algae, known as cyanobacteria. There are two issues here, one is excess nutrients, coinciding with unshaded waterways and high temperatures, which can result in potentially toxic algal blooms. The other is the pollution of water by faeces – direct pollution by faecal pathogens from stock in and near waterways, and inadequate wastewater treatment plants.

E. coli bacteria are the indicators of faecal contamination. NIWA’s mapping again shows that the worst areas for faecal contamination are in intensivelyfarmed and lowland urban areas (Figure 2).

Is water quality improving or not?

Water quality has significantly worsened over the last twenty-five years (1989 to 2014) at the majority of the 77 NRWQN sites. For example, total nitrogen increased at 39 sites while just 11 declined (Figure 3). For dissolved reactive phosphorus, 24 sites deteriorated and 9 improved.

The only improvements were in clarity and ammonia.

However, ammonia is largely related to point-source (out of pipe) discharges, and the improvement is likely due to the reduction of those discharge points and better wastewater treatment. The biggest issue for freshwater in New Zealand is diffuse pollution resulting from agricultural intensification, for example where more cows per hectare are enabled by bringing in more external feed and fertiliser.

The NRWQN sites are separated into two groups; half baseline (mostly undeveloped catchments) and half impact (downstream of pastoral catchments). When the baseline and impact groups are considered separately (as they should be) it is clear that water quality is declining in considerably more impact sites than baseline sites, notwithstanding the baseline sites now have development in their catchments (Figure 4). The graphic clearly shows that in most cases twice as many impact sites as baseline sites are declining.

The data above reveal just where the degraded waterways are, and that the fundamental impacts are related to land-use for pastoral and urban catchments.

The correlations were almost all significantly positive, indicating that poorer water quality was associated with increasing urban or pastoral cover, but it is crucial to note that urban catchments make up less than one percent of the length of all waterways.

The primary drivers of the declines revealed in New Zealand have been unrestrained agricultural intensification, indigenous vegetation clearance and wetland drainage, with their attendant increases in nutrients and sediment inevitably entering lakes, rivers and groundwater.

These impacts have accrued along with the impacts of urbanisation, damming of rivers and exotic species introductions, all cumulatively triggering this freshwater disaster.

Despite attempts by government and the agricultural industry to confuse the issues and downplay the declining state of our freshwaters, the problem and its causes are clear and simple. It is time now to act and reduce farming intensity for all our sakes.

Dr Mike Joy is a senior lecturer in Ecology and Environmental Science at Massey University’s Ecology Group

Figure 1. Modelled current state of the Macroinvertebrate Community Index.

A score of < 80 indicates severe pollution, 80 -100 is moderately polluted, 100120 is doubtful water-quality and > 120 is healthy. Accordingly, dark orange and red waterways are severely or moderately polluted. (Unwin, M. J., and S. T. Larned. 2013. Statistical models, indicators and trend analyses for reporting national-scale river water quality. NIWA. Pg 69.)

Figure 2. Modelled current state of E. coli. All red areas exceed the contact recreation limit of 260 MPN/100ml. (Unwin, M. J., and S. T. Larned. 2013.

NIWA. Pg 62.)

Figure 3. Water quality trends at the 77 NRWQN for 1989–2014. Based on Larned, S., T. Snelder, M. Unwin, G. B. McBride, P. Verburg, and H. McMillan. 2015. Analysis of Water Quality in New Zealand Lakes and Rivers.

NIWA. Data used is from Table5-6, p 56.

Figure 4. Plot of trends 1989 –2007 from NRWQN data, separated into baseline and impact. From Ballantine, D. J., and R. J. Davies-Colley. 2009.

Water quality trends at NRWQN sites for 1989-2007. NIWA Report.

See Table 1, p8.

State of the Nation

State of the Nation

Unsurprisingly, New Zealanders are very concerned and confused about the state of our freshwaters.

The facts are actually simple and clear-cut: our freshwater ecosystems are in poor shape, and are getting worse – fast – in intensively-farmed catchments. There is no sign of a halt to these declines, let alone improvement at the majority of monitored sites.

One of the starkest indications of the extent of the deterioration in freshwater health is the fact that New Zealand now has proportionally more threatened freshwater fish species than any of the other countries in the world who keep a tally. Just think of our native fish as miners’ canaries – there is a clear message here!

Water quality has been monitored by NIWA at a set of 77 river sites, known as the National River Water Quality Network (NRWQN), since 1989. These data have more recently been supplemented by a few hundred sites monitored monthly by Land, Air, Water Aotearoa (LAWA).

Lakes are measured at 112 sites.

Analysis of all these data reveals clearly the poor state of water quality in most lowland rivers, particularly for the measures of nutrients, and faecal and sediment pollution.

Even in 2010, 44 percent of lakes had declined to the point of eutrophication (causing an excessive growth of algae due to nutrient overload).

The most robust measure of the health of a waterway is to sample the life in it. This is done in New Zealand using the Macroinvertebrate Community Index (MCI), which is a measure of organic enrichment based on the response of the individual insect species to increasing nutrient levels.

To give a national picture of the state of water quality the national MCI scores, measured at the sites shown as black dots in Figure 1, were modelled by NIWA to fill in the gaps and the results were colour coded. The red and darkorange river lines show areas that are severely (a score of <80 on the MCI) or moderately (<100) polluted.

Figure 1 shows clearly that the areas with poor quality waterways are the lowland areas. Land cover maps from Landcare show that those areas are intensively farmed.

Contrast those areas with the West Coast of the South Island, the East Coast around East Cape, and the Coromandel Peninsula, which show that healthy waterways do still exist in lowlands without agricultural intensification.

17

Our fall to the bottom Dave Kennedy

A June UNICEF report has New Zealand languishing at the bottom of the developed world in relation to the health and welfare our children and youth.

The report is based on the data our government collects but, with regards to child poverty, a ranking wasn’t provided for our country because of our refusal to follow standard practice. The following rankings from the report are out of a possible 41 developed countries (not all countries provided data on all issues).

• Teen Suicide (34/34) We are the worst by a great margin. The median number of teen suicides per 100,000 for developed nations is around 7.5, while 15.5 of our 15-19 year olds take their own lives. This is a shocking indictment of the ability of families to support their teens and of our severely under-resourced mental health system. Those specialised youth facilities that do exist are run like prisons. Youth prisoners can be locked in their cells for 19 hours a day, which is classified as torture.

• Jobless Households (35/37) 16% of our children live in households not supported by employment.

Benefits have not kept up with inflation and many of these beneficiary families will be experiencing high levels of poverty. Many in real need don’t receive a benefit, despite entitlement, because of bureaucratic difficulties, and many are forced onto the street with no income at all.

State of the Nation

• Environmental Awareness (34/36) Our 15 year olds have less understanding of the key environmental issues facing our planet than those in most other countries. Only 49% knew something about at least five environmental issues, while the average in other countries was 62% (82% for Portugal). Our water ways are seriously polluted and we have the highest number of species facing extinction in the world. Keeping our young people ignorant about this is a concern.

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This article has been adapted from a blog post which has links to all references and sources: https://localbodiesbsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/nz-now-ranks-atbottom-of-developed.html

• Teenage Birth Rate (36/41) We have one of the highest rates of teenage births (23.3 births for every thousand 15-19 year old females). With increased alcohol consumption and binge drinking amongst young females we are also experiencing greater numbers of children born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

While it is hard to come up with an accurate figure, it is estimated that between one and five out of every 100 babies born have FASD.

• Inequity in Education (34/39) We have one of the greatest disparities of educational achievement when related to socio-economic influences. Private and higher decile schools, however, capture the majority of special education funding because of the costs of access.

• Inclusive Economy (34/40) The unemployment rate for Maori youth is almost 26% (14% for nonMaori). Around 90,000 young people in NZ have no training or job to go to. The jobs available in NZ are predominantly low-waged and insecure. We also have a youth pay rate where we employ young people at lower rates than adults who do the same job. Our workers, on average, work the longest hours.

• Homicide and Bullying (33/40) We have the second highest rates of bullying in the OECD, and concerning levels of youth committing violent crimes.

Family violence is a massive issue in New Zealand and violence begets violence.

• Child Murder (31/37) The number of children in NZ who have been murdered is a national shame. We have the worst levels of family violence in the developed world. Around 525,000 New Zealanders were harmed by domestic violence last year and it has been estimated that the cost of this violence to our economy is $7 billion. Our violence counselling services are underfunded and our social worker numbers have been reduced.

• Neonatal Mortality Rate (28/36) Over the last decade or so we have seen more mothers pushed out of maternity wards because of a lack of beds, while Plunket struggles to provide the services that it once did.

