Local Bodies

This weekend the Green Party will be holding their Annual General Meeting in Auckland and I am looking forward to another well organized event. If it is anything like all the past meetings I have attended it will be full of robust and informed debate, useful workshops and great food. It amuses and sometimes frustrates me when the media representation of these same meetings often goes to great length to confirm myths about the party rather than report on important policy development or serious announcements. While I admit there have been times when we have fed some of these myths ourselves by some interesting activities early in our history, like the infamous Morris Dancing, it does seem odd that years afterwards it is still referred to while grossly racist comments at other party conferences (for example) are quickly forgotten. Television footage of our meetings in recent years have revealed a strange magnetic power that the few bearded or ethnically dressed delegates have over n...

The Minister for Education, Anne Tolley, has never been able to engage in a professional discussion around the merits of her own National Standards policy. She continues to ignore specific questions and concerns from our highest regarded educationalists and suggests that the hundreds of schools and  principals protesting  against the forced implementation of the untested standards have political motives.  When questioned in the house by Trevor Mallard about what an actual standard meant in plain english, Tolley made the bizarre claim that she didn't have to understand them, just implement and resource them. When really pressured she falls back on the statement that National was elected with a policy to introduce National Standards and therefore has a mandate to do so. This view is so flawed and simplistic when no voter nor the National Party had any idea about what the standards would look like in reality. Parents had visions of plain english reporting and the ability ...

On Campbell Live this evening the plight of the Waituna Lagoon was highlighted. Nitrogen and phospherus are washing into the lagoon at ever growing levels and a rapid decline of water quality has  been revealed and delicate, but important indicator plants are dying. The $8.8 million that the Greens got put into the 2007 budget to protect wetland areas has been largely spent (the money will cease next year) on useful partnerships with landowners and some concentrated scientific research. The rapid increase in dairying in Southland, and around the Waituna, has accompanied a similar increase in water pollution and scientists have now determined that the lagoon is poised at the point of flipping. It has happened to many other Lakes and lagoons in New Zealand and now it is about to happen to the Waituna , our most important and internationally regarded wetland. Flipping is when a body of water shifts from a clean environment supporting a large range of plants and animals to a turgi...

Rt Hon John Key Prime Minister of New Zealand Parliament Buildings Wellington Dear Prime Minister Key, Encouraged by youth of New Zealand, especially members of the organization 350.org, I write this open letter to inform you of recent advances in understanding of climate change, consequences for young people and nature, and implications for government policies. I recognize that New Zealanders, blessed with a land of rare beauty, are deeply concerned about threats to their environment. Also New Zealand contributes relatively little to carbon emissions that drive climate change. Per capita fossil fuel emissions from New Zealand are just over 2 tons of carbon per year, while in my country fossil fuel carbon emissions are about 5 tons per person. However, we are all on the same boat. New Zealand youth, future generations, and all species in your country will be affected by global climate change, as will people and species in all nations. New Zealand’s actions affecting climate chang...

My father has had a life long interest in cars and even though he retired after many years as a school principal he worked during an era when teachers, especially primary teachers, were not paid a great deal. Cars were also much more expensive before the days of Japanese imports and my father, being a practical man, admired reliability and functionality over style and high performance when choosing a new vehicle. In my early childhood our family cars were British and a series of Humbers and Hilmans transported the Kennedy family from A to B. As the British car industry struggled to compete internationally and their reputation for quality and reliability faltered he bought a couple of Holdens (useful for towing boats and caravans) and then as Japanese cars came to the fore, some Mitsubishis. On his retirement about twenty years ago he decided to buy what he thought may be his last car. This purchase was an important one for my father as he planned to cash up some of his valuable sup...

NZEI Te Riu Roa President, Ian Leckie, puts the apparent increases in education funding into perspective in this press release. Early Childhood Education appears to be getting a substantial boost with an increase of $550 million, but when the $400 cuts from the previous budget are taken into account it will hardly restore the damage done. The fact that we still substantially fund ECE below the level in most OECD countries (.6% of GDP compared to the average of over 1%) means we are still disadvantaging our youngest children. There is a desperate need for high quality ECE in our communities and when New Zealand has one of the highest percentages of working mothers in the OECD our funding needs to reflect that. The 2.9% increase to schools operational funding is also a disappointment as it is well below inflation rates (4.9% this year) and will restrict further a school's ability to pay the wages of already underpaid school support staff. The refusal to centrally fund core suppo...

The New Zealand Institute has produced the NZahead report card that provides an overview of New Zealand's social, economic and environmental wellbeing. By measuring our performance in 16 key areas it hopes to generate robust discussion and support prioritization in future decision making. It makes especially interesting reading because when we are ranked against other developed nations it puts into perspective how well we are performing and highlights where our government's priorities should be. If you look at where we perform best we find that we are ranked 4th in the world in education and 3rd for our per capita levels of agriculture and forestry. The areas where we perform worst and near the bottom of the OECD are: Income inequality,  this especially disadvantages children where a high percentage live in substandard housing and low income households.   Mortality through assault (worse than the US and Mexico)  Low household wealth (largely due to mortgages ...