National's tourism funding announcement falls short of what’s needed to cope with skyrocketing tourist numbers, and a bump in DOC funding for tourist facilities will do nothing to halt the loss of our threatened species, the Green Party said today. Tourism Minister Paula Bennett today announced a $15 million-a-year increase to tourism infrastructure funding, and $76 million over an unspecified period of time for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to develop tourist facilities. “Paula Bennett's tourism fund is mostly a...

A Government backed rent-to-buy programme would open the door to home ownership for the four in five New Zealanders who can’t afford a house according to the Government’s new Housing Affordability Measure, the Green Party said today. “With a rent-to-buy programme we could get thousands of families into their own homes, affordably,” Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei said. “The Green Party’s Home for Life plan would save people $100 a week on mortgage payments. Payments would be no more than...

Women have been denied the opportunity to know when they are being underpaid, by a Government that is not prioritising women’s issues, the Green Party said today. “When the Government voted against my bill this evening, they denied women the right to know if they are being underpaid in the workplace,” Green Party women’s spokesperson Jan Logie said. “My member’s bill would have had employers adding gender to their payroll reporting requirements, and allowed employees access to that aggregated information...

Protecting our water from pollution has never been more important, as we can’t take the water from our taps for granted anymore, the Green Party said today. The comments come on the back of a report released by the Havelock North drinking water inquiry showing that dysfunction between local authorities, poor infrastructure and faecal contamination led to more than 5000 people becoming sick with campylobacter. “New Zealanders want clean water. It’s not good enough to say we’ll just chlorinate the...

Plans to protect some of our most precious species won’t be worth the paper they’re written on if the Department of Conservation doesn’t get a significant funding boost, the Green Party said today. “DOC funding has been chopped by some $336 million since National came to power. Maggie Barry’s plan to increase the number of species DOC protects will fail dismally if the department continues to be asked to do more with less,” said Green Party conservation spokesperson Mojo Mathers....

MPs have the opportunity to support women being paid what they’re worth by voting for Jan Logie’s Equal Pay Amendment Bill in Parliament tonight, the Green Party said. The Bill would get employers to add gender as a payroll reporting requirement and allow employees to request access to this information to ensure that they are being paid fairly. “It’s wrong that women are still earning so much less than men in 2017, and I want each MP to ask themselves...

National should follow today’s advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and implement deposit insurance to protect New Zealanders’ savings, the Green Party said. The IMF’s Financial Sector Assessment Programme recommended today that introducing deposit insurance is “the best option” to strengthen the Reserve Bank’s crisis resolution framework. “New Zealand is the only developed country in the world where we can lose our savings if our bank makes a bad decision, and that’s because we don’t have deposit insurance,” Green...

Thousands of heavily-mortgaged first home buyers in Auckland could be hit hard by rising interest rates, thanks to out of control house prices, according to documents released to the Green Party under the Official Information Act. An email from Reserve Bank analysts to senior Beehive staff in January 2017, titled “response to PM’s questions”, highlights a “significant likelihood of financial distress” for people who have recently got mortgages in Auckland, in the event interest rates rise as predicted. “The Prime...

The Government must immediately put the full resources of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Department of Conservation (DOC) towards finding the cause of the myrtle rust incursion and preventing a wider outbreak, the Green Party said today.

A new gas power plant granted consent today in southern Waikato is a step backwards for New Zealand’s efforts to generate more renewable electricity, the Green Party said today. “New Zealand is blessed with an abundance of renewable electricity options like solar, geothermal, and wind, so there’s no good reason we should be allowing new power plants that burn fossil fuels in the era of climate change,” Green Party energy and resources spokesperson Gareth Hughes said. “It’s irresponsible that climate...