The Fund’s stake in Hong Kong-based property development company Sun Hung Kai is the tenth biggest investment the Fund’s made in an international company, according to their December performance report.

Is China the next big property bubble on the brink of collapse?

The Chinese Government has spent much of its massive export revenues on building brand new cities. Trouble is, not many Chinese people can afford the prices of new apartments and some of the cities have become ghost cities — their emptiness visible on Google Earth.

If you find the satellite images interesting, this SBS Dateline report (Australian TV) takes you there on the ground and leaves you wondering how all this building activity could possibly end well.

Russel

Auckland couple Craig and Carla Bradley often have only $150 a week left for food. “We have gone two days without food just so the kids can eat. That’s when I was pregnant, too,” says Mrs Bradley, 29.

Monday’s Herald piece focuses on Auckland and looks at the census data. Good reporting has highlighted that median incomes for areas across the city have departed from their historical tie to the regional average income. Basically this provides evidence that the earnings gap between rich and poor parts of Auckland has increased. We must remember this data is from the 2006 census before the financial crisis and so we can expect the current situation to be somewhat worse given that the number of people unemployment has risen from 80,792 people when the census was taken to 171,225 part way through last year.

The National Government has no clear economic plan to address poverty. Its 15 post-election economic priorities do not address the issue of poverty. Mums and dads who go without food so that their children can eat will not have spare change to invest in SOEs. National and Labour’s tax policy have left NZ with lower tax rates in the OECD for those in the highest income bracket.

On the other hand, we have the world’s most comprehensive GST, one of the most regressive taxes that impacts those on lowest incomes disproportionately. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is busy consulting on her Green Paper on vulnerable children, but until we address the root causes of inequality and child poverty we will simply be papering over the cracks.

The most chilling part of the Herald series so far has been a quote from today’s article on tax from a mother described as “comfortable”:

“During the election was when it really hit me,” says Anita. “I had been to have a facial. Then I went to a supermarket and did the weekly shop. “I drove past one of the Labour billboards about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That’s $600 a week. I thought, ‘I’ve just spent that this morning having a facial, buying products from the beauty therapist and doing the shopping. How can a family live on that?”

Compare that to the plight of Lisa, a mother Metiria spoke to last year as part of our plan to bring 100,000 children out of poverty by 2014:

“How do you budget when your necessities cost more than you earn? An extra $60 a week would mean I could provide healthier food, my daughter could participate in more out of school activities, I’d get my bills paid faster so I could benefit from prompt payment discounts, and I wouldn’t have to panic if one or both of us needed the doctor unexpectedly.”

The Green Party takes an holistic view of inequality and poverty. New Zealand’s appalling rates of violence are partly a result of growing inequality. In its Green Paper, the Government seeks merely to address the results of poverty.  By contrast, the Green Party has a plan to address the causes. Until we start to do this I anticipate more sobering stories like those in the Herald this week.

A transcript is here for those who cannot access the video.

I think the most interesting part that Paul Matthews hits on is that by signing the TPPA, New Zealand law could be overridden.

New Zealand recently completed a review of the outdated Patents Act and, among other things, the new bill, supported by both sides of the House, contains the following exclusions in Clause 15:

(2) An invention of a method of treatment of human beings by surgery or therapy is not a patentable invention.

(3) An invention of a method of diagnosis practised on human beings is not a patentable invention.

(3A) A computer program is not a patentable invention.

All three of these exclusions would be specifically disallowed in this draft of the TPPA, regardless of the fact that New Zealand’s commerce committee, made up of all parties in Parliament, unanimously supported them.

You read that right: the proposed Article 15 of the TPPA would specifically prevent New Zealand enacting law that was unanimously agreed to by all parties in Parliament.

This position — that is to say the position of the United States — is driven by commercial interests and corporate lobbyists. It’s not good policy development; it could hardly be called negotiation.

As we’ve seen earlier in the year with the release of Wikileaks cables, the US is all too keen to let our Government give away our rights, a little bit of our soverignity, and an awesome opportunity to shift our economy in the right direction.

