Louisa Jackson replied to Jackson Wood's discussion 'Candidate Selection and List Ranking Review Survey'
Ah, cool - what I'm referring to is the YG proposal to change the list apportionment to include a 1/10 under 30 requirement, rather than as it currently stands, 1/10 under 40... (there has previously been a suggestion that this change is promoted vi…

Jackson Wood replied to Jackson Wood's discussion 'Candidate Selection and List Ranking Review Survey'
I don't know what I was indicating. I just wanted to get the YG involved in the process of shaping their party. I like your idea about advice, mentoring etc. If there is one thing that we need it is that.

melissa warmenhoven and Jackson Wood are now friends

Jessica Zanetti and Jackson Wood are now friends

Louisa Jackson replied to Jackson Wood's discussion 'Candidate Selection and List Ranking Review Survey'
Thanks Jackson - I really support getting more YGs standing for candidacy, but I'm not sure I support changing the list apportionment requirements... (if that's what you're indicating via the survey). The fact that there are so many people under 35…

Louisa Jackson and Jackson Wood are now friends

The Green Party’s agreement with the Government took a step forward today – a small, practical and principled step.

The latest news is that we’ve agreed with National on a draft proposal for the regulation of natural health products.  Natural health products includes many vitamin and herbal supplements as well as lotions, gels and shampoos. 

New Zealanders have a right to know these types of products are safe and it is government’s job to set up and monitor rules to ensure safety.  That’s a fairly straightforward idea, but it got complicated under the previous Labour government that wanted to regulate natural health products jointly with Australia. 

Our Sue Kedgley has worked persistently on this issue for many years and now we’re that much closer to rules that are better for local businesses and protect consumer.  Good stuff.

It is one of three areas where we are working with National under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed last year.  The biggest of the three is the $323 million home insulation fund that has proved wildly popular and is on track to make 180,000 New Zealand homes warmer and drier, lowering power bills for families and health costs for the country. 

We’ve also got in behind John Key’s national cycleway where Kevin Hague is providing expert advice so that Nga Haerenga is designed to work well for both tourists and locals.  We tried to work with the Nats on energy efficiency as well, but couldn’t make any progress there and withdrew that topic from the MoU.

Nearly a year on since we signed the working agreement, it’s timely to ask how it’s going.

There are the practical, tangible measures – homes getting insulation into the ceilings and under their floors, the Waikato River Trail open for cycling – and then there’s the political component which is a bit harder to measure.

We think it’s important for the Greens to contribute to good government where we can – even from Opposition.  If a piece of policy or legislation matches up with our values then we want to support it and work to make it better.  The MoU gives us a framework to work constructively with National when we have common ground.  We have found some common ground and got good results in the three areas listed.

We’ve copped flack from Labour MPs for this approach but we think this is a mature approach. We also note that, as at February 18, Labour had supported 63 of National’s bills at third reading while the Greens had supported only 42 of them. We think our approach is independent, principled and practical.

It’s not a long list of MoU work, but we don’t have a whole lot of common ground with National.  We disagree with John Key’s Government a lot more than we agree and we knew it was important to maintain our independence in any working relationship. 

The MoU is designed so that we are unconstrained. We do have the freedom to voice our views loudly and clearly and we’re doing that.  As just one example, I think it’s fair to say we’ve helped change the agenda when it came to plans to mine the conservation estate.  Speaking up against bad policy is a powerful tool.

So practical steps forward where we can and the freedom to voice our opposition elsewhere.  In sum, the agreement is working as best it can given National’s agenda and the Green Party’s beliefs.  It’s an honest approach – we stick to our values and you know where we stand.

Julie Genter and Jackson Wood are now friends

The word opposition doesn’t always describe Labour’s voting patterns. In fact, Labour have voted with National almost exactly as often as the Maori Party, even though Labour is the official opposition, and the Maori Party is actually part of the Government!

[For the political junkies, Labour have voted with National 12 times at first readings, and 16 times at third readings, since the start of this term of Parliament. For the Maori Party it's 13 and 17. For the Greens it's 0 and 1.]

Yesterday, Labour voted with the Government again on a Bill that everyone except the Greens supported – the Education Amendment Bill.

We opposed this supposedly “technical” Bill because it included clauses to facilitate corporate control of school boards. In doing so, we seem to be the only ones consistently opposing privatisation in the education system.

