Local Bodies

National are now holding on to their polling lead by the skin of their teeth and their traditional coalition partner when things get tight is looking increasingly dodgy. Act has lost its libertarian base and the social liberalism, a strong element within that philosophy, that used to softened their hardline economics and make them appear more mainstream. The new faces of Act, like John Banks and Don Nicholson, come across more like flaky members of a conservative christian party and this kind of political philosophy has had minimal support in New Zealand in the past and even less so now. The Maori Party has developed into the party for the money orientated, entrepreneurial sector of the Maori community and they have lost their activist, social justice element to Mana. This will potentially halve its support and diminish its value as a useful coalition partner. All that remains are the Greens. We Greens are an increasingly credible political force and we have the real potential of...

This is the speech I have written for the education forum being organised by the local School Trustees Association. It is hard to cover as much as you would wish in 5 minutes. I think I have covered things fairly well but it doesn't paint a pretty picture. Our public education system is a great one, and we are ranked by most international assessments as amongst the top five in the world. We lead the world in our students’ achievements in maths, reading and writing. Our teachers are treated like gold when they work overseas, as I have found myself in the UK, just saying you were from New Zealand would assure you of a job. The main difference between New Zealand and the countries ranked above us is around cultural diversity and disparity of wealth. It has been suggested that 20% of our children are under achieving but when you remove those with identified disabilities we are only looking at around 16% of children and poverty (which now effects ¼ of our children) is a significant...

I was asked a good question at a rather lively  Riverton meeting  regarding the lifting of the minimum wage to $15. The questioner was an owner of a small business who was concerned that such an increase was unaffordable to them. I attempted to explain the issues around maintaining a low wage economy but I felt that I hadn't got my messages across clearly enough in the time that I had. Here is a second attempt at doing so in another forum, letters to the editor: Dear Sir I was asked a question on Tuesday night regarding the affordability of raising the minimum wage for small businesses. It was an important issue and needed a more detailed answer than I was able to provide on the night. New Zealand’s economy isn’t as dire as we are given to believe as most of our large companies have seen a 20% average increase in profits over the last year. Our productivity has increased by about 59% since 1989 yet real wages have only increased by 16%. Many businesses are achieving good ...

Tomorrow the Green Party are having a campaign launch on the Wellington waterfront and I just spent a very pleasant evening dining out with our national campaign team and many of our candidates. I was sitting opposite John Field, our National Secretary and beside Eugenie Sage, who is number six on our list and a likely MP. John has a long history with the party and his name has featured on all our advertising for at least two elections. He often reminds us that if we muck up with our billboards, or anything else regarding the Electoral Finance Act, he may end up doing time. John is a stickler for good process and many, including myself, have been on the receiving end of one of John's strongly worded reminders of the rules and how we stuffed up. Every party needs someone like John to keep them on the straight and narrow and in past elections John's patience would be wearing pretty thin at this stage of the campaign as we struggled with the workload and a multitude of enthus...

The Southland Times have devoted the past week to a series of articles related to our polluted waterways and they have made it the number one election priority for Southland. Editor, Fred Tullet , has become a strong advocate for our environment and sustainable living (he led a home gardening series last year) and he is especially keen to clean up our rivers. He has asked all candidates to explain our solutions to solve our water crisis in less than 1000 words and this is my response.  MAKING WATER COUNT The Green Party is the only party that has made the state of our rivers an election priority. Rivers exist for all of us; for recreation; as a source of food and drinking water and for industry. Rivers are essential for a healthy economy and our clean green brand underpins our tourism industry and agricultural exports. New Zealanders take pride in leading the world in many areas and even second place in the Rugby World Cup would be unacceptable. The view that our rivers are all...

The Green Party has firmly established itself as New Zealand's third largest party. The party is now 21 years old and firmly established as a party that is here to stay. We are not a party based on personalities, but policy and principles and when our leaders and MPs retire we have competent and capable people to shift immediately into their places. We are a stable party and although we do have turnover and change within our leadership positions we do this only when necessary and certainly not through overnight coups, undercover plots and individual ego trips. We do not flip flop with policy according to popular whim, our policy is based on research, consultation and wide ranging advice. Russel and Metiria have constantly proven themselves as capable leaders and politicians of substance. Political commentator, John Hartevelt , described Russel a few months ago as "the real opposition finance spokesman..." and the Q&A panel in the weekend thought that Metiria should...

Eric Roy promotes National's new employment policy as though it will be the saviour for many of our unemployed youth who currently suffer a 27% unemployment rate. This terrible situation is largely because of the frozen budgets for tertiary education and cutting back on places in our Universities and most importantly because there just aren't the jobs being created. Bringing back youth rates will only see a repeat of common situations like capable youths finding themselves in positions of responsibility and managing staff older than themselves, but earning less. I can also see lots of older workers losing their jobs to younger cheaper options as happened when youth rates existed before. If someone does the same job as another and to the same level of performance they should be paid the same. We are rushing steadily further into an low wage economy and even further behind Australia, this is " Back to the Future " stuff. My reply to Eric: Eric, as someone who ...