If National were dedicated to building a clean, green, smart economy that works for everyone, they would be trying to create an environment where NZ IT companies can thrive. Not one where they can be held ransom by big multinational corporations. As Matthews points out:

“Companies in software, information technology (IT) services and high-tech manufacturing are now generating as much export revenue as meat (also around $5 billion) and not as far as you think behind the dairy industry traditionally thought of as our mainstay (around $11 billion).”

The number employed in the tech sector and high tech manufacturing has grown from 24,000 in 2010 to 30,000 this year.

The Government needs to be open and transparent about the TPPA and it needs to think about where they want to take our economy. Do they want one that continues to be based on primary production or do we want to make the switch to a smart green economy with IT at its core.

The good news: the Greens achieved a record result, including our bonus 14th MP Mojo Mathers.

The bad news: official voter turnout was only 74.21%, the lowest in over 100 years.

This record low voter turnout strengthens my call for the Justice and Electoral Select Committee to focus its regular post-election inquiry into addressing declining voter turnout.

I think that one option to help increase citizen participation and voter turnout is to introduce online enrolling and voting. We need to modernise our enrolment processes and exploring online options to help encourage New Zealanders, particularly young New Zealanders, to participate in the civic process.

Last week, as a way to start exploring these ideas, we set up an informal online survey that asked people six simple questions about enrolment, voting, and civics education.

The response was overwhelming, with over 1,000 people taking part. The results gave us some interesting indications of the factors influencing voter turnout and showed strong support for exploring online options for enrolment and voting.

74% of respondents said they would have been more likely to enrol to vote if they could have done so online. Significantly, just looking at those who had not enrolled to vote, two thirds indicated they would have been more likely to enrol if there was an online option.

Figure 1 – Online Enrolment

Of those who hadn’t voted, 58% said they would have been more likely to if secure online voting was available.

As well as this support for online options, nearly 80% of respondents believed that civics education at secondary school would make it more likely for young New Zealanders to vote.

Figure 2 – Civics Education

I think that these results indicate that there are options to turn around this trend of declining voter turnout in New Zealand and that they need to be explored for the health of our democracy.

What do you think?

• The big winners are Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata, moving up 10 and 13 places respectively in the Cabinet ranking. Parata replaces Anne Tolley as Minister of Education.

• Paula Bennett’s reward for losing the Waitakere electorate is a promotion of 7 places. She keeps her role as Minister of Beneficiary Bashing.

• Tolley drops 5 places in the ranking and is given Police and Corrections as a reward for her sterling efforts in Education.

• We have a new Colossus of Roads, with Gerry Brownlee taking over from Joyce as Minister of Transport.

• Phil Heatley takes over from Brownlee as Minister for Drilling and Digging.

• Environment Minister Nick Smith drops 4 places and Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson languishes at a lowly No. 17 in the rankings. I guess that reflects the importance with which National views those portfolios.

• Judith Collins gets the job of handing ACC claimants over to be crushed by private insurers.

Update: Jan Logie has just pointed out that another feature is Women’s Affairs being allocated to a Minister outside Cabinet. Again a reflection of the importance with which National views that portfolio. Disability Issues is outside Cabinet too.

Mojo’s election will cause a shake-up in the way things work around Parliament.  Shamefully, the proceedings of Parliament have been pretty much inaccessible to the Deaf Community until transcripts appear on the Parliamentary website , sometimes days after the event. Mojo being profoundly deaf means that will have to change to ensure her ability to participate.  That will have big positive spin-offs for the Deaf Community’s participation in the Parliamentary process.

The Greens in Parliament will now have the advantage of being able to cover every Select Committee, and our MPs will each be able to focus more strongly on a smaller number of spokesperson roles.

From an organisational perspective, the election result gives the Greens a great base to build on to further increase our party vote and become a significant player in a progressive Government in 2014.  We have lots of people who have for the first time ever not just voted Green but been involved in campaigning for the Greens.