The Maori Party did express concern about these aspects of the Bill but they still voted for it.

It’s fascinating, because if you just read the Regulatory Impact Statement which describes the Bill it would seem to be just about police vetting of school tradespeople and registration issues for teachers. Actually, like most legislation there is always fine-print to examine.

This Education Amendment Bill continues a trend towards corporate control by allowing corporates to be statutory managers of schools. It also allows the combining of school boards, potentially disenfranchising local communities.

The Quality Public Education Coalition (QPEC) was one of the small number of submitters against this Bill who saw its potential to further undermine public schools. QPEC has the experience and the capacity to step back and analyse the bigger picture.

With their support, we are prepared to be a lone voice in Parliament to at least make sure there is opposition to any form of privatisation on the public record.

Schools are not businesses to be managed efficiently in order to produce more labour for the market. Schools are communities, and as communities in partnership with the state they need the ability to run their own affairs and proper resources. We don’t need Pepsi Cola High School being managed by a firm of corporate auditors whose bottom line is profit.

The word opposition doesn’t always describe Labour’s voting patterns. In fact, Labour have voted with National almost exactly as often as the Maori Party, even though Labour is the official opposition, and the Maori Party is actually part of the Government!

[For the political junkies, Labour have voted with National 12 times at first readings, and 16 times at third readings, since the start of this term of Parliament. For the Maori Party it's 13 and 17. For the Greens it's 0 and 1.]

Yesterday, Labour voted with the Government again on a Bill that everyone except the Greens supported – the Education Amendment Bill.

We opposed this supposedly “technical” Bill because it included clauses to facilitate corporate control of school boards. In doing so, we seem to be the only ones consistently opposing privatisation in the education system.

The Maori Party did express concern about these aspects of the Bill but they still voted for it.

It’s fascinating, because if you just read the Regulatory Impact Statement which describes the Bill it would seem to be just about police vetting of school tradespeople and registration issues for teachers. Actually, like most legislation there is always fine-print to examine.

This Education Amendment Bill continues a trend towards corporate control by allowing corporates to be statutory managers of schools. It also allows the combining of school boards, potentially disenfranchising local communities.

The Quality Public Education Coalition (QPEC) was one of the small number of submitters against this Bill who saw its potential to further undermine public schools. QPEC has the experience and the capacity to step back and analyse the bigger picture.

With their support, we are prepared to be a lone voice in Parliament to at least make sure there is opposition to any form of privatisation on the public record.

Schools are not businesses to be managed efficiently in order to produce more labour for the market. Schools are communities, and as communities in partnership with the state they need the ability to run their own affairs and proper resources. We don’t need Pepsi Cola High School being managed by a firm of corporate auditors whose bottom line is profit.

Jackson Wood added a discussion
Candidate Selection and List Ranking Review SurveyThe Green Party is currently reviewing how we select candidates and rank the list.It is important that your input is part of this process so that we can have decent representation of the Young Greens on the list for the next election.All you have to…

I can’t believe the people of Canterbury are going to allow a democratically elected Council—Environment Canterbury—to be thrown out and replaced by an unelected and unaccountable political appointee—most likely Jenny Shipley.

What is happening in Canterbury is eerily similar to what is happening in Auckland—layers of democracy are being quietly got rid of and replaced by unelected political appointees, who work behind closed doors and are not accountable to the public in any way.

One of the key aims of right wing governments is to shrink democracy and the state, using a time-worn set of tactics. First they manufacture some crisis to argue that democracy is inefficient and not working properly (the Royal Commission in the case of Auckland, the Creech review in the case of Canterbury) and then they use that review as an excuse to turf out democratically elected Councils—seven in the case of Auckland, and one in the case of Christchurch.

Most alarming of all, ordinary voters are hoodwinked into going along with all this, not seeing the hidden agenda at work here.

That’s why I have been calling Rodney Hide’s Super City plans Rogernomics phase 2. Having been thwarted in his plans to sell off national assets, Rodney Hide is focussing his attention on local government, and using the restructure to corporatise the Auckland City Council and ready it to sell off some of its $28 billion worth of assets.

Now he is turning his attention to Canterbury, and is about to implement a similar plan here, aided and abetted by local Mayors, some of whom are no doubt driven by personal agendas of wanting to amalgamate Councils in Christchurch so they can become the Lord Mayor of Christchurch.

