Principle triumphs through politics

Kia ora tatou

It’s traditional, ‘specially in this setting, to pay homage to the tangata whenua... people of the land. It’s also custom, at the start of speeches on marae, to greet the land itself.

Not only the land as a whole, but to greet – specifically – islands, lakes, mountains and rivers.

So I’d like to say to the people of Tamaki-makau-rau, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

And… tena koe to Waiheke, an old friend of mine because I lived there. Tena koutou to all the other islands of the Hauraki Gulf. Tena koutou to the beautiful volcanic cones around us. And to the rivers and lakes nearby, may you always weave your spell, nga mihi aroha ki a koutou.

The tradition we’ve had here for hundreds of years, of bonding people to the land, in which land and people are joined as one, is a great tradition. It’s acknowledged in our sayings like:

Ko Taranaki te maunga, Ko Taranaki te iwi: Taranaki is the mountain and Taranaki is the people. Ko Waikato te awa, Ko Waikato te iwi. Waikato is the people, and the river. There’s an iwi not far from here called Ngati Wai, the people of the waters.

I’m talking a lot about this because over the past two hundred years many New Zealanders have forgotten how closely they are connected to the earth. Our leaders in National and Labour, Father Coke and Mother Pepsi, have tried to dominate the land, not live with it. We have forgotten that when we pollute and trash our rivers, lakes and the land itself, we trash ourselves. We disrespect ourselves and we fail our mokopuna.

So today, as I explain my passion for Aotearoa and my impatience with the short-sighted focus of those who put politics before principle, let’s celebrate also some of successes and rededicate ourselves to building an Aotearoa New Zealand that will be here, in all its beauty, when we no longer are.

Rivers and lakes

Freshwater, of course, is one of the biggest issues of our time. It is becoming scarce in many countries and there are fears that tension over diminishing water supplies due to climate change, will be as big a problem for the world as tension over diminishing oil supplies.

This country is renowned for its pure water – 100% pure our overseas markets are told. Our tourism and primary production sectors depend on clean fresh water.

There’s an iconic New Zealand image, which some of us think of when we yearn for summer, of a child on a rope swing - perhaps a rope attached to a native tree, and with a tyre on the end - a child swinging and jumping into a deep river pool. Meanwhile dad or mum is upstream or on the beach catching a fish for dinner.

I hate to have to say it, but that image is becoming out of date.

The Tarawera River in the Bay of Plenty is still known as the “black drain” due to reckless pulp and paper waste. The Tukituki River in Hawke’s Bay has shameful amounts of sewage, including heavy metals and bacteria, pouring into one of its tributaries, the Pah Flat stream. As I revealed earlier this year, the DHB even warned local GPs to be on the lookout for illnesses caused by exposure to the waters of the Tukituki.

In the South Island, the upper Kaiapoi runs through a rural catchment where grazing stock use the river as a toilet and in Southland, the Mataura River is suffering increased farming pollution as well as discharges from factories.

These days, fishing and swimming aren’t recommended before and after rainfall because of increased E. coli bacteria levels.

And it’s making our beaches unsafe too. After heavy rains many of our beaches are dangerous for swimming because of the faecal bacteria flushed out of our rivers and into the sea. Last summer Hawkes Bay regional public health warned people not to go swimming or surfing for two to three days after heavy rain or you could get sick from cow shit.

Sadly, many great North Island rivers are heavily polluted and unsafe for local families to swim in. The lower Waikato, which disturbingly Aucklanders get some of their drinking water from. Downstream of Huntly the river has high levels of E. coli and nitrogen caused by agricultural runoff and Environment Waikato is urging people not to swim in the river from Hamilton downstream because it’s so unsafe.

As they say in Hamilton, flush twice - Auckland needs the water.

And then there’s Lake Horowhenua, or Waipunahau, a beautiful large lake in sand dune country near Levin. It was once surrounded by kahikatea, totara and rimu forests stretching to the Tararua Range. The islands in the lake still have sharpened totara piles used by the Muaupoko people in a vain attempt to defend themselves against Te Rauparaha. These days the lake has toxic algal blooms in summer, because of current and historic cow shit, fertiliser and sewerage from surrounding farms and towns. The Muaupoko iwi now own the lake bed and are trying to clean it up by planting flax and other plants around the edges of the lake. But the problem is this will make little difference while farmers and town folk continue to drain their waste into it.