A few statistical highlights are:

• Almost a quarter of a million voters (247,370) cast their party vote for the Greens

• In two electorates, Wellington Central and Te Tai Tonga, the Greens came second in the party vote

• In Waiariki the Green party vote increased by 221%

And perhaps the best news of all is that MMP is here to stay:

• In the referendum, 58% of valid votes supported sticking with MMP, with only 42% wanting to change to any other electoral system

• The strongest vote for any other electoral system was actually “informal” votes – i.e. more voters (33%) either declined to pick another electoral system preference or spoiled their ballot paper for that part of the referendum than voted for any of the alternatives to MMP that the referendum provided

With MMP secure, we can now consider ways to improve it and make it even more democratic and representative.

The appalling and heart-wrenching situation for the woman in Invercargill whose rapist moved in next door highlights several areas for legislative review and policy & funding change.

This woman has an indefinite protection order in place but this does nothing to prevent her abuser moving in next door. The police have been for a ‘chat’ and suggested he move but cannot do anything else unless he breaches the order and crosses that line. His friends have been threatening and harassing her but this does not constitute a breach.

NZ has high incidences of sexual abuse, as well as low reporting and conviction rates. Making a complaint and taking a case through court is something the majority of people are too intimidated to do. I believe that bravery deserves acknowledgment and I believe we owe it to victims to make sure they are looked after. This means, in part, finding a legal process that will not finish at conviction or acquittal as if that’s all there is to it.

Work by NZ  legal academics Tinsley and McDonald recently highlighted some of the limitations of our justice system in relation to sexual offending and suggested we need to reinvestigate protection orders and how they work. Sexual offending is a notoriously difficult area of law. Despite reforms over many decades, the evidence continues to show stubbornly unchanged prosecution rates for sexual offences and victim dissatisfaction with the system.

This election the national party pledged to double the penalties for breaches of protection orders. This was window dressing for domestic violence designed to appeal to the get tough on crime lobby. It doesn’t address any of the concerns raised by the research, this woman or others in similar situations.

Further I know a significant number of women are struggling to get police to enforce breaches of protection orders when the victim and abuser share responsibility for children. Doubling the penalties will make some police even more reluctant to enforce the orders and then if they do the fines may just mean the abuser cannot pay maintenance and so the children will end up paying or the woman will not call the police in the first place.

And protection orders are just one piece of the puzzle. Kim McGregor from the Rape Prevention Network has noted that there have been numerous instances of abusers moving in close to their victims. She also noted it is likely these offenders have not completed a treatment programme. Attending a treatment programme for 1-2 years reduces the risk of re-offending to 5%. Yet there is a waiting list to get into the programmes within prisons and perpetrators need to fund themselves to do programmes after release or if they haven’t been to court. We must invest in support for victims and one of the ways to do this is to invest in treatment for perpetrators.

Ultimately we need to get serious about making the cultural, legislative and funding changes required to make a real difference and stop hiding behind populist proposals that end up just perpetuating the problems.

What’s more, in Te Tai Tonga, the Greens came second in the party vote, out-polling each of the Māori Party, Mana and National. Overall, the Greens’ share of the vote in the Māori electorates is 10.29%, only marginally less than the 10.62% we received nationwide.

The 2005 election was the only one since the Greens have been in Parliament that saw a loss of Green MPs. Part of the reason for that was a dramatic loss of votes in the Māori electorates to the then newly formed Māori Party. Now, despite the emergence of Mana as another Māori-led party, the Greens are back stronger than ever in the Māori electorates.

Immense credit must go to Metiria Tūrei and our Māori candidates for getting the Green message across to Māori voters. Two of those candidates, David Clendon and Denise Roche, will be joining Metiria in Parliament.

I have excluded very small booths like Arthurs Pass (we won with 19 votes) and Okiwi (10 was enough for first place).  In fact I’ve excluded any booth where under 100 votes were cast.  That meant omitting Pawarenga, where we tied for first with National and Labour with 3 votes, and Te Rerenga in Hauraki-Waikato, where we tied for first with everyone, despite getting no votes at all.