In Auckland many local leaders such as Chair of the Auckland Regional Council Mike Lee, originally supported the Auckland Super City plan. But now that the true agenda of the Super City has become clear Mike Lee and other one-time supporters of the super-city have become outspoken opponents.

My bet is that is that the same thing will happen in Christchurch, and some of those who are currently supporting moves to oust Environment Canterbury and replace it with a Commissioner will wake up in a few months time and realise that a coup d’état has happened, which has left them powerless and without the ability to influence such significant issues as how Canterbury’s water is managed and allocated.

The fact is that Mr Creech was unable to find any statutory basis for dismissing elected Councillors or any reason to justify removing Councillors. So it will be interesting to see what excuse Rodney Hide and Dr Smith come up with to justify their dismissal.

Appointing Jenny Shipley would be such a blatant power grab. Replacing elected Councillors with a government appointee would undermine the whole principle of local democracy, and Cantabrians should be careful or they will find themselves without local representation on issues they care passionately about.

Some fantastic news late last night – the companies applying to start factory-style dairy farms in the Mackenzie Country have shelved their effluent consent applications, citing costs.

This is a real victory for the Greens, the environmental movement, and everyone who’s spoken up in opposition to the proposals since we revealed them in December. More than 4,000 people made submissions against the proposals, and a facebook group against them has more than 27,000 members.

However, as Russel has pointed out this morning in this press release, the battle is not over yet. The iconic Mackenzie Country landscape is still at threat from applications to take water for irrigation in the upper Waitaki, and the applicants are saying they may reapply for the effluent consents in future.

Environment Minister Nick Smith had some lovely green rhetoric on Morning Report this morning – he should follow it with a National Policy Statement on the Mackenzie that actually protects it in future!

The Green Party are siding with the firefighters in their bid to have extractors installed at their workplaces.

The DominionPost reported yesterday that the Fire Service was dragging its feet over the installation of diesel fume extractors at fifteen fire stations around the country. The extractors are expensive — $15,000 per unit — and the Fire Service claims there is no proof breathing diesel exhaust from truck engines is harmful. “There was no quantifiable risk for staff from exposure to diesel fumes,” said operations and training director, Paul McGill.

Are the Fire Service taking Public Relations lessons from the tobacco industry? The link between long-term exposure to diesel exhaust and cancer is well proven. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and fine particulates are all contained in diesel fumes and have been linked to respiratory illness, cancer, and premature death.

Motor vehicle pollution is estimated to lead to the premature mortality of 400 people per annum in New Zealand already — the so-called “other” road toll — so why would the Fire Service put our fire fighters at risk?

The Fire Service needs to be taking a precautionary approach to their workers health and safety and clean up the air at their fire stations.

No, that’s not my headline.  The dubious honour for this beneficiary bashing excuse for journalism belongs to the Southland Times, which revealed (shock, horror):

Figures obtained under the Official Information Act show 100 people who claim sickness-related and invalids benefits in the Queenstown-Lakes and Southland regions cite drug or alcohol abuse as a reason for being unable to work.

Hang on a minute!  It is not beneficiaries who cite alcohol or drug issues as being the reason they cannot work.  It is medical practitioners, who have diagnosed them with an illness, in these cases substance dependency, and certified to Work and Income that they are unable to work because of it.

Put in the context of the total muster of sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries in Work and Income’s Southern Region, who numbered 10,286 in December last year, those on benefit because of  alcohol or drug dependency are less that 1% of the total.  Hardly an issue that warrants sensational banner headlines, I would have thought.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, who set the scene for stigmatising beneficiaries in this manner, was quick to wade in again by spinning the Government’s policy of work-testing sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries:

But the Government was determined to break the cycle of welfare dependency and “shifting the focus to what people can do, not what they can’t, is an important part of that”.

No amount of work-testing is going to get people who cannot work because of alcohol or drug dependency back into the workforce.   All that will do is make them feel harassed and more likely to sink deeper into the faux refuge of their dependency.

What will help them get back into work is better and faster access to treatment and rehabilitation programmes.  But in response to government health funding restraints, District Health Boards are cutting back on those.

Hat Tip: greenfly in the comments thread

Raven is now a member of Young Greens New Zealand
Welcome Them!

I’m looking forward to meeting the Steve Irwin and her crew when they arrive in Wellington tomorrow.

While life goes on as normal in Parliament it seems the Government has forgotten we have a Kiwi sitting, right now, in a Japanese jail.

