A Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report today shows the need for an urgent review into how mothers are being treated by the Ministry of Social Development, the Green Party said today. The CPAG report ‘Kathryn’s Story’ tells a heart-breaking story of one woman who has been subjected to more than 15 years of prosecution, jail, losing her children to the state, and debt repayment. There are still unclear rules around whether single mothers can claim a Sole Parent Support...

One of the rivers that Green Party MPs will visit during their Swimmable Rivers campaign later this month has been named as one of the worst sites to swim in in the Wellington Region. The Ruamāhanga river has once again scored a D rating for swimming at The Cliffs, a site south of Masterton, in the annual Greater Wellington Regional Council Recreational Swimming Report Card. “The Ruamāhanga’s story is a tragic one – it starts out pristine in the Tararua...

New building consent numbers declined further in Auckland in May, again highlighting the National Government’s failure to address the city’s housing crisis, the Green Party said today. Statistics NZ Building Consents data released today shows that the number of new building consents in Auckland has been trending downwards since November 2015. “If the National’s Government’s solution to the housing crisis in Auckland is for the private sector to build more houses, it’s not working,” said Green Party Co-leader James Shaw....

The Green Party is again calling on Ashburton District Council to abandon its shady plans to sell land, including a resource consent to bottle billions of litres of pristine water, in a backroom deal. A petition of 40,000 signatures is to be presented to the Council today at midday in Ashburton, asking to stop the sale, which is reportedly to a water bottling company that will pay nothing for the water they bottle and sell.   “Canterbury is in the...

Finance Minister Bill English’s suggestion that poor families in New Zealand are better off than those in other developed countries shows how disconnected he is from the reality in his own country, the Green Party said today. “Bill English’s comments show he’s in denial about what we’re actually seeing in our communities, which is food banks with empty shelves and more people begging on the streets,” Green Party social development spokesperson Jan Logie said. “When people are working hard and...

Revelations that Lifeline Aotearoa has only enough money to run for one more year are another blow to our already strained mental health system, the Green Party said today. Lifeline Aotearoa provides free 24/7 mental health assistance through phone lines 0800 Lifeline, 0508 Tautoko (specialised suicide crisis line), and 0800 Kidsline (for those aged under 18). “A strained mental health system has already been palming people off onto these 0800 numbers, and if Lifeline services go under, then New Zealanders...

The Government needs to come clean with Cantabrians, and provide a detailed financial breakdown of the true cost of the proposed Christchurch convention centre, the Green Party said today.

The National Government is failing to report properly on the extent and seriousness of New Zealand’s environmental problems, and is instead hiding behind misleading statistics, the Green Party said today. A report the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE), responding to the Government’s own State of the Environment report released last October, criticises the Government for not providing New Zealanders with "information about how good or bad aspects of the environment are in different parts of the country", focusing on...

The Health Minister needs to urgently undertake an inquiry into mental health services, after new figures have revealed that young people are facing unreasonably long waiting times to receive the help they need, the Green Party said today. Thirty percent of young people who seek help for mental health issues have to wait longer than three weeks to see a mental health provider, and of those, 1337 young people had to wait longer than eight weeks in 2015/2016. The figures,...

The Green Party is again calling on ACC not to throw good money after bad by investing public money in the hugely controversial Ruataniwha Dam, which will be a disaster for the Hawke’s Bay environment. Local community groups, supported by Greenpeace, are protesting the Ruataniwha dam today highlighting the massive environmental destruction the proposed dam will have on the Makaroro,Waipawa, and Tukituki rivers. The $333 million dam has so far failed to secure any private investment and could end up...