Greens’ Agreement with National Updated

Published: November 10, 2009

by frog

The Greens have the door open to more work with National, but today confirmed that Energy Efficiency is no longer part of the MoU between the two parties.

Collaboration on the $323 million home insulation scheme and the New Zealand Cycle Trail is working well and there’s also progress on sensible regulation of natural health products.  However, energy efficiency hasn’t worked out despite the best efforts of Jeanette Fitzsimons.

Confirmation came on Pundit where the astute Claire Browning first observed that Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee seemed to be doing his own thing despite an official undertaking to work with Jeanette as part of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by National and the Greens in April.

The Government’s work in this area is covered by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act of 2000 which Jeanette wrote and, in a guest spot on Pundit, she explains where and how the Greens and the Government disagree.

At the time the MoU was announced Russel Norman noted:

Pragmatism and principle are both important to our voters

Currently, the Greens are working where they can (home insulation, cycle trail and natural health products), but there are limits to the relationship (energy efficiency).

Meanwhile, the door remains open to see if there’s other common ground where a bi-partisan approach may be possible.

frog says

Published in Environment & Resource Management | Parliament by frog on Tue, November 10th, 2009   

More posts by frog | more about frog