In April this year a sailing regatta was cancelled on Waipunahau, Lake Horowhenua, because of the toxic algal bloom in the lake. Regional council officials warned that if someone fell into the lake during the regatta they could swallow water causing serious liver damage from the algal toxins. I’m not making this up – a sailing regatta had to be cancelled at one of the largest lakes in the North Island because toxic algal blooms made the entire lake toxic for human life.

This is fast becoming the norm. In March the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research put out a report that stated baldly that the overwhelming majority of rivers in pastoral and urban catchments failed the guidelines for safe recreational use due to the faecal bacteria E coli.

Our rivers are quite literally so full of crap that they are dangerous to human health.

And the suppressed chapter 13 of the state of the environment report told us what we can see through our own eyes – the spread of intensive farming is making this worse. This is a picture of irrigated dairy farms in the Maniototo in central Otago. And this is the Taieri River above the dairy farms and this is the Taieri River below the dairy farms.

Is this the clean, green Aotearoa New Zealand we dream of, and sell to our markets? No I don’t think so.

I give greetings to all these rivers and lakes - nga mihi aroha ki a koutou. The Greens have not forgotten you.

Labour’s failure

The Labour Party has a policy that all rivers should become safe for swimming. The Ministry for the Environment is promising all rivers will be safe to swim in by the next generation.

We don’t believe them.

We don’t believe them because the promised and long-awaited government “Sustainable Programme of Action on Water” is well over-due, we don’t believe them because the science shows that many of our streams and rivers are getting worse, not better.

But most of all we don’t believe them because we can see through our own eyes what is happening around New Zealand.

DoC, Landcorp and the Manawatu River

Absurdly, given the rhetoric of the Prime Minister and her government, in the case of the Manawatu River, the Government itself is making the river more polluted.

I want to show you this. This is a photograph taken on a visit I made to the river last month. It wasn’t taken on the property of some anti-environmentalist, redneck farmer. This photograph was taken on your land, on my land, on land which is owned by all New Zealanders and these cows are on it quite legally.

These dairy cows, believe it or not, are grazing on a conservation reserve.

They’re on a Department of Conservation block along the Manawatu river called the Moutoa Reserve.

On the same trip that I visited this so-called reserve - this riparian strip which is supposed to be protecting the river - I also visited the beautiful forest reserve at Lake Papaitonga. The Lake Papaitonga bush is a tiny remnant of the great forests of the plains of the Manawatu and Horowhenua.

Wouldn’t it be simple enough, instead of allowing cows in the river, for DoC to plant up these reserves along the river with native plants from the region. It would bring back native birds along the river, it would make the river beautiful again, and instead of promises and spin, it would show the Government is doing something real to make our rivers cleaner.

I want to show you some more pictures It gets worse. DoC is not only allowing cows to graze right along the river like this, and into the river. It is actually getting rental payments from Landcorp, a State Owned Enterprise, to allow Landcorp cows to graze this riparian reserve.

We’re not sure which of these cows are Crown cows and which are cows belonging to private farmers – we could hold a rugby match and see who gets there first.

We do know that Landcorp pays DoC $25,000 a year so that Crown cows can be grazed here. So we have a government department working in conjunction with a State Owned Enterprise to pollute one of our great rivers.

And Fonterra completes the trifecta by collecting the milk produced by these cows and selling it overseas as clean and green.

We are the people of the plains. We spend most of lives living, working and playing in the lowlands. And while there is still forest up in the mountains, virtually all of the lowland forest has been lost. The only wild places left are the rivers. They are the last places that humans still don’t totally dominate.

And virtually all the land on the plains has been privatised. The only places left in common are the rivers and lakes. Our only remaining common spaces are in and on the shores of our rivers and lakes.

But if they’re too toxic for swimming or fishing or kayaking, are they really our common domain anymore, are they really wild anymore? Haven’t they become private drains for industrial dairy producers – like this one. I believe that we need to fight to retain the last of the wild places and the last of the lowland commons.

I give greetings to the mighty Manawatu and all its tributaries - nga mihi aroha ki a koutou. We will not forget you.