• Reducing Inequality (26/41) New Zealand was once considered an egalitarian society, but since the 1990s we have experienced the highest increase in inequality in the developed world.

• Food Insecurity (21/41) In the land of milk and honey, where we export vast amounts of food, a high percentage of our children go hungry or suffer from a poor diet. Milk is cheaper in the countries we export to and, here, fresh fruit and vegetables cost more than processed foods. 32% of our children are obese or overweight and yet the Government removed the requirement to have healthy food in schools.

• Education Performance (15/38) Just over a decade ago our children’s academic performance put us in the top four in the world. We have now dropped to 21st in mathematics. 71.9% of our 15 year olds currently achieve baseline competency in reading, mathematics and science. By comparison, Finland and Canada have over 80% achieving this.

Our failing prisons, struggling hospitals and social services, extreme housing crisis and low wage economy are forcing more and more families into third world lifestyles and living conditions.

New Zealand should be the very best country to bring up children and youth in. We have a relatively small population, abundant resources and were once a world leader in education, child health and family support. We are now ranked near the bottom because of poor governance, neoliberal austerity measures and a lack of compassion.

We need a change of government!

Dave Kennedy, Invercargill/Clutha Southland Branch

State of the Nation

• Child Poverty (41/41?) New Zealand was not included in this indicator, but I consider that we must be by far the worst in the developed world when the Government refuses to use the same measures as other countries so that we can be ranked. We use a much higher threshold to determine child poverty, requiring seven elements to recognise hardship, while most other countries use only two. 28% of our children live below the poverty line and 16% live in jobless households, so I would surmise that we could be the worst. The Government is clearly too afraid to provide relevant statistics to enable us to be ranked. Appropriate housing is also a major indicator of poverty and our level of homelessness is now the worst in the OECD, according to an international comparison done by Yale University.

19

The revolutionary potential of Green health policy

Keith Locke

Dr Rebekah Jaung

Election promises can cost a lot of money. Here are some ways the Greens in government could raise extra cash. All these proposals are consistent with existing Green policy.

Firstly, as recentl has been announced by the Green Party, we should increase tax on the rich, having a top 40% rate for incomes over $150,000. The successful Corbyn campaign in Britain was a little more ambitious, proposing a 45% tax on incomes over 80,000 pounds (around NZ$142,000) and 50% on incomes over 123,000 pounds (around NZ$220,000). A comprehensive capital gains tax, long advocated by the NZ Greens, is already used around the world to make the tax system fairer and raise revenue that can be used to benefit everyone. Other options, promoted in the UK Greens 2017 election manifesto, include a wealth tax on the top 1% of income earners, and a “Robin Hood” tax on high value transactions in the financial sector.

Secondly, a big chunk of the GCSB’s $159 million annual budget could be saved by closing down the Waihopai spy station. Such a move would be in line with the Greens’ opposition to NZ being part of Five Eyes. The communications data drawn down into Waihopai’s satellite dishes is fed to Donald Trump’s National Security Agency and often used for purposes New Zealanders would not agree with. The government is embarrassed about how much Waihopai costs the taxpayer and has refused to provide any figures.

Thirdly, several hundred million dollars a year could be saved by phasing out our two frigates, Te Mana and Te Kaha. Getting rid of the frigates has long been a Green policy. Our other navy vessels (the six patrol boats and the multi-purpose vessel, ‘Canterbury’) are useful for disaster relief work and resource patrols around New Zealand and in the South Pacific. The frigates, by contrast, are geared only to help America fight foreign wars and they cost a fortune to run and upgrade. The current frigate weapons systems upgrade is costing $440 million.

Fourthly, legalising and regulating marijuana would not only keep a lot of people out of jail and lower our imprisonment rate, but would also enhance tax revenue.

Colorado takes in around US$200 million annually from the state’s tax on legal marijuana sales. Some of the takings could be dedicated to help those who missuse the drug.

Fifthly, $1 billion would be saved by cancelling the projected new 1500 prisoner facility at Waikeria, and the 300 new beds at Ngawha and Mt Eden. Even a fraction of that money being put into prisoner rehabilitation programmes would produce a better outcome. Reducing prisoner numbers in the short term can be done at both ends of the prison system. Repealing the 2013 Bail Amendment Act would significantly drop the number of remand prisoners. More would be on bail before their

In 2014, in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine, Kevin Hague presented the five key characteristics of a good healthcare system: • Health care should be a fundamental right for all New Zealanders • There should be no access barriers, certainly not financial ones • Services should be universally available • Services should be preventive in focus • Services should be integrated.

trials. And we should also follow California’s lead. That state releases selected prisoners early to relieve pressure on accommodation. There is no excuse for adding to prisoner numbers when our overall crime rate has been dropping, not increasing.

These five policies are controversial and would draw fire from the business establishment (for raising taxes on the rich), the intelligence establishment (for closing Waihopai), the defence establishment (for phasing out naval combat boats), the moral conservatives (for legalizing marijuana for adults) and the law-and-order brigade (for allowing more bail and releasing some prisoners early).

However, each of these policies would resonate favourably with thinking, progressive voters. They would also more clearly differentiate Green policies from Labour’s in five important areas. Pushing such policies in the election campaign would also enhance the Greens’ credibility as an anti-establishment party at a time when voters, in New Zealand and around the world, are increasingly critical of the status quo.

And each of these five policies would produce funds to help pay for the important social and environmental projects the Greens will be promoting during the election campaign.

Photo Keith Locke participating in an anti-mining march Keith Locke is a former Green MP

During the current election cycle, our position on individual issues, such as drug law reform and taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages, eloquently represented by Julie Anne Genter, has been applauded by the healthcare sector for being sensible and evidence-based. Acknowledging that it is election year, and that the campaign process is already in full swing, I would like to highlight health as an area in which an overarching vision setting out our philosophy and approach to governance could be evidence-based, compassionate and progressive all at once.

The right to good health is fundamental, and addressing the ugly reality of health inequity in Aotearoa is exactly the kind of agenda where our holistic approach and values are urgently needed. Happily, the importance of good quality, public healthcare and health equity are concepts that most people agree upon, independent of their other political views. It is not considered acceptable for a person to be deprived of healthcare because they cannot afford it, nor for a person’s life to be cut short because of their ethnicity.

However, that is where we are currently at as a country and why this issue is so important.

The great thing is that we Greens already have an overarching health policy to build on. The vision and key principles acknowledge the role of social and environmental factors, and the priority of addressing inequity. They already provide a strong foundation on which to build an overarching health policy, using the language and ideas of our leading indigenous health academics, and what is standard practice in the world of public health.

I was fortunate enough to be taught by the likes of Prof Papaarangi Reid, Dr Elana Curtis and Dr Rhys Jones – teachers who, in their time, have lit the flame of justice in the hearts of many a privileged and naïve medical student. Their meticulous deconstruction of the many myths about Māori health inequity, and the flawed approaches that have been taken to address the issue in the past, should be our guide for talking about the broad vision for health policy in Aotearoa. Like any process of decolonisation, this is likely to be difficult – but very necessary in order to adequately address this unacceptable remnant of our colonial history.

Similarly, a stronger emphasis on the role of the social and environmental determinants of health would tie

together our charter principles, and many of our existing policies and positions, with an equitable and thoroughly evidence-based understanding of what health policy should be. Climate protection is a natural fit here.

Making our support for this comprehensive model of health explicit in all aspects of our future health policy would clearly distinguish us from the fragmented and haphazard approach to health taken by other political parties. It would also demonstrate a willingness to recognise that it is the responsibility of the State to provide good healthcare for all, rather than the current model where health funding is seen as a bothersome expense that is topped up only when the need becomes disastrously high.

This is an issue on which we can be the leaders.

We are a Party that is proud of the values that set us apart, and of our ability to be compassionate as well as evidence-based. Health policy is an area in which we can very easily do both. I believe that by reviewing and building upon the foundations of the current health policy in the near future we could continue this tradition and, most importantly, we could raise the standard of discourse around healthcare. At the centre of our vision for the health of Aotearoa would be those with the greatest need, a comprehensive plan to address the impact of our changing environments on health, and our dedication to Te Tiriti.

Photo Rebekah with research team Dr Rebekah Jaung is the Northcote Green Party candidate

Greens Have Their Say

Greens Have Their Say 20

Some bold ways of funding Green election promises

21

Social (dis)investment

Kate Fulton

Jan Logie

Recently, Grey District Council has proposed ‘sustainably’ logging three of the old-growth native forests it owns on the West Coast. It argues that the revenue earned would be of economic benefit to the region.

