The Green Party today announced it will invest $20 million per year for ten years to help small towns and communities upgrade sewage treatment systems. The announcement is the fourth component of the Party’s environmental priority this election: rivers clean enough for swimming and beaches safe from oil spills. Many small communities struggle to pay for the infrastructure required to keep sewage out of their rivers. That is why the Green Party is re-establishing the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme (SWSS)...

National's promise of tax cuts before getting the Government's books into surplus is irresponsible, the Green Party said today.

"National’s water announcement is an election band-aid on a gaping wound because it doesn’t address the main cause of water pollution: intensification of land use,” Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today. John Key announced that $100 million would be spent on retiring land next to important waterways, and that dairy farmers would be required to fence streams on their properties by 2017. To date, National has allocated $120 of the $400 million it ear-marked in 2011 for irrigation...

The Green Party today announced a workers' package that is part of its plan to build a fairer society where all workers have enough to live on. The key policy points in the Green Party's plan to make life better for all New Zealand workers are: Lifting low wages by moving the minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2017 and introducing a Living Wage for the core Government sector. A new legislative minimum redundancy package of four weeks' pay....

Prime Minister John Key needs to respect the constitutional status of his Government this close to an election and proceed with an independent Royal commission of inquiry, the Green Party said today. 

National's alleged involvement in dirty politics makes it appear that the Government is  looking out for its mates instead of everyday New Zealanders, the Green Party believes, after new allegations that one of John Key's senior Ministers may have been aware of attempts to undermine the Serious Fraud Office's investigations into finance company collapses. 

The National Party’s election campaign has been thrown into chaos with the sacking of John Key’s minister Judith Collins over dirty politics allegations, Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei said today.

A new report, commissioned by and released today by the Green Party, shows the Education Review Office (ERO) and the Ministry of Education are seriously failing queer students in secondary schools. The Green Party report, How Safe Are Our Schools?: An analysis of the Current Policy Framework Aimed at Protecting Queer Young People in New Zealand Secondary Schools highlights a severe lack of support, in some schools, for queer and trans* students.  The report was researched and written by Murray...

New evidence shows that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is almost certainly sharing metadata with the US spy agency NSA, the Green Party said today. Newly released documents from NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden detail an NSA search engine, known as ICREACH, which contains over 850 billion records of metadata on phone calls, mobile phone locations and emails. The documents suggest that this data is then shared amongst Five Eyes partners, including New Zealand. A document from 2008 also states...

The Green Party has announced today that its key housing policy for the election is to deliver healthy houses for our poorest children by improving the quality of rental accommodation and rights of tenants.