Proud to be angry

At this point I want to mention something we Greens are really proud of and that is the policy of not descending into personal attacks. Our MPs have earned real credibility in Parliament by avoiding personality politics and sticking to issues. Whatever our differences, whatever our arguments, we try to respect our opponents as we respect ourselves.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t be deeply passionate about the big issues of our time, it doesn’t mean we can’t criticise ridiculous policies of other parties, and it doesn’t mean we can’t express our impatience.

If we’re not passionate, or if we don’t show our frustration about policies which threaten our children, our families and our environment, then which other political party will? We should be angry.

I’m angry about a government department like DoC allowing cows to pollute the Manawatu River at the same time as other branches of the Government claims to promote “Clean Streams Accord” to keep cows out of our waterways.
MAF

I’m angry that another government department, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, has been opposing a plan by Horizons Regional Council to make the Manawatu River safe for swimming. MAF has been lobbying against the plan in writing. That’s hard to believe – but I have a copy of MAF’s written submission. MAF wants the Manawatu to remain a drain. I’m pleased that due to our pressure MAF has withdrawn its written submission opposing Horizons plan.

A small victory but one that means that Federated Farmers no longer has MAF as an ally in this issue. At least in public.

There’s something else about MAF. Father Coke and Mother Pepsi and their polluter mates know all about this story, but the public doesn’t.

I have a pile of 25 documents here. We got them under the Official Information Act and they show vested interests, in other words the polluters, have hijacked a government process aimed at cleaning up New Zealand's waterways.

These 25 papers are drafts of a blueprint, a blueprint for our lakes, our rivers, and our groundwater. The latest blueprint, draft number 25, is the worst. It says in effect polluters should have as much say about the state of a river as ordinary people who live around it, who want to swim in it or fish in it. It says that if restrictions are put on dairy companies’ ability to pollute rivers they should be compensated.

There’s no surprise why. Because these documents were written by a classic “Yes Minister” committee made up, not of representatives of all our great environmental groups… but Fonterra, Dairy New Zealand, Federated Farmers and the irrigation and fertiliser industry.

Our rivers aren’t becoming any cleaner while all this is going on in the Beehive.

But I say Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton needs to come clean.

Why has he met this committee in the past fortnight to discuss the future of our water resources?

Why is this committee being serviced by MAF officials? Why does it have an Environment Ministry member to give it semi-official status? Why is MAF paying some of the group’s expenses?

And why do we have this parallel process when we all thought the main player was an official government Programme of Action, led by the Environment Ministry. The Environment Ministry is consulting with all stakeholders, not just polluters. It's talking to iwi, to scientists, with conservation groups and with ordinary people who kayak on the rivers or fish in them.
I want to ask, who has the ear of the Government right now? Ordinary people or the big polluters?

Polluters caused the Government to backdown on the Emissions Trading Scheme. Will the polluters now make Mother Pepsi back down on promises to clean up our water?

Climate change

And let’s talk for a minute about the government back-down on measures to address the greatest issue of our time - our climate change obligations - merely to save their skin come election time.

At last year’s Green conference in Nelson I said I didn’t view the Greens as the third party of New Zealand politics but as the second party because National and Labour, Father Coke and Mother Pepsi, were so similar. In recent weeks there is even more proof that these two big parties are moving closer, toward a grand coalition, at least on climate change.

It’s a grand coalition of the unwilling.

Each party is outbidding the other to appease emitters and do the least to address our Kyoto commitments. Its bottom-feeding; it’s a self-interested, vote-catching race, and it’s simply disgusting – a disgusting retreat from principle by Labour and a disgusting return to simpering denial by National.

I’m particularly disgusted at Labour, the party that was courageous last century in creating the welfare state, in opposing playing sport with whites-only teams and in standing up to the United States to make New Zealand nuclear free.

Keeping nuclear ships and Springbok rugby teams out were brave moves, and split the country. Labour showed leadership, and in both cases, it did the right thing. Principle triumphed through politics. Now, with the biggest moral issue of our time, Labour has lost its guts. Principle has surrendered to politics.

I’ve got a message to Labour and National – trust the people. People want this country to be proud and strong on climate change.

We are extremely frustrated about this, not only because New Zealand is failing to meet its Kyoto obligations, but because of the huge cost on taxpayers and the environment. The Sustainability Council estimates the subsidy being paid by taxpayers to the dairy industry is around $1.3billion.