Less than a quarter of New Zealand is still covered in native forests, of which two thirds are beech forests primarily located in mountainous regions.

These days our lowlands are predominantly an agricultural landscape, with only occasional remnants of the ancient podocarp forest that once covered the plains and low hills. These remnants include our giant hardwoods - rimu, kahikatea, miro, mataī and tōtara, previously the main targets for logging. They remind us of a primeval forested time.

With so few podocarp forests left, it is important to protect any and all that remain. The largest remaining podocarp forests are on the West Coast of the South Island.

These precious remnants contain the highest diversity of plants and animals in the country.

Research increasingly concludes that any selective logging, even if carried out in a supposedly ‘sustainable’ manner, will damage many of the intricacies of old-growth forest ecosystems. This is because the oldest and largest trees are the most precious trees for the ecology of an entire podocarp forest.

Old-growth trees produce thousands of fruits in mast years, thus providing an essential food source for insects and birds. They contain cavities that are essential for hole-nesting birds, already vulnerable to predators. Their canopies are festooned with epiphytic plants, and scores of species live within these trees, providing a unique ecosystem that doesn’t exist in younger trees. Removing even one large tree destroys the habitat and food source of many native flora and fauna.

The spectacular scenery of the West Coast is a drawcard that few other regions in the country or the world can match. Tourism is one of the West Coast’s greatest opportunities - it should be at the forefront of all future planning.

In 2001, central Government allocated $120 million to the West Coast Development Trust to allow for alternative investment, as compensation for the loss of indigenous forestry on publicly-owned land. Publicly-owned land includes that owned by the Crown/DOC and by the local councils.

The Development Trust has already committed over $8 million to each of the Buller, Westland and Grey District Councils. This is significantly greater than the $100,000 per year the Grey District Council could earn by logging these three forests. All other profits will end up off-shore.

Central Government and DOC have also invested in large-scale tourism attractions on the West Coast, which have proven incredibly popular. Developments include the

The Government is telling us that they are ready to tackle the big social issues in front of us through their ‘social investment’ approach. On first glance this sounds great. We have been arguing for years now that it is incredibly short sighted not to address child poverty. Most of us have been arguing that child poverty is avoidable and unethical. We have also argued that it is costing us billions more than it would cost to solve. I’ve made the same arguments for domestic violence and workplace protections.

We have in many ways been using a public health analysis for years, effectively arguing that if we address the social determinants of health - like income, environment, housing - then individuals and our society will be better off. So social investment sounds familiar and probably quite good to most of us. The problem is that the Government has a very different understanding of what social investment means and is using a very different model.

Since 2012, MSD’s Investing in Services for Outcomes approach is being used to target services to a very small group that the Government has decided are the most vulnerable and/or will be a long-term cost. This approach increasingly drives funding decisions for community organisations, the structure of income support services, and the decision to focus the new Ministry Oranga Tamariki on ‘vulnerable children.’ Many organisations will no longer get government funding or they will only get funding for services that fit this very targeted model.

In reality this means more centralised control, and a reduced ability for communities to identify needs and respond to them. This is the next step in turning community -based organisations into agents of central government.

The Government has set up actuarial modelling to make these decisions, using insurance company data analysis techniques to try to assess who will be at risk of negative outcomes. They define negative outcomes as: involvement with youth justice; being on a benefit for five years between the ages of 25 and 34; getting a conviction; or not getting a school qualification.

The Government has decided that the risk factors are: a substantiated CYF notification; a parent on a benefit for the majority of their life; having a parent with a conviction; and limited formal education.

The degree of ideology is obvious in the choice of outcomes and risk factors. The Government’s concern is the individual, not society, and unsurprisingly most of the discussion seems to be about individual interventions. This means people who fall outside of the identified risk groups will increasingly either go without or have to pay for their own counselling. It also means that services are more likely to become a sign of ‘something being wrong/people being a burden.’

Old Ghost Road, the West Coast Wilderness Cycleway, and the major upgrade of the Heaphy Track. The Pike29 Memorial Track is a new Great Walk due to open in 2019.

It is crucial that central Government continues to support local government and DOC, so they can provide for essential tourism infrastructure and increase tourism opportunities. A locally-invested tourism levy would provide funding for this.

Research commissioned by Globe-NZ after the signing of the Paris Agreement indicates we can achieve a carbon neutral Aotearoa by 2050, whilst co-benefitting valuable areas such as water quality, biodiversity, distribution of food and food production values. Reforestation of 1-1.6 million hectares is a key element.

Contrary to past beliefs about younger trees growing faster, old growth trees actually grow most rapidly. This makes them markedly more effective at capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it. A 2014 study published in Nature, titled Rate of Tree Carbon Accumulation Increases Continuously with Tree Size concluded that trees with ‘trunks three feet in diameter generated three times as much biomass as trees that were only half as wide.’

The West Coast has a critically important role to play in protecting unique ecosytems, promoting tourism potential and reducing climate change. It can best do this by retaining its untouched old-growth podocarp forests.

Kate Fulton is the Greens’ West Coast-Tasman candidate

This model is particularly worrying for Maori, as entrenched institutionalised racism in our child protection and justice sectors, as well as the ongoing dynamics of colonisation, mean Maori will be disproportionately identified as ‘at risk’ and subject to increased surveillance and state interventions.

In 2016, a Treasury paper said we could “expect a third of children at higher risk to not have any of the five poor outcomes later in life, and for every negative outcome there are more children with only one or no risk factors.”

Tightly targeting services will stigmatise people who were not at risk, and will mean people who need help are no longer able to get it.

The paper further criticised the MSD approach noting, “Although these four indicators are associated with poor future outcomes, they may not cause poor outcomes directly. Instead, they may be linked to other things that lead to poor outcomes.” And, “Many children can overcome disadvantaged backgrounds, and others have poor outcomes despite their relative advantage. Measuring risk is inexact and services will always need to be flexible enough to provide support based on that individual need.”

The social investment approach turns our safety net into hyper-targeted interventions. As the President of the Maori Women’s Welfare League noted, “Investment sounds like adequate resourcing, but this is cost cutting.” Instead of cost cutting we must focus on repairing our shredded social safety net.

Image Angus Maguire for IISC, see http://interactioninstitute.org/illustratingequality-vs-equity

Greens Have Their Say

Greens Have Their Say 22

Sustainable logging?

Jan Logie is an MP and candidate for Mana

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Assisted dying

Catherine Delahunty

Hugh Thorpe

The 12-month tour of rivers has taught me a great deal, and most of it is very challenging. The freshwater scientists are telling us the sobering truth about the crisis in freshwater. However I have also learned that there are champions for fresh water everywhere, and the commitment to change is building. From Landcorp to the “Farmers For the Future” group, modern farmers are stepping way from Fed Farmers’ denial. They are working for clean water and biodiversity by reducing herd numbers and reducing the inputs that pollute. From Waikoropūpū Springs to Poroti Springs, the tangata whenua are leading action, including clean-ups, court cases, restoration and monitoring. The children of this country,who understand that “swimmable” means safe to swim in NOW, not in 2040, are also leading water projects. There are many community groups passionate about and committed to the view that enough pollution is enough.

During the rivers tour I met some unforgettable rivers and people. I experienced the joy of white water rafting on the upper Tarawera, and the disgust at the ongoing state of the lower river. We travelled with Millan Ruka on his endless monitoring mission to protect the Wairua and other Te Tai Tokerau rivers from cattle incursions and pollution from effluent. I kayaked with the MP team up the Lucas Creek on the Northshore and got a cyanobacteria rash on my legs that lasted three weeks. I travelled up the Waitara with the mana whenua, who showed us the historical sites and the pipes that had polluted their kaimoana reef. At Coe’s Ford on the Waikirikiri/Selwyn River I watched a class of school children collect water samples from a pool that would later disappear altogether.

I learned that our rivers are treated like drains and sucked up for irrigation because of a greedy agricultural model requiring too much water. And I learned that the disconnection between the need for water and the respect for water is huge.

The waterways may still run but so many are sickening from a thousand cuts, a thousand water takes, or the invisible leaching of nutrients. All this occurs in the context of Nick Smith’s incoherent water polices that even his officials cannot understand, let alone communicate.

This year and in the past we have challenged the Government on water issues from drinking sources to bottlers, from dirty rivers to algae-choked lakes. We have presented the water petitions of champions like ‘Bung the Bore’ and ‘Choose Clean Water’ to Parliament.

