Green Election Policy Highly Sophisticated.

As each new election policy is released by the Greens I am impressed by the depth of thinking, costing and multiple benefits that come with them. We have made a convincing impression this election that we are ready to govern and are easily holding our own against the other parties with highly relevant and practical policies.

National's policies look like as if they are just throwing money around where they think they will get some traction, but with no long term vision. Their regional road spending and the building of Auckland schools just look like stuff that they should be doing anyway dressed up to look like new spending and lacking consultation. The carrot of tax cuts is also being dangled in front of voters by Key despite English's reservations that the money exists to do this.

The Green Party are offering tax cuts through our carbon tax policy, we know where the money is coming from because we have generated it first. This policy will future proof our economy by shifting the focus to sustainable business practices and put money in people's pockets at the same time.

Extending our home insulation scheme (that we originally established as part of a memorandum of agreement with the National led Government) will just continue the success of this initiative. Not only are we making families healthier, and less of a drain on our health system, but the scheme supports local businesses and jobs. Like most of our policies this is an investment, not one way spending, as there is a return of $5 for every dollar spent.

Our Green Card is a simple yet effective way of providing financial support for struggling students by saving them around $40 a week in transport costs, reducing traffic and encouraging the use of public transport ouside peak times. It will also allow students to potentially save even more money through renting cheaper flats more distant from their tertiary institutions.

The Safe to School policy is another seemingly simple policy that has multiple benefits. It will allow children to be independent, increase the level of activity for our children to curb our growing child obesity rates, and take traffic off the roads during the congested times before and after school. Councils will be able to access money to make their towns and cities more family friendly without increasing rates.

Another thing I like about our policies is that they are all interrelated and it is our holistic approach that will deliver the 'balance' that National often talks about, but never achieves. A degrading environment, growing inequity and an economy based on borrowing and exporting raw commodities does not constitute balance.

All Green policies make sense because they are grounded in evidence and will force our economy to work for us rather than the other way around. Under National our economy has performed well for only a small section of our society and our environment and our families have had to be unreasonably sacrificed to support it. A well functioning economy should benefit all people and improve our quality of life as well as our environment. Party voting Green will support progressive policies and a cleaner, fairer and smarter future.