The record for the highest ever number of Green votes at a booth was set this election: 619 at Aro Valley in Wellington Central.  This beats the 586 we got at the same booth in 2002.

Well done to the Green Party candidates, campaign managers, and volunteers who organised around the areas that voted at those polling booths. I’m hoping there will be many more polling places where the Greens poll tops, come 2014.

Update: I have been reminded by Jack McDonald, the amazing 18 year old candidate for Te Tai Hauauru, who managed to more than triple the Green  Party vote in that electorate, that I omitted two booths in the Mana electorate where the Greens polled best.  Thanks, Jack.  Have updated table above accordingly.

And thanks to Jeremy Hall from Mt Roskill electorate (who was Campaign Manager for our new MP Julie Anne Genter) for doing the initial number crunching.

We received 10.62% of the vote, which means that we can bring at least 13 Green MPs into Parliament.

So a big welcome to Eugenie Sage, Jan Logie, Steffan Browning, Denise Roche, Holly Walker, and Julie Anne Genter.

There is also a possibility, depending on the special vote, that we could have one more Green MP join us—Mojo Mathers—we’ll let you know as soon as the overseas votes have been counted.

Importantly, we couldn’t have done it without you!

This election result means more voices in our Parliament calling for stronger environmental protections, a fairer society, and a clean green economy that works for everyone.

10.62% is the highest proportion of the vote we’ve received since Green MPs first entered Parliament in 1996. We’re proud of this result and you should be too.

Our success is due to the tireless effort of thousands of supporters like yourself. Thank you for every event you attended, petition you signed, or email you forwarded from us to a friend.

And, finally, thanks more than anything for Party Voting Green.

Over the next three years we will continue working as hard as we can to be a strong voice in Parliament for our environment, our children, and our future.

But for now it is time for us all to have a lovely Christmas break and enjoy a well-deserved holiday – we’ve all earned it!

A vote for the Greens is a vote for a richer New Zealand in the things that really matter. A richer New Zealand will have clean rivers, healthy kids, and jobs that are good for our environment and our economy.

We are ready and rearing to get back into Parliament with more MPs and more energy than ever before to start working on our priority areas of jobs, rivers, and kids.

We’ve got costed plans to bring 100,000 children out of poverty by 2014, clean up our rivers, and to create thousands of new green jobs.

The Green Party will make Working for Families work, provide better study support for sole parents and beneficiaries, raise the minimum wage to $15, and make sure rental properties are warm and healthy. By doing this we will reduce inequality and make sure our kids get the best start in life possible.

We will create thousands of new green jobs because it is vital for New Zealand’s families, environment, and economy. A reminder: a vote for the Greens is the best way to keep state assets in Kiwi hands.

We will create green jobs by ensuring our state-owned energy companies capture the massive export opportunities in renewable energy. We’ll also shift the drivers in the private sector towards sustainability and increased productivity.

The Greens will also clean up New Zealand’s rivers and lakes to make sure we can swim in them again. Over half of our monitored rivers are unsafe for swimming, one third of our lakes are unhealthy, and two-thirds of our native freshwater fish are at risk or threatened with extinction.

We will set standards for clean water, introduce a fair charge for irrigation water, and support water clean-up initiatives.

So there you have it. Jobs, rivers, and kids: It’s a pretty compelling vision for a richer New Zealand and with your support we can make it happen.

Let’s make history tomorrow,

Russel and Metiria

This is why we at the Green Party take social media seriously. It’s an opportunity for us to make ourselves available to you and show that we’re real people caring about our country. This isn’t just about being hip; it’s about being good public representatives.

We’re not alone in thinking we do a pretty good job. This morning on TV ONE’s Breakfast, Matty McLean did a story about the Greens having the most Klout — social media impact. I’m proud to say I was ranked in top place, ahead of John Key and Phil Goff. Despite being a smaller party than National or Labour, we have three politicians in the top ten — Kevin Hague (tied for 4th) and Russel Norman (9).

But our high rankings don’t mean we’re doing everything right. Parliament can be a bit of an Ivory Tower at times, so to help us engage even better with the community, I’d love to hear from you about what you think we could do better. And it’d be good to also know what you think we are doing right.