We have also been supporting communities defending sacred places such as Waikoropūpū Springs and Blue Springs at Putaruru. Anywhere and everywhere in the country is potentially under threat from over-allocated irrigation consents, nitrates, sediment and phosphorus from intensive agriculture, unregulated water bottlers and wastewater discharges.

I have a particular interest in this issue, having watched my wife die very slowly with vascular dementia.* Rhona was diagnosed in 2005, went into care in 2008 and died in 2014. She was in hospital for four and a half years, and of those was essentially comatose for between two and three years. The reality of her situation was that her only voluntary movement was to open her mouth when I touched her lips with a spoon, with no communication or recognition at all. There was apparently no pain but she was incontinent and simply wasting away. I have no doubt that at any one time there will be hundreds of people throughout the country in this situation - I saw many alongside Rhona over those years.

The present law does not allow assisted dying, but I argue strongly that this should change. To require that people should have to endure years of such non-existence as Rhona is, in my view, simply inhumane, and to end a life in such circumstances is an act of mercy; of love even.

I am very frustrated with the public debate thus far, because everything I have read assumes that the person dying has retained mental faculties and can be part of decision making. The article in Te Awa #54 appears to follow the same line. Any form of advanced dementia robs the person of this ability, so any law revision should allow for this and specify a decision-making process, with suitable safeguards. Personally I think it should primarily be a family decision, with medical and legal involvement as checks.

I made a submission along these lines to the Parliamentary committee in December, appeared before it and was very well received.

A factor to be considered also is that, with our ageing population, dementia will be an increasing concern. This should be considered in any law change.

Living wills are often cited as a sensible way around any block in the law. These can already be drawn up but, even if signed and witnessed, do not carry legal weight.

Rhona and I both wrote living wills years ago but it did not help her. At the moment, they are useful only as an indication of a person’s carefully considered position, but I believe that they should be formally acknowledged in any new law.

The NZMA however does not support any change of the law, citing uncertainties in diagnoses and medical outcomes. But in Rhona’s case there was no uncertainty in diagnosis. An MRI scan of her brain in 2005, nine years before she died, clearly showed evidence of the disease.

Even as a lay person I could see this. The doctor was in no doubt, and with dementia there is no cure. It is all downhill, slowly or rapidly.

Some argue that euthanasia is acceptable when the person is “terminally ill”, but who decides when the situation is terminal? A person like Rhona with dementia

But all these challenges have Green solutions that can redeem our rivers and protect our water. We are brave enough to put a 10 cent per litre charge on water bottlers, and commit to a national debate on pricing other commercial water users. We are upfront that the Crown, acting as the owner of water, is allowing private exploitation, while avoiding the negotiation which the Te Tiriti relationship demands. We are ready to change the National Policy Statements on Drinking Water and Freshwater to protect the health of our communities and the quality of water. We will work with farmers to change the agricultural model and we will place a moratorium on dairy conversions. The ‘polluter pays’ plan will collect funds from polluters so that we can restore rivers. We are preparing for the unavoidable realities of climate change, and the effects of temperature changes and sea level rise on our coasts and freshwater.

My Member’s Bill to protect aquifers will help raise the status of and provide protection for the sources of water on which we all depend.

The water campaign is receiving support because the public knows it’s a survival issue. If we cannot swim or gather food from rivers, or rely on the water from our taps in some parts of the country, we are in big trouble. We have a responsibility to protect our mokopuna and to look after other species.

It has been my privilege to work on this kaupapa for the Green Party.

Catherine Delahunty has been a Green MP since 2008, and is spokesperson for education, water, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and toxics

was, in my view, terminally ill from the time she became comatose, and that condition persisted for years.

Palliative care is often cited as an argument against euthanasia. Palliative care seems to be useful in pain management and Rhona did not show signs of distress from pain although I am sure that prolonged immobility must at least have been extremely uncomfortable. Rhona received wonderful care from the hospital staff, but whether it was “palliative” or not, I do not know. So again dementias stand out as special cases.

Anecdotally there has been a swing in public opinion, with about two thirds now supporting a law change.

But the anti-euthanasia groups are well-organised and committed, so if we wish this law change to occur we will need to be equally determined. The government has announced that the issue will be decided on a conscience vote, so it will be extremely important to let our local MPs know how we feel. *There are several different types of dementia. Alzheimers is the most common, followed by vascular dementia.

Greens Have Their Say

Greens Have Their Say 24

Take me to the river

Hugh Thorpe, Christchurch Central branch

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Green Party AGM 15, 16 July Top row: Far right Sarah Helm, Greensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; General Manager Middle row: Second from left Zack Exley, senior advisor for digital communications of Bernie Sanderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presidential campaign. Far right Abby Reynolds, Executive Director of the Sustainability Council

From the party

From the party

Bottom row: Far right Reb Fountain, musician, sharing her story as a mother and beneficiary

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Chloe Swarbrick #7, Maungakiekie

Golriz Ghahraman #8, Te Atatū

John Hart #12, Wairarapa

I write this just after a very successful campaign launch in Nelson, and counting down 70 days to the Election. Thank you to our members out campaigning hard for our party.

I’ve been focused on the Election and enjoying campaigning in the East Coast electorate. A real highlight was having a well-attending, fun launch event with musicians and Elizabeth Kerekere in Gisborne. It’s been great to door-knock places like Kawerau, where people have told me they’ve never seen an MP there before. It’s been great to contribute on the Campaign Committee, and I’ve been working hard organising our team of MPs to make campaign phone calls.

I was very happy with the positive response received by the launch of the Empowering NZ: Cleaner, Cheaper, Smarter Electricity policy, and after two years of work I was relieved it was completed. There’ve been a lot of policy debates in my area of energy and resources, ICT, tertiary education, research, science and technology and broadcasting, about which I always enjoy articulating our great policy.

It’s also been great to be on ‘Back Benches’ again, and I even appeared as a special guest on the ‘White Man Behind a Desk’ live satire show! I was blown away to see a speech I gave on National’s scandals receive 85,000 views in only a few days.

Lastly, as a Friend of Tibet, I was proud to organise a day of activities for the Tibetan Prime Minister-inexile at Parliament. I can’t wait to #ChangeTheGovt this September.

The catalyst for my personal involvement in politics was a feeling of a growing divide between people and politics, something frequently reinforced in my previous role in the media.

In a nutshell, politicians are presented as untrustworthy, politics is presented to the masses as something technocratic and bureaucratic, and it has increasingly become a privileged game to which the cost of entry is a decent standard of living and some headspace – a price many New Zealanders are finding themselves unable to pay.

The effect is that many don’t connect the dots between their vote and the potential for change. That is, until Metiria spoke her truth to power at our AGM in mid-July.

It resonated deeply with a sentiment expressed by previous Green MP, Holly Walker, who I had the privilege of interviewing recently, that ‘the most personal is the most universal.’ Metiria opened a Pandora’s Box of humanity.

She gave unbridled licence to others to speak of their experiences. She was real, and proved politics could be too.

It put guardians of the status quo into a tailspin, and empowered those who so frequently are neglected.

Those who profit from business-as-usual will fight.

But our movement for the many – not the few – and the explosion of grassroots support mean we are on an unbeatable path.

We’re bridging the gap between people and politics.

I’ve never felt more at home than I have in the Greens.

Coming into politics, two of the issues close to my heart are democracy and human rights, which is why my legal career has always been focused on the courts as the third constitutional branch of our government.

One of my cases, the ‘family carers case’, encapsulates these issues, simultaneously highlighting the threats posed by the current National Government both to our democracy and to our rights. This case has been a labour of love for me for over 18 months, and we’re currently awaiting a judgment from the High Court. The ‘family carers’ are fighting for fair pay to care for their profoundly disabled loved ones at home. To start, the crux of the unfairness was that the Government is happy to pay around $70,000 for a corporate care facility, but will not pay a minimum to families who won’t place their loved ones in out-of-home care. The family carers challenged this pursuant to the Human Rights Act and won. Even though the Government appealed, the Courts kept finding that this discrimination violated our human rights laws.

This is where the incredible and even more frightening constitutional issue arose. Instead of doing the right thing, this Government passed legislation under urgency, and with a tiny majority, to cut the carers off from the Human Rights Act remedies regime. This revealed a breathtaking disregard for the separation of powers between parliament and the courts, the Human Rights Act, and Parliament’s own consultation processes.

Our current challenge comes under the High Court’s inherent power to find public decisions unlawful and unreasonable. Sadly, because the carers are cut off from the fiscal remedies that the human rights regime offers, the Court can only at best declare the policy unreasonable and ask the Government to reconsider. It will mean another win for the carers morally, but it won’t guarantee fair treatment.

