The Government must reverse savage cuts for the Department of Conservation, or risk more tracks being closed due to lack of money to maintain them, the Green Party said today.   A section of the Inland Pack Track in Paparoa National Park has been closed since April 2014, when Cyclone Ita brought down 380 beech trees, and has not been re-opened because there are no volunteers to do the work to clear them. “Under this Government, DOC has endured job...

John Key must rule out making the public pay for his settlement with Bradley Ambrose, because it is explicitly prohibited in the rules governing MP’s use of public funds, the Green Party says. “The Green Party is today releasing the rules that show MPs are explicitly prohibited from using parliamentary money for legal settlements,” Green Party Co leader Metiria Turei said. “The rules also confirm that the Prime Minister should have asked the Speaker if he wanted his legal fees...

The largest ever oil and gas Block Offer announced today, including 2,600 km2 in the Maui’s dolphin sanctuary, is a disaster for our environment and shows how desperate the National Government is to keep its oil dream alive in the face of growing public concern about climate change, the Green Party said. “This is a disaster for the environment and yet another example of National backing a polluting industry instead of investing in the clean-technology jobs that New Zealanders want,”...

The Government can close some of the loopholes multinational companies are using to avoid paying their fair share of tax by adopting similar measures to Australia, the Green Party said today. Australia passed new legislation in December 2015 to target multinational companies that are avoiding paying regular company tax rates. Multinationals now face 100 percent tax penalties if caught shifting profits, along with new transparency and reporting requirements to give the Australian Tax Office (ATO) a better picture of how...

The Green Party can reveal the Government is continuing to pour public money into subsidies for the oil and gas industry and ignore clean energy investment, on the eve of a major government-sponsored oil and gas conference starting in Auckland tomorrow. The Government has just confirmed it spent $47,583 on the 2016 Minerals Exploration Data Pack – a collection of valuable data for overseas fossil fuel companies as a sweetener to make drilling for oil in New Zealand more attractive....

The Green Party is supporting the announcement made by the Chief Ombudsman on TV3s The Nation that he will produce a league table revealing Government agencies’ lack of compliance with the Official Information Act (OIA).

Data obtained by the Green Party shows that the National Government’s funding announcement at the Paris climate change conference is a cut to assistance to help other countries deal with climate change.

The IRD warned the Government in 2013 of massive, systematic tax avoidance by multinational companies but National is still to act on it, the Green Party said today. The New Zealand Herald today released analysis that showed multinational companies operating in New Zealand could have avoided paying up to $500 million in tax last year. The IRD warned both the Ministers of Finance and Revenue in 2013 that multinationals were avoiding tax by profit shifting and that work to protect...

The Prime Minister deliberately misled the New Zealand public into believing women had left New Zealand to join terrorist groups and become what he described as “jihadi Brides”, the Green Party says.

The gap between the tradable and non-tradable parts of the economy has grown to its biggest since 2000 meaning the economy is growing more unbalanced under National’s economic leadership, the Green Party said today. GDP statistics released today by Statistics New Zealand show that the tradable parts of the New Zealand economy (exporters and trade-exposed businesses) shrunk by 0.8 percent in the December 2015 quarter while the rest of the economy (the non-tradable sector) grew by 0.9 percent over the...