The Green Party has a vision of a smart green compassionate economy that works for everyone.
To help us get there, we're exploring what a "compassionate economy" might look like.
We asked a handful of New Zealand women, prominent in their fields and communities, to share their visions of a compassionate economy.
We'll be publishing the results here over the coming weeks. Please feel free to read and comment on each piece via facebook, twitter, or email, and share them with others.
Introduction - Catherine Delahunty
This project is a contribution to the national debate on economics from a fresh and necessary perspective. With inequality becoming entrenched and a quarter of our children living in poverty its high time we started listening to voices which value caring, empathy and compassion in all our economic decision making.
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The needs and rights of children in a compassionate economy - Sue Bradford
If we are to begin to imagine an economy in which the needs and rights of children are taken seriously, rather than relegated and dismissed as of little importance, I believe the first step is to realise that things do not need to stay the way they are.
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Caring for our grandchildren and the planet - Jeanette Fitzsimons
The high point of my six-year-old grandson's summer this year was swimming across our river by himself - about 30 metres. His feeling of confidence, achievement, his joy at the freedom of almost weightlessness in the water gave us all a glow. Water in a rich country like New Zealand is essential to our mental and spiritual health, but 90 percent of our lowland rivers are not clean enough to swim in, and cleaning up the animal excrement and excess nitrogen that threatens our children's health and the survival of many aquatic species is not a national priority.
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Unpaid and paid work - Prue Hyman
What would a compassionate economy look like in terms of unpaid and paid work? It would support, value, and encourage all the useful activity we need to do to lead rewarding lives, bring up the next generations and leave the world in good shape for them to do the same. Useful activity is an important concept, encompassing both unpaid and paid work. The sharp distinction between them would disappear in a society where all useful activity was valued in reality, rather than political rhetoric.
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A Pāsifika view - Marie Laufiso
So many tangata whenua and Pāsifika women and men known to my aiga have died much earlier than they might have in a world free of capitalist profit imperatives and institutional racism. Had they lived in a genuinely people-centred society, their levels of familial/spiritual/mental/physical health would have ensured different mortality rates.
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A collection of Wāhine Māori Perspectives
Compassion is a fundamental relationship principle from which a dynamic theoretical framework can be developed for reshaping domestic and global economies. Within this context, compassion poses a challenge to all who live in Aotearoa with its unique indigenous Māori traditions, culture and knowledge, to consider the place of our relationships with each other and to Papatuanuku in a future domestic economy shaped by compassion.
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The views expressed in these pieces are not necessarily those of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, nor do the contributors necessarily endorse all elements of Green Party policy. What we all share is a vision for a more compassionate economy, and a desire to find ways to get there.