If you’re not yet friends with us on Facebook or following us on Twitter, you’ll find links to all our MPs’ pages and accounts here. And here you’ll find our official Green Party Facebook page, which btw, has the most fans per capita for a political party in OECD English speaking countries.

But it’s not just about FB and Twitter. We’ve also launched various successful online campaigns including Hey Kiwi and Aroha NZ. To connect with people that usually wouldn’t realise MPs are interested in hearing from them, I’ve also done a few AMAs (ask me anything chat forums) on Reddit and Game Planet.

What matters more than what we do online, is that you get out and vote tomorrow. And, of course, Party Vote Green!

My new Copyright (Parody and Satire) Amendment Bill seeks to protect people from being prosecuted for satirising copyrighted content; a protection available in Australia, the U.S. and many E.U. countries. Parody and satire are among the oldest forms of criticism and play an important role in making light and creating understanding of issues the public feel strongly about. They deserve to be protected in our legal system.

I agree with the Creative Freedom Foundation: “Considering NZ has just implemented a law providing Copyright holders with a system for enforcing their rights online, now would be a great time to balance this by protecting artists making transformative works ie remix, mashup, satire, parody, pastiche, and caricature. These creative methods have been around for centuries – wouldn’t it be great if NZ recognised them and protected them in it’s law?”

I’m keen to change the law because parodies like Telecon and Should-A (Smack As Part Of Good Parental Correction…).com, as well as political parodies like the Hitler Downfall remixes, have all been removed because of copyright infringement. My bill would give creators a legal leg to stand on and give them confidence to create.

I thought it was fitting to launch the internet-focused Bill via Reddit — a popular online community that discusses everything from pictures to politics — because people affected by the current law are more likely to be online. You can read the live chat here.

Spoof by the comedian Andy Borowitz quoted in the Economist.

I was also delighted because the appointment represented the fulfilment of a lot of my work in Parliament this term. My Human Rights (Disability Commissioner) Amendment Bill to establish the position of Disability Commissioner was due to be debated in Parliament when the Government announced they would adopt my proposal and create the position.

In recognition of the importance of appointing someone to the post as soon as possible, Paul was appointed on a fixed term contract before the law was officially changed to create his position. The Government has now introduced legislation to establish the permanent position.

Or has it?

It won’t be debated until the next term of Parliament, because the House has now risen for the year, but the Human Rights Amendment Bill has been tabled in the House so we can examine and prepare for it in the next term.

At first glance, I’m surprised and a little perturbed to find that the Bill does much more than just establish the position of Disability Commissioner. The Government seems to have taken the need for legislation to establish the role of Disability Commissioner as an opportunity to review and the whole Human Rights Commission (HRC).

The Bill would make quite major changes to the structure of the HRC and the roles of the Commissioners. Instead of having dedicated Race Relations, Equal Opportunity, and Disability Commissioners, they will all be Human Rights Commissioners, with particular “portfolio” responsibility for different areas. While the Bill stipulates that there must be a Commissioner appointed to lead the work in the three priority areas of Race Relations, Equal Opportunities, and Disability Issues, it actually allows for one Commissioner to lead work in more than one of these “priority areas”. So there would be no guarantee that the Commissioner working on Disability Issues would actually be doing so full time.

It’s even possible that Commissioners wouldn’t be appointed because of their specialist knowledge in these areas, but appointed as Human Rights Commissioners first, and then assigned to one of these portfolios. If that were the case that would run completely counter to the strong push from the disability sector that the Disability Commissioner should have lived experience of disability and a proven track record as a disability advocate.

Obviously this rings some pretty loud alarm bells for me! Other parts of the legislation – like those more clearly spelling out the HRC’s role in promoting and monitoring New Zealand’s international human rights record – might be perfectly reasonable and necessary changes to enable the HRC to operate efficiently. I intend to talk to people within the Human Rights and Disability sectors to find out what they think over the coming weeks and months.