And that’s just in the first five years.

BIGGER

Many people have said to me that we should revel in the new-found popularity of green issues and shouldn’t cause so many waves. Some people will be shocked that I am telling the truth about climate change and the role of industrial dairying in climate change.

I’ve been warned not to be so strident, to tone down our demands, and sit back to collect the votes at the 2008 election. But if the Green Party doesn’t point out inconvenient truths then I’m not sure who in parliament will, because these messages aren’t as easy to sell as, say... tax cuts.

One of the Greens’ challenges is to shift the National-Labour focus from the next six months, to a vision, like we have, for our grandchildrens’ grandchildren.

This is why we have the slogan, “Some things are BIGGER than politics”. Of course like Father Coke and Mother Pepsi, we want people to vote for us this year. Unlike National-Labour we have a bigger vision, a bigger vision that extends beyond this election, and the elections following.

Political positioning

So how on earth do we help National-Labour see the bigger picture? Part of the answer is the decision we made this morning on a process for deciding our preferences for government negotiations after the election.

Our first goal is to be the largest party in parliament after the election.

Our first goal is to lead a coalition government dedicated to sustainability, peace, justice and democracy. This country needs a Green Prime Minister like Jeanette Fitzsimons and it needs one fast.

But we’re realists and know that it takes time to build the green political movement, and in any case, we need to consider what kind of relationships we want to have with other parties after the election.

Following the decision of the Annual General Meeting this morning, the Greens will be assessing the policies and programmes of the other parties in the lead up to the election to determine which parties we would work with after the election to form a government.

We challenge the other parties to step up and adopt policy that genuinely addresses the great sustainability and resource issues of our age in a fair way. They can adopt our policies if they wish! Occasionally they do.
We will announce our preferences for post-election negotiations prior to the election. We believe that voters have a right to know how their votes will be used in government negotiations.

But at this stage we haven’t even seen all the policies of the parties so it is still too early.

We sincerely hope that National-Labour take up the challenge and improve their performance on sustainability and social justice.

The Greens, as an independent party of principle, will be encouraging and cajoling the other parties to be realists and face up to the pressing issues of our time.

Cost of living

Addressing the recent cost of living increases is one of these pressing issues. Many people are hurting under the pressure of rising food, fuel, rent and mortgage payments. Of course those most in need are those on benefits – Labour and National seem to share a philosophy that beneficiaries and their children must suffer. We don’t share that new right ideology – benefits should be raised and minimum wages raised to help those most in need. And we need more affordable social housing – under Labour social housing as a proportion of the rental market has dropped precipitously as the numbers in private rental have increased. Given their track record it’s fair to say that National would probably be worse.

And rising petrol prices will not be addressed by building more roads – we need more and better public transport. How crazy is it that if you want to build a new motorway in Auckland the government throws money at you, cost overruns no problem; but if you want to electrify the third world train system you have to get a special law through parliament, you have to levy regional petrol taxes, and that’s real popular, and you have to take out a big loan to pay for it all. That’s dumb 1950s thinking – let’s invest in decent public transport now.

We need to future-proof our transport system so that it still works in the era of the end of cheap oil.

Transitioning to a sustainable economy – tax shifting

And we need to future-proof our economy by getting the right price signals in place so that our economy becomes more efficient at using finite resources. The weird thing is that for all their new right rhetoric about incentives for beneficiaries, when it comes to using market signals to make our economy more efficient in resource use, National Labour are reluctant to offend their big business mates.

The Greens believe in internalising the true environmental costs into market signals.

That’s why today I’m announcing the first part of our approach to ecological tax shifting. I’m proposing a resource levy on all commercial water use and to use the revenue from that levy to reduce rates and income taxes.
There has been a 50% growth in commercial water use over the last decade. About three quarters of freshwater is used for irrigation of intensive agriculture and about 10% for large industrial users. As a general rule there is no price paid to use this globally valuable natural resource.

We are not proposing to privatise water or to introduce tradeable water rights. We are not proposing to charge for drinking water for humans or for stock. But if you use a public resource to make a profit then the public should be paid rental for that use.

Resource levies make sense. This is an initiative that rewards those many commercial water users that use water efficiently and puts the heat on those that waste water. It encourages efficient use of water to take the pressure off highly stressed rivers and aquifers. We are using a market mechanism to achieve an environmental goal. Tax shifting takes taxes off incomes and puts it onto resource use.