People often ask me how we can bring farmers with us on our journey to clean rivers and a zero-emissions economy. When agriculture represents half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and puts the lion’s share of pollution into our rivers and lakes, it’s a big question indeed.

Over the years, I’ve become convinced that simply applying policies and regulations to farmers will not get us where we need to go fast enough. It’s vital that the industry willingly comes along. Many farmers I talk to openly accept limits to growth, and are looking for leadership and practical solutions to move to the high-value, low-impact farming industry vision we actually all share.

But unfortunately we rarely hear that sentiment from industry bodies. The challenge is to break down the “fortress farming” mentality that is still all-too-common.

That’s a big ask in the confrontational climate we often find ourselves in.

I believe the messenger matters. If the Greens were to suggest pursuing a target of fewer cows you can well imagine the response from the farming sector. This, even though the evidence shows fewer cows can lead to higher profit per farm, and lower pollution to our waterways.

Now imagine a farming industry leader saying essentially the same thing. This actually happened recently, and the response from the industry was muted, even positive.

We have excellent policies, based on the evidence, and aimed at producing good outcomes for people, the land, and the economy. Alone, they are not enough to bring farmers with us. We still need to build relationships and trust. That said, we’re never going to win everyone over.

This is something I’m passionate about: not pandering to farmers, but having respectful, honest conversations about the challenges we face, and the ways forward.

Future MPs

MP Reports / Future MPs 28

Gareth Hughes #5, East Coast

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Teall Crossan #15, Rongotai

Teanau Tuiono #16, Manurewa

I have worked in entertainment and the media for over 20 years, including in the political media on ‘Back Benches.’ I have learnt a lot about how the industry works and what is supposed to ‘sell’; it’s not always the whole truth but a watered-down and jazzed-up version of events. I have had a lot of fun in my career, but I have also experienced the frustration of having to toe the line, not be too contentious and to never say anything that might upset those who hold power. I realised that if I wanted to use my voice to highlight the inequalities in our society or our Government’s failure to address climate change, I had to change tack.

So, I joined the Greens and that is when the truth really hit home. Standing for the Greens has meant giving up some of my career. When a media personality decides to nail their political colours to the mast, the owners of our media companies feel it compromises their integrity. There are exceptions to the rule, as everyone knows who has ever sat through one of Mike Hosking’s ‘Mike’s minutes.’

Others, like John Campbell, haven’t been so lucky.

Government is supposed to be about making a real, meaningful difference in our lives and in our environment.

Under National, the Government’s primary role is to generate media content to create the illusion of meaningful government, while the reality is the accelerating deterioration of our environment and the growing voicelessness of those who are most vulnerable.

There is a great challenge in how we inform our people in a fragmented and broken media environment that continues to underestimate our intelligence and cater to the lowest common denominator.

That is why we need to strengthen and protect our public broadcasting institutions – and why I’m standing with a party that believes so too.

When I made the decision to join the Greens, little did I know how much door knocking was going to be involved! My first taste of the ground campaign was in the 2014 election with the Wellington Central team. And then in 2015, in the build up to Paris, we joined up with the Rongotai branch and ran a climate change campaign that was all about door knocking.

Those climate conversations confirmed what motivated me to return home from New York: that Kiwis care about climate change and want to be leading, rather than following. I have seen NZ treated as a rogue state for lack of ambition on climate change and, at times, deliberately derailing progress at the United Nations. Clearly, this is not the country New Zealanders want us to be.

This election, climate change is also causing concern at the doors that I am knocking on, along with water and housing. The sentiment that hits me the hardest is from people who say, “I have a home, but I know others in my community don’t, and that’s not ok.” Fixing the housing crisis is not about tinkering with a broken economic model driven by profit, nor about changes to the Resource Management Act that do nothing to provide homes and mostly shut people out of democratic processes.

Rather, it is about protecting and fulfilling the basic human right of every person to have a home. And that’s what the Greens will do in Government.

It would be fair to say that my upbringing was the foundation for my politics. My father migrated here from the Pacific Islands and my mother was part of the 1960s urbanisation of Māori communities. They met at the door of a South Auckland pub, where my Dad was the bouncer and my mother was trying to get in without I.D. My grandfather used to tell me stories, like when he was 14 and working in French Polynesia mining phosphorus, and how people would tease our family when they first came to Aotearoa because they did not speak good English.

My mother would tell me about the times that she would get whacked at school for speaking Māori and how they forced her to speak English. She took us kids on our first protest in 1981 against the Springbok Tour and racism in South Africa.

Viewing life through this bicultural lens helped my understanding of what it means to be rooted to this place, Aotearoa, the importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Tino Rangatiratanga and what that means in the wider Pacific context.

In different communities I am known for different things.

In the Pasifika community I am known for my work in the education sector and on climate change advocacy. I ended up in Paris working at the UN for a number of years, and was active in organising the Paris climate summit and the follow up in Marrakech.

In Māori communities I am known for my work on indigenous rights. I was the spokesperson for Te Ata Tino Toa, the group that pushed for the Tino Rangatiratanga Flag to be flown on the Harbour Bridge during Waitangi Days. It was up there this Waitangi Day. I checked.

Our South Auckland communities are at the intersection of our focus of lifting vulnerable whānau out of poverty and also planning for climate change. I see myself continuing to work at that intersection.

We have a lot of people on struggle street in our communities. A man died from cold in his sleeping bag outside a church a few streets from where we held our Manurewa market Green Party stall last week. I have equal parts of sadness and anger about that.

Auckland is the Polynesian capital of the world. With the Pacific Islands on the frontlines of climate change, the struggles of our communities back home in the islands and here in the Pasifika diaspora of Aotearoa, continue to be connected.

Future MPs

Future MPs 30

Hayley Holt #14, Helensville

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Looking back, a reminder

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When I first started writing this piece, I was sitting at my nana’s bedside, providing palliative care to her in the final days of her life. This context is significant as it cuts to the heart of why I am standing for Parliament for our Party this year. You see my nana taught me about the intrinsic value of care, and it is largely because of her influence and legacy that I have come to this juncture in my life.

My parents divorced when I was two years old, my sister only a newborn, and my nana and papa were the ones who provided the day-to-day support to my mum – by caring for us – to enable her, as a sole-parent, to continue working and to build her career. My grandparents provided the continuity of care and stability that our little family needed during a time of great hardship in the 1980s. In later years they mortgaged their own house to subdivide the property next door to enable my mum to build a home for us. The security and stability of their care, support and eventually support for home ownership was the difference that probably sets my family apart as a socio-economic outlier amongst the dominant trends for Pasifika in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

As the years passed, my nana steadily lost her sight to glaucoma, and after my grandfather passed away I didn’t even think twice about supporting my mum to take care of my nana. At a practical level this meant juggling my study, career, financial and eventually familial responsibilities to provide support. At an emotional level it meant being available to listen to and support nana, as she coped with the frustration and anger of becoming blind during the years when she most needed her sight to hold onto the little bit of independence she still had.

Dave Kennedy

From my perspective the value of care cannot be quantified, and yet it is probably the most valuable and instrumental form of work that makes the difference between detrimental and harmful social outcomes and good ones.

With the huge body of qualitative evidence that we have domestically and internationally, it is no longer acceptable for decision-makers and policy-makers to undervalue (and I suspect, hide) the value of caregiving work as part of the ‘assumption’ process that underpins the societal and economic model that Aotearoa operates on.

Equations that factor in maximum productive input and output need also to take into account our humanity and the need to take care of each other and ourselves. To do otherwise is dishonest.

To put it simply, with an ageing society and already unacceptably high levels of child poverty, our current social security and economic models are not sustainable and need to change. And in order for them to change we need political decision-makers with courage, integrity and vision. This is why I’m standing for Parliament this year, and this is what I will continue to stand for and support our Party to achieve, whether or not I end up in Parliament after 23 September.

Tatou, tatou, tatou ē.

Ten Years Ago The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 was passed on 21 May 2007. The Anti-Smacking Bill, as it became known, was first proposed by Green MP, Sue Bradford, in 2005 in an attempt to give children the same rights and protections from physical violence as adults and animals. This came in the context of an appalling infant homicide rate for a developed country (sadly this hasn’t changed), and parents who beat their children with riding crops and hoses being seen as non-criminal under the legal justification of using “reasonable force.”

Sue worked tirelessly to get the legislation through Parliament, and suffered much verbal and written abuse for challenging those who believed that the right to physically discipline their children had a greater priority than a child’s right to be protected from physical violence.