I asked the Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully, on Tuesday what he was doing to help New Zealander Peter Bethune. Mr Bethune did what our Government hasn’t done, which is to stand up to illegal Japanese whaling. He was detained by a Japanese whaling vessel as he tried to deliver a citizen’s arrest to the Captain who had allegedly rammed his boat, the Ady Gil.

In response to my question the Minister conceded jurisdiction in this case to Japan, essentially saying “not much”. I don’t think this is good enough. The New Zealand legal system could be dealing with this issue.

I’m urging Mr McCully to explore the legal opportunity in the Maritime Crimes Act 1999, to bring our man home. You can read the background and legal opinion here.

I think the Government should have looked down this avenue earlier, however I’m not surprised. The Government has been very quiet on the plight of Peter Bethune, and has switched to a very weak stance towards Japan on their whaling. The Government is supporting a position at the International Whaling Commission which would see Japanese whale hunting legalised. Ostensibly it’s an attempt to reduce the numbers killed – but I think Kiwi’s understand you can’t save whales by killing them.

Let’s do more than providing consular support and having the occasional chat with Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Katsuya Okada about Bethune. Let’s try harder to join with the Aussies who are already campaigning hard to bring home Bethune and return to our prior long standing anti-whaling stance.

Metiria Turei grills the Prime Minister on his government’s confused and contradictory statements about the mining of protected Schedule 4 lands on the conservation estate. Her question was:

Does he stand by his statement “Notwithstanding the public consultation process, it is my expectation that the Government will act on at least some of these recommendations and make significant changes to Schedule 4.”?

The government has no answer.

Yesterday the National Party shot down Sir Roger Douglas’ dreams of returning New Zealand back to Victorian England by saying they will not support his Members’ Bill which would have re-introduced youth rates.

It’s a rare piece of good news out of the Beehive, but let’s face it; the bill was a stupid idea to begin with.

A Treasury study in 2004, three years after the legislation removing youth rates was passed, showed increasing youth employment.

It’s kind of funny that the oldest person in parliament is trying to screw over the youth. Imagine a bill that seeks to pay older people a smaller minimum wage or Maori, or women? It would be outrageous.

However, I do have my own positive Private Members Bill which seeks to amend the Human Rights Act. Currently the HRA allows discrimination in pay based on age.

30 (2) Nothing in section 22(1)(b) of this Act shall prevent payment of a person at a lower rate than another person employed in the same or substantially similar circumstances where the lower rate is paid on the basis that the first-mentioned person has not attained a particular age, not exceeding 20 years of age.

By removing this section we also fix a contradiction in our law between the Minimum Wage Act and the Human Rights Act.

This amendment makes it harder to erode the rights of youth workers.

The last place we should see age-based pay discrimination is the Human Rights Act.

Update

A copy of my bill is available here [pdf].

This week a Ministry of Health Report came out on the health effects of the dubious remediation at the toxic site in Mapua. The way the Ministry of Health’s media release read, glossed over the risks to the community, which could now be declared negligible.

I only had to read the Executive Summary of the report to get a totally different picture.

The report slams the Ministry for the Environment for failing to protect public heath. It establishes that only a small number of substances—mainly heavy metals—were monitored; it says these would not have had serious health effects.

Scandalously the company and MFE did not monitor the site and its surrounds for the dioxins, PCB’s and other organochlorine compounds that were spread in to the air. Some of these toxic chemicals were actually created by the malfunction of an experimental “clean” technology.

These “chemicals of concern”, as the report calls them, are infamous because there is virtually no safe level of exposure and they bio accumulate in the food chain.

The local people have been told that because there was no monitoring data collected no one knows the level of risk they have been exposed to. Because Dioxins and other dangerous chemicals have a long half-life (some more than 30 years) in the environment and our bodies there can be a wide range of intergenerational health effects—from cancer to reproductive disorders, immune related disease, diabetes and heart failure. While the Ministry of Health is calling for further testing and is working with the community on the issue their media statement mimics the negligence during the clean up has had negligible effects.

The only good thing is that the secret is out. People living through that noise and dust suspected they were being exposed to dangerous chemicals without monitoring, and they were right. What I don’t understand is why the Ministry of Health press releases would pretend this wasn’t true. Who are they trying to protect? Public health or perhaps the agencies responsible for a failed chemical clean up?