This is not an extra tax, it is fiscally neutral. This is not a tax that will put up interest rates like National Labour’s tax cuts are doing, it is as fiscally responsible as the Finance Minister used to be. This is not an approach to tax that cuts the money available for health and education nor does it lead to government borrowing like National Labour’s tax cuts. This is responsible economics and I challenge Father Coke and Mother Pepsi to follow our lead.

Our full tax shifting policy will be released closer to the election.

The Greens believe that if our economy is to prosper in a world of finite resources, and water is most definitely a finite resource, then our economy must become much more efficient in the way it uses resources. And one of the best ways to ensure water is used efficiently is to put a price on its commercial use.

We also need regulatory measures such as resource consents and a national environmental standard on water quality. But we need to align the regulatory signals with the price signals – currently any regulations that place limits on water use are being undermined by price signals that tell the big users to waste as much water as they like because it’s free. Well it isn’t free to the environment and it shouldn’t be free in the market either.

That’s green economics and it’s the only kind of economics the future can live with.

The Greens are also futureproofing our economy by protecting our two most important export industries, primary production and tourism, that both trade on our clean and green reputation.

Achievements

Many people have said to me; “the issues are so many and so immense, what can a few Greens in Parliament really do?” Well, I’ll tell of just a few of our achievements and leave it you all to imagine how much more we could do with extra Green MPs.

We stopped the Government logging our native forests; we set up a multi-million dollar fund to record and clean up highly toxic contaminated sites; so far we have kept genetic engineering almost entirely in the laboratory – these are huge achievements.

We have given people with historic and minor criminal convictions the chance for a new start, through Nandor’s Clean Slate Bill.

Due to Keith’s untiring efforts we helped to right an injustice, we helped to release from jail a victim of a long government smear campaign – a man who was never charged with any offence – I’m talking of course, about Ahmed Zaoui.

Jeanette lobbied for, helped set up and has led an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Agency which has real policies to help address climate change, not just promises, including the recent announcement that the Greens have secured funding to insulate all state houses.

And largely through the efforts of Metiria, we ensured $8.8 million was allocated in last year’s budget to protect our precious wetlands.

Working with the Auckland Regional Council and others we got the government to agree to electrify Auckland’s rail network. It took a lot of arm twisting but we did get there.

With Sue Bradford’s stewardship we are fulfilling Rod Donald’s dream of a Buy Kiwi Made campaign to support New Zealand companies and try to cut our overseas trade deficit.

But I want to focus, especially, on our achievements in the past year to improve the lives of young people, and children. For a long time, we’ve claimed to be the political party which is most concerned about children and recently we’ve proved, without doubt, that we keep our promises.

Through a massive effort by Sue Kedgley we’ve ensured children in schools around the country have much healthier choices at lunchtime and this will help set them up to a better diet throughout their lives. Again due to Sue Kedgley we have flexible working hours laws, which means it’s much easier for parents to spend time with their children.

Good work by Sue Bradford has raised the minimum wage for young people. But I want to compliment her most of all for resisting the personal and vitriolic attacks mounted against her last year. Attacks which opposed her efforts to protect children against physical abuse in the same way adults are protected.

Making it illegal to beat children is surely one of the Greens’ greatest achievements.

We pressured the NZ Super Fund to stop investing our taxes in cluster bombs and we will get them out of nuclear weapons. We have persuaded some of the big retail chains to stop importing kwila furniture, and we will get the rest of them.

And the parliamentary term isn’t over yet so we should get Nandor and Mike’s Waste Minimisation Bill through before the election.

Let’s be passionate about the real issues, the hard issues, and not only focus, like National-Labour is focussing, on winning votes at any cost. The climate, our rivers, our food and our children. Let’s be passionate about things that matter, and channel that passion positively in Parliament.

We have a vision for Aotearoa in which our fresh water is actually fresh, and our aspirations for sustainability and fairness become a reality,

I’ve told some home truths about industrial dairying so perhaps it’s appropriate to finish with this beautiful Maori insight:

Ko te whenua,
te wai-u,
mo nga iwi
whaka-tupu-ranga.

“Land... is the mother’s milk... for the generations to come”.