The Bill was passed 113 votes to 8, and reviews since have shown it to be working well.

Twenty Years Ago The Green Party left the Alliance Party in 1997. The fourparty Alliance Party was formed in 1991 and the Green Party’s first MPs – Jeanette Fitzsimons, Rod Donald and Phillida Bunkle – were elected under the Alliance banner in 1996, at the first MMP election. Rod Donald had earlier served as the national spokesperson for the Electoral Reform Coalition that had successfully championed proportional representation.

Thirty Years Ago 1987 was the last year that the Values Party contested an election, standing nine candidates. Formed in 1972, the Values Party was the first Green Party in the world to

contest a national election. In 1978, at its peak, it had stood 92 candidates under the old First Past the Post system.

Green MPs Jeanette Fitzsimons, Rod Donald and Mike Ward had been Values Party Members. The “Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand” was formed from Values and new green groups in mid-1990 and contested the general election just months later, winning 7% of the total vote (with an election spend of $10,000 and four fax machines!).

Forty Years Ago Tony Brunt, the founder and inaugural leader of the Values Party, was elected as a Wellington City Councillor in 1977, gaining more votes than any other candidate. Tony formed the Values Party to bring an end to the “barren and miniaturist” political culture that existed at the time.

Fifty Years Ago While many of our members (those older than 50 years) will remember the introduction of decimal currency in 1967, few may recall that a referendum to extend the term of Parliament from three to four years was rejected by 68% of voters.

In 1967, the first murmurings of New Zealand’s first major environmental movement were heard as the Manapouri Power Station was being constructed, and raising the level of the lake was being considered.

Also in that year, Manabe and Wetherald published a ground-breaking paper that was the first to include all the main physical processes relevant to climate change. All the science since then has just consolidated, refined and confirmed their model. Donald Trump has 50 years of science to catch up on.

Green History

Future MPs

Leilani Tamu #17, New Lynn

Photo Dr Sue Bradford, Green MP 1999–2009

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Green world, August 2017 Compiled by Lois Griffiths

UK The Conservatives have reached a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to prop up their minority Government. Green Co-leader Jonathan Bartley said, “Theresa May’s claim her party shares many of the DUP’s values is alarming. Which is she referring to? Their opposition to equal marriage, abortion or climate action?

The Green Party will always stand up against the regressive values of the DUP and work with others to stop a lurch to the right under a Tory-DUP alliance.” The DUP has 10 MPs after receiving fewer than 300,000 votes in the General Election. The Green Party has just one MP, Caroline Lucas, despite getting more than 500,000 votes.

Green leader, Caroline Lucas, and Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, debated terrorism and UK foreign policy on the BBC. Ms Lucas said the UK must “stop adding” to the world’s problems and singled out arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which has led a brutal bombing campaign in neighbouring Yemen. “My question is this, really, why is Britain the second biggest arms dealer in the world? Why are we selling to 22 of the 30 countries on our Government’s own human rights watch list? Why do we make ten times more in arms sales to Saudi Arabia than we gave to Yemen in aid? I genuinely wonder how you sleep at night knowing those figures.”

Green World

EUROPEAN GREENS European Greens are making the point that, “by pulling money out of fossil fuel companies, we can take a stand against the continuous burning of coal, oil and gas. They are the main drivers of climate change, and pose a huge threat to our planet and a future worth living in.” The Greens have published a booklet, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, that answers the questions, “Who exactly are the main polluters in Europe that need to be targeted? How does “fossil fuel divestment” work? Where can we invest our money responsibly?”

AUSTRALIA Australian Greens are in shock. Scott Ludlam has resigned from Parliament after discovering that he was ineligible to sit in Federal Parliament because of dual New Zealand

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Lois Griffiths has compiled Green World for Te Awa for many years and takes a keen interest in world affairs

citizenship. He was three years old when the family left New Zealand. He became a naturalised Australian citizen in his mid-teens, and “assumed that was the end of my New Zealand citizenship.” Ludlam accepts that it was his error and has apologised “unreservedly.” He is “personally devastated” that an avoidable error was forcing him to leave Parliament. The Australian Constitution bans anyone holding dual citizenship from being eligible for election to Federal Parliament Before his resignation Ludlam was angry that Australia has chosen to boycott the UN negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. “It is long past time for countries like Australia, which claim to support the abolition of nuclear weapons, to get behind the first major progress in decades to actually get it done. Our Government, in placing an obsolete faith in these weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, is defying the will of the vast majority of nations and their peoples… Should these hideous weapons ever actually be used, the Australian Government’s indefensible role in blocking and then boycotting this process will be exposed as the hollow and amoral stance that it is. But by then, of course, it will be too late.”

The theme for 2017 NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) week was “Our Languages Matter.” Green Senator, Rachel Siewert, has called on the Australian Government to strengthen support for protecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. “Our First Peoples have repeatedly told governments that continuing connection to culture is essential for wellbeing… We have already lost many languages; complacency cannot allow that number to continue to fall.”

Adani, a giant Indian multinational, wants to create one of the world’s biggest coal mines in Queensland.

Opponents of the project fear for the Great Barrier Reef.

Green Senator, Janet Rice, speaking in opposition to the proposed Native Title Amendment Bill said, “Why are we here today? It has got nothing to do with native title. We are here today to help the Labour and Liberal mates of the Adani coalmine and their dirty, polluting, reef-cooking, climate-destroying coalmine. That is why we are here today.

It is to support something that goes completely against the interests of Indigenous peoples across this country, of all the peoples of this country and of all the peoples of the world, given the consequences of this coalmine and the carbon pollution that it will entail if this coal is mined.”

USA The Green Party affirmed its support for the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City. It endorses independence, decolonisation and self-determination for Puerto Rico. Greens call for the environmental clean-up of Vieques, an island used as a firing range by the US military.

Greens oppose recruitment of Puerto Rican youth into the US armed forces and their deployment in US wars.

Green World

SWEDEN Swedish Deputy Prime Minister and Green, Isabella Lövin, attended a Conference held at the UN in New York, on the condition of the world’s oceans. The Conference, co-hosted by Sweden and Fiji, urgently called for steps to reverse the decline in the health of our oceans due to stresses like climate change, plastic litter, over-fishing and pollution. Isabella explained that Sweden’s priorities are to reduce marine debris with a focus on plastic, create a sustainable blue economy with a focus on overfishing, and mitigate the effects that climate change has on the oceans.

Photo Great Barrier Reef, Australia

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Another look at The New Zealand Project Max Harris, Bridget Williams Books, 2017

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I met Max Harris in the courtyard of a little café in Islington, London, in June this year. It was one of those meetings where you suddenly look at your watch and an hour and a half has gone by without you realising. He’s a highly engaging, friendly and deeply thoughtful person, and this comes across in his writing. I left the café with a bunch of actions, and people to look up and meet. You get the sense that this is how Max goes through life. His research for the book includes interviews with practitioners as well as academics in New Zealand, the UK and Norway, and he draws on his conversations and experiences in the various positions he has held and places he has lived.

The New Zealand Project does what all good policy writing should do: it simplifies the inherently complicated.

It starts from the premise that another world is possible and that we all need to work to make it happen. Having situated us in the ‘shifting global dynamics of power’, the book’s opening sections pick through the debris of neoliberalism in New Zealand: poverty, inequality and stalling productivity – the result of the ideological tenets of a market-driven economic and political theory practised by technocrats (right back to Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society). Harris is clear about all this: “The neoliberal political project has failed in Aotearoa/New Zealand.” For those of us, like me, who grew up during Rogernomics, it makes for painful reading, sort of face-palm stuff. For those who didn’t live through that era, it should stand as a useful potted analysis of what happened during that period and what it has meant for our society.

Harris contrasts neoliberalism with a values-led politics centred on the three recurring values of care, community and creativity, to be practised by all of us in society (with all of us participating in politics). Those three values provide a neat intellectual structure that holds the book together.

What results is a lucid, contemporary overview of the state of play in NZ politics and an outline of some opportunities for the period ahead. The book takes us through foreign,

economic, social and environmental policy, the continuing process of decolonisation, our justice system, the future of work, gender and sexuality, and political participation.

Overall, Harris is looking at a greater role for a rejuvenated state sector in steering, regulating and redistributing wealth, as well as (re)building the social infrastructure that sustains us all. He takes an integrated approach focused on overall outcomes for people and the environment, rather than a simple measure of GDP. He is looking at what it is that the state can do well.

