The Green Party's vision for Aotearoa New Zealand is one of prosperity without growth in resource use and without growth in waste; in fact, it is a vision of prosperity with declining resource use and waste, and declining inequality.
We believe the government should approach the raising and spending of money, with this aim in mind.
On the revenue side, taxes should be structured to not only raise the money the government needs, but also to move our economy in a green direction by taxing resources and waste.
The government's books would be in a much healthier position, by billions of dollars potentially, if there were a levy on the commercial use of water and a levy on the production of greenhouse gases. And at the same time, by increasing the price of water and carbon, the market would direct our economy to use water and carbon more efficiently, something which is essential for our economic and environmental prosperity. A country which uses water wisely will prosper in the 21st century as water becomes more and more scarce globally; and likewise for carbon.
Sadly the government is doing neither of these things - there is no price on water for irrigation, the biggest user, and there is scant price on carbon as the Emissions Trading Scheme is too weak. So we miss out on the revenue, and we lock our economy into investments that use water and carbon inefficiently.
The one bright spot on the revenue side in the government's accounts is catching the banks attempt to steal $2.2 billion from the taxpayer. The banks got caught but suffered no penalties. Think about that - the biggest theft of public money in NZ history, the banks got caught and had to pay it back - no penalties, no-one sent to jail, and those who advised the banks on how to steal billions got appointed to the Tax Working Group.
On the spending side, our accounts are weighed down by the ghosts of years past. The dramatic increase in inequality in the 80s and 90s has left our budget with huge legacy spending due to high crime and violence, high prison populations, high spending on social services and preventable illness, and an education system that is struggling to teach kids who are dragged back by poverty. Inequality is really expensive on the public purse and we are living with that legacy and paying taxes through the nose to pay for the downstream effects of the Rogernomics experiment.
And also on the spending side we are throwing vast amounts of treasure at new motorways - literally tens of billions of dollars, which makes the spending on buses, trains, cycling and walking look like peanuts. It is Joyce's Think Big Project with the inevitable production of white elephants.
Labour and National clearly don't read the reports from the International Energy Agency that are warning governments that the era of cheap oil is over. So I suggest the government save money by stopping paying for the IEA reports because clearly no-one in Labour or National is reading them.
And then there is the small question of our accounting framework. When we consume natural capital, when we mine minerals, to buy consumer goods, are we really richer? Our national accounts certainly say so, as GDP increases. But if you start selling off parts of your house in order to buy flat screen TVs are you really richer? Of course not, you are simply consuming your capital. And that is exactly what we are doing with our minerals. We are simply consuming today the natural capital that we will never have again.
How much better would our books be if we had invested a good proportion of the returns from the Maui gas field in a Gas Fund, whose dividends would now be helping our chronic current account deficit and budget deficit. Norway turned a good chunk its North Sea oil, its natural capital, into financial capital in the form of the giant half trillion dollar Norway Pension Fund. While NZ and the UK simply consumed our mineral resources and now have nothing to show for it except a few mothballed methanex Think Big plants.
Thinking long term to ensure prosperity is the Green way, and we encourage all parties in this House to steal our ideas instead of the next generation's inheritance.
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