He also talks about the politics of love, or how we could develop policy with “a deep warmth directed towards another.” Some of the key proposals considered are known progressive policy prescriptions: an independent foreign policy, including leadership on people displaced by climate change; raising the top income tax rate; a written constitution; te reo Maori as a learning area in the curriculum; a moratorium on new prisons; trialling a universal basic income (UBI); introducing a carbon tax; comprehensive new legislation to achieve pay equity; and civics education. To some these will seem like obvious solutions, as in, what are we waiting for? Others might dismiss them as beyond our reach.

What’s impressive about the book, though, is its comprehensive mapping of the challenges facing our society, and Harris’s reframing of these challenges in terms of his values of care, community and creativity. The book’s novelty – and undoubted utility in informing political debate and shaping public discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand – is in its collection of progressive ideas, and its pragmatic normalisation of transformational change. It is also straightforwardly and refreshingly aspirational, seeking to discuss the ‘undiscussable’ and to rekindle a sense of political imagination: “First, we should all expect more from governments.

We need to expand our ideas about what is ‘realistic.’ […]

As citizens we have the power to decide what is ‘realistic’ Photo Max Harris

when we choose how we react to policy announcements and when we choose how to vote. We can reward political parties that offer more imaginative ideas and be more open to visionary suggestions – if we decide that imagination and vision are values we want in our political sphere.”

In line with this sense of ambition, Harris concludes with some ideas for a ‘Fourth Way’, a move beyond traditional social democracy to ‘public democracy.’ This is a paradigm shift, he says, towards “values-driven politics, a strong, decolonised state and genuine people-power.”

The book is a call to action for people who want to build an Aotearoa/New Zealand that cares about everyone, and that provides genuine, creative leadership in the world. It’s up to all of us to respond to that call.

Reviewed by Thomas Nash

Reviewed by Christine Dann

Reviews

Reviews

The New Zealand Project Max Harris, Bridget Williams Books, 2017

Bring me your tired old policies … and exchange them for bright new ones.

I wanted to like Max Harris’s The New Zealand Project, after I heard him talking about basing public policy on the values of caring, community and creativity. It has been over 40 years since New Zealand’s Values Party talked that sort of policy talk. During this time we have suffered deepening social and environmental crises. But on the upside, people practising values-based politics in the Values Party and its successor the Greens, and in social movements, have managed to make some gains for the previously marginalised, oppressed, neglected and exploited – human and non-human. But not nearly enough. In some important areas (especially social security and ecological sustainability) we are worse off now than we were then. So new ideas on policies that would get to the roots of our systemic problems are needed.

Unfortunately, they are not in Harris’s book. His enthusiasm for a better Aotearoa is touching, but his proposals for how to create it are sadly lacking. They are based on interviewing people who (with few exceptions) are part of the liberal policy elite, and on reading an inadequate number and type of books and articles, most of them published after 2010. This results in a shallow book which is devoid of the historical context in which policies are made, and thus devoid of the politics by which they are made.

These major weaknesses are glaringly apparent in his chapter on environmental policy, where his main sources on what needs to be done to ‘improve’ the Resource Management Act are a judge, a professor and the Productivity Commission(!). He does not mention that the National-led government has been pushing for RMA ‘reform’ since 2013, leading to its rewriting as a ‘developers’ charter’. He has not talked to those who tried to stop this happening (e.g. the Green Party, environmental NGOs and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment), let alone consulted them on their ideas for better environmental policies.

This failure to engage with our political history and those who actually make it applies to the other chapters in the book as well. It means that what I hoped would be a useful contribution to raising the intellectual bar above what is proposed by the Morgan Foundation and other liberal policy wonks is nothing of the sort.

Is there such a book? Yes! Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, published by Chelsea Green in 2017.

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The White Earth

by Andrew McGahan, Allen& Unwin, 2004

The Whole Intimate Mess

by Holly Walker, BWB Texts, 2017

No Way but This.

In Search of Paul Robeson

by Jeff Sparrow, Scribe Books, 2017

A Killing in the Hills

by Julia Keller, Headline Publishing, 2012

This is another example of how good fiction can present issues in their complexity, while telling a good story. This is not a new book, but the themes and characters are timeless, the writing superb.

Set in outback Queensland, The White Earth tells the story of a place, Kuran station, a character, John McIvor, and a time, 1992, when the Mabo legislation on Native Title was about to come through.

The ‘White’ in the title is layered: the colonial settlers who squatted on 100,000 acres in the 1850s were named White; the original people, the Kuran, were “dispersed” by the white colonials; and the colonial government is a local manifestation of global white rule.

Mabo threatens this cosy arrangement, so McIvor tries to resist it. Meanwhile, his own history and that of his father undermine the simple idea that things must always be the same. Family relationships mirror those of the wider community – different perspectives, and different desires and needs create conflict.

If you want to get some understanding of the dynamics that have shaped modern Australian society and politics, this kind of quality fiction is essential. Or, you can read it for the sheer pleasure of a good story with depth of meaning.

Holly Walker was a Green MP from 2011 until 2014. She is a Rhodes Scholar, a mother and a well-liked woman of integrity.

This short, excellent book, which I highly recommend, gives Holly’s reasons for leaving Parliament. It journeys through the birth of her first child, her husband’s illness, her anxiety and depression, plus her life after politics.

Holly’s writing is very honest and thoughtful, and should appeal to parents, high-achievers or someone who has been through mental illness. It shows the difficulties of being a female MP with a young family and how crucial it is to have a support network. Holly expresses that Parliament needs to change so that it is a more inclusive, flexible and fair workplace. This is the same for other professions too; workplaces need to change so that women with kids can contribute at the top level. It shouldn’t be either kids or a career.

What really stood out for me in this book was that we must be really honest with ourselves and know when something isn’t working for us. Holly had several warning signs to make changes but she didn’t listen to them. Upon reflection, she knows she had an ideal but that it didn’t match the reality. Holly says, “I had grown up expecting that, when the time came, I would ‘have it all’ – a fulfilling career, a loving partnership, children, and enough time and energy to parent them the way I wanted to. When I found that I could not, in fact, have all these things without the very real risk of losing my mind, I felt humiliated.”

Circumstances played a big part in this too, like Holly’s husband getting very sick.

Once Holly left Parliament she immersed herself in reading a variety of books by female authors. Doing some writing of her own, she journeyed back to wellness. She is now a principal advisor at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. Holly is expecting her second child later this year.

Jeff Sparrow worked in a trade union bookshop in Melbourne where the book collections belonging to deceased unionists and peace activists ended up. There were always books about Paul Robeson.

Sparrow became fascinated by Robeson, who was the son of a slave, became a superstar singer and actor, was an advocate for the oppressed and the foe of racism and fascism, only to be hounded by secret services and ‘disappeared’ from public life.

To learn more about Robeson’s background and the politics and social structures that influenced him, Sparrow travelled to North Carolina, Philadelphia, Harlem, England, Wales, Spain and Russia.

The Spanish Civil War had the strongest influence on Robeson. He explained, “The artist must take sides. He must choose to fight for freedom or slavery.” He maintained for the rest of his life that Spain had altered him.

No Way But This is very readable. Hard to put down, actually. And it raises questions. Why is it that the suffering of the Spanish in the civil war raised so much passion that, at the time, civilians volunteered to go to Spain? Why were people horror-stricken at the bombing of civilians, and the barbarity illustrated by Picasso’s Guernica? Yet today, hightech bombing of civilians seems of little concern. What has happened to humanity?

Certainly Paul Robeson deserves to be remembered by today’s justice activists. Not surprisingly, at Elsie Lock’s funeral in Christchurch, a recording was played of the singer’s moving rendition of Going Home.

Good fiction, including genre fiction, at times can offer so much more nuance on issues than even the most closelyresearched non-fiction.

An example of this is the crime fiction of Julia Keller, whose protagonist, Belfa Elkins (Bell), works as the prosecutor in Raythune County, West Virginia. It’s a grindingly poor rural community that used to depend on coal mines and now depends on welfare and drugs. It’s full of badly-educated, bigoted people who spend most of their time trying just to survive. They believe that bringing the coal mines back would resurrect the good times. Trump country.

Bell herself is a survivor of childhood neglect and abuse, who escaped and came back to try and put something positive back into the place. Each of the novels in which she features reveals a bit more of her backstory and that of her sister, who is serving 30 years in prison.

The “killing” of the title works on several levels: the literal one of the murder that Bell investigates, the slow death of a community and the killing of the environment through plunder and poverty. All are part of the same thing – the actions of a distant, uncaring government in thrall to big business.

The universal message of this well-written novel is that you may not be able to fix everything, but you have to try to fix what you can.

Reviewed by Janine McVeagh

Reviewed by Lois Griffiths

Reviews

Reviews

Reviewed by Janine McVeagh

Reviewed by Simone Little

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Letters

Writer, illustrator and natural historian, Sheila Natusch, is No Ordinary Sheila in the feature documentary about her inspiring life and exciting times. It premiered in the New Zealand International Film Festival in Wellington on 3 August, and screens in all the other NZIFF centres through August and September.

Sheila grew up learning about nature, and learning to write and paint, on Stewart Island in the 1930s, and studied the natural sciences and English at Otago University in the 1940s. She went on to write and illustrate books about native plants and animals, foraging, historic ships, and much more. She also tramped, cycled and sailed her way around a lot of New Zealand, including an epic cycle ride from Picton to Bluff via the West Coast in 1958 – when the road to and from Haast was still under construction, and there was no bridge over the Haast River.

People who have previewed the film thoroughly recommend it.

“It’s a gorgeous film about an astonishing woman. Just loved it.”

“The interviews, archival photographs and film, Sheila Natusch’s own sketches and paintings, and contemporary film of mountain, forest and coastal landscapes are full of interest, beauty and warmth.”

“A beautiful film about a charming, passionate, adventurous woman.”

“This is the story of a remarkable woman. With rare archive footage, we are taken back in time, capturing the rich texture of Sheila’s life and her dedication to nature and the outdoors. The film works on many levels; it communicates, educates and entertains us with Sheila’s humour and zest for knowledge, and with the wonders of nature. It not only records the life of a strong-willed, determined and wonderful New Zealander, but paints a rich tapestry of her love of people, country and life.”

The film is directed by Hugh Macdonald (who, at this time 45 years ago, was directing the world’s first ever Green TV ad for the Values Party’s 1972 election campaign), and is produced, researched and written by me. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done since co-convening the Green Party from 1998 to 2000, and co-managing the first successful Green election campaign in 1999. But well worth it in both cases!

Reviews

Christine Dann was one of the first national spokespeople for the Green Party before we had elected leaders

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Sadly, Sheila Natusch passed away on 10 August, aged 91.

Just two days prior, Sheila had watched the film about her life with a packed auditorium at Wellington’s Paramount cinema. This delightful film is a fitting tribute to a lively, wonderful woman. Liz Gray, Copy Ed.

Share the good news!

Hugh Macdonald and Christine Dann’s documentary on the inspiring life and exciting times of Sheila Natusch – No Ordinary Sheila – had its WORLD PREMIERE in the NZ International Film Festival in Wellington on 3 August, and will screen in all the other Festival Centres thereafter.

Would we each pay $200/yr to offset our carbon footprint?

Can we offset our carbon footprint AND reduce consumption? There are various certified carbon offsetting projects, such as planting trees that will live for 200 years.

Quoted carbon offsetting costs vary from NZ$10 to $35 per tonne of CO2, with the 2016 average being $24/tonne.

Personal carbon footprint calculators also vary widely, but figures in tonnes of CO2/yr for the average person are roughly as follows: • Globally: 5 • US, Australia: 17 • UK, Aotearoa/NZ, China: 8 • India: 2 Sustainable levels are estimated at two tonnes of CO2 per person per annum.

So, a rough estimated annual cost for the average person in Aotearoa/NZ is, say, NZ$24/tonne x 8 tonnes = NZ$192/yr.

In my opinion, value for money and a message worth promoting!

Roy Krawitz, Hamilton

Unfortunately the delays in getting this issue published has meant it has already been shown in our main centres, but screening times and places for the other Festival centres (Nelson, Gore, Timaru, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Masterton, Hawkes Bay, New Plymouth) will be in the August No Ordinary Sheila News Flash.

Information on when and where the film goes on general release will be in the September News Flash.

Your Will Matters Bequests are a wonderful way to make a difference. As you may know, we have already been the grateful recipients of a couple of bequests last year. It is so kind of these generous people to consider us in their will.

Metiria didn’t say it was ok, nor that she felt ok about doing it. She said she did it out of need, that she has held the lie inside her for decades, that she knows that thousands of other NZers hold similar lies, and that she wants the need for all these lies and deceit to end. She told her personal story of lying to illustrate a great big truth about how we as a society treat beneficiaries. And that it is beyond time we stopped doing that.

I have never had the need to ask WINZ or its predecessors for anything, and I’m enormously grateful for that. I’ve often helped out people on benefits with small things (cash, school uniform, petrol, loan of a vehicle, food...) that possibly, if WINZ had known about the help I’ve given, could have led to benefits being cut or other sanctions. I’ve also stepped in with financial help when people I know have been put on benefit stand-downs for unjust, trivial and spurious reasons (e.g., not turning up to an appointment because the notice about the appointment didn’t arrive in the post until the day after the appointment). I’ve probably paid more tax than I needed to by not claiming some rebates or not bothering with some deduction entitlements.

I’m telling you this just in case you or others are under the delusion that it is only ‘similar people’ that Metiria is ‘pandering’ to. You might be surprised at how many privileged, well-off people like me support the sort of redistribution of income that Metiria and the Greens are proposing. I like to think I support it out of a sense of compassion and justice, but I could frame it as selfinterest too if that’s the only argument that some people can understand.

The policy could actually save me money by reducing what I spend in my own pathetic ad hoc attempts to fill a few of the gaping holes that our unjust, unequal society and economy have created. Also, I fear that if I personally were in the position of having to seek WINZ help, I wouldn’t cope either with the system or with the amount of financial support it provided. My family has financially supported an adult family member to enable them to avoid having to go anywhere near WINZ for fear that they wouldn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to cope with it. Those are self-interested reasons enough to want to save others from that fate.

Barbara Stumfels, Maunga Rua branch

But money isn’t the only thing you can bequeath.

We were recently asked by a wonderful member if we would be at all interested in their bequeathing us an electric car. Such a generous offer! This car is much loved and has already saved several tonnes of carbon emissions in the time we have owned it.

If you are considering including us in your will, please let us know. Email Sonja.deely@greens.org.nz

Green Bites

No Ordinary Sheila

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Craft Corner

Weaver Extraordinaire Featuring Danna Glendining

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My mother taught me to knit at a very early age. In the years since I have dabbled in a number of different crafts, including spinning, crochet and cane weaving.

We moved from the Wairarapa to the Waikato in 2000. In 2005 I left my paid Green work at Parliament.

For the first time in my life I was living quite close to town with the ability to attend night classes. Looking at the list of subjects available at Fraser High, raranga (flax weaving) caught my eye. Learning raranga in two hours once a week is not ideal. I needed to make sure I had got the hang of it when I came home after the class or the next morning.

A Maori friend suggested that I go out to Raglan in the holidays and attend a wananga run by Nga Hua o Te Rito, a Trust that promotes weaving. It was a nerve-wracking experience as I was very much a beginner, had practically no experience of Maori tikanga and knew no one. But they are a wonderful group of women who are endlessly encouraging, patient and supportive.

Having had the foundation year at Fraser High, I looked around for a second step class. At the time Waikato University’s Continuing Education was funding various classes at Rauawaawa in Frankton. It is a Trust which runs a drop in and social service centre for older Maori. There was no raranga class, but instead I discovered korowai/ kakahu (cloak making). Again everyone was friendly and encouraging. I made three cloaks from mop string and am on to my second muka cloak. Marama wore my first muka one to her induction into Parliament.

I am very indebted to the women, both Maori and Pakeha, who have passed on their knowledge and skills to me. In turn I pass them on to others now.

Show you Aotearoa We’ve got great new merchandise available from www.greens.org.nz/shop Green Party Thunderpants We’ve teamed up with Thunderpants to bring you these fabulous New Zealand made, organic cotton undies. Available in three styles - boxers ($36), full briefs ($28) or hipsters ($28).

Keep NZ Green tees Keep NZ and your wardrobe Green with this fresh tee by NZ illustrator and designer Logan Smith.

White or black. $35.

Stickers galore!

We’ve got stickers for every occasion. Buy a few for you and your friends, or more for your stall, branch, event or campus group.

Top Left wahakura (baby basket) Top Right Danna at work Bottom Marama Davidson wearing Danna’s muka cloak at the AGM Danna Glendining has held numerous leadership roles within the Green Party over many years and is a current co-convenor of the Campaign Committee

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Campaign Trail Our campaign teams from the deep south to the far north are out in force

Rongotai

Ilam

Whangarei

Tamaki Makaurau

Invercargill

Rangitikei

Flax Roots

Nelson (and Muslim community)

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Tama tu, tama ora; tama noho, tama mate He who stands, lives; he who sits, perishes