What concerns me is that these changes haven’t been sold by the Government as a major review of the HRC, even though that is what they are. The press releases from both the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Disability Issues following the tabling of the legislation merrily celebrated the creation of the new Commissioner with responsibility for Disability Issues, mentioning the wider changes almost as an aside. Both also emphasised that the Bill would enable a full time Disability Rights Commissioner, despite the fact that as drafted, it does not guarantee that the Commissioner wouldn’t have another portfolio as well.

This is at best careless and at worst misleading. If we are going to have a wholesale review of the HRC, then let’s have it out in the open! And if we’re going to establish the full time position of Disability Commissioner, then let’s do that, not do something like that that doesn’t quite meet the description.

I will be following the development of this legislation in the next term of Parliament very carefully, and suggest anyone with an interest in Human Rights, Race Relations, Equal Opportunities, and Disability Issues does the same!

The Construction Strategy Group is a lobby group and is made up of a who’s who in the industry. Their report outlines a number of key initiatives they’d like the Government to take to protect jobs and remove some of the massive volatility experienced by the industry. Many of their policies were foreshadowed in the Green Jobs initiative I released on September 21. They include:

1. Tax changes to discourage property speculation (i.e. a comprehensive tax on capital gains excluding the family home);
2. Adding employment targeting to the Reserve Bank’s sole focus on inflation;
3. Smoothing boom-bust cycles through counter-cyclical government investment in building and construction;
4. Changes to Government procurement processes to drive local innovation in the industry.

The Green Party’s plan to build 2000 new energy-efficient state and community houses before the rebuild of Christchurch gets underway later in 2012 will help retain skilled workers in the industry and soften depth of their current recession.

Where the Green Party parts company with the Group’s recommendations are their proposals to “cut red tape” and further weaken protections in the RMA. The last National Government’s attempts to cut red tape created an $11 billion leaky home disaster. And, in light of the Christchurch earthquakes, we need higher standards in the building and construction industry, not weaker ones.

So, to clarify, there are two separate systems:

1. There is ‘The Green Machine‘ which lists ‘missions’ people can choose to do. People earn stars for doing those missions. There are no missions saying “comment on this particular topic on Reddit, Frogblog, stuff.co.nz etc”. There is a mission “become an online activist” which is basically asking people to sign up to system #2 (below).

Typical missions are “Green sticker your letterbox”, “Donate a tweet per day”, “Deliver leaflets”, etc. All the available missions can be viewed at the Green Machine site which is open to the public.

2. The second system is the ‘online activist’ alerts. It reads a few dozen RSS feeds, looking for key words. The list of key words is here.

The email alert contains the subject of the blog post/news article/whatever and the body of the blog post/article/etc and a link to the item. What they do with that information is entirely up to the recipient. There is no ‘this post is about such and such so here is a pre-written thing to paste in” in the email notification.

There isn’t anything different between the alerts and  sending an email or posting a link on your Facebook with a note saying “Hey you might be interested in this.”

There are no stars earned by responding by posting comments on blogs. The link in the notification email goes straight to the blog post. The Green Party has no way of tracking who or how people respond to the notification.

The stars that people earn by doing missions are essentially meaningless. They do not confer any special status in the real world and are just for fun.

We have made serious efforts to promote the Green Machine to our members and the public – there is a big button in the top right of every page on greens.org.nz which says ‘GREEN MACHINE’. This is not some big secret that has suddenly come to light. We are totally out in the open about this.

Comments posted by ‘online activists’ are their own and there is not an expectation that they will use multiple accounts to appear to be more than one person.

The intention was to encourage debate and give people access to a tool that helped them keep on top of what people were saying about things they were interesting. We think that it is crucial to democracy that people are informed and that debates — such as this one —happen in public.

A key element of our Green Jobs initiative launched on September 21 is a $1 billion boost to R&D funding over the next three years. New Zealand invests just 1.31 percent of GDP in R&D — barely half the average spent across OECD countries. We plan to turn around this legacy of underinvestment to help drive innovation and prosperity.

Our plan did not specify the best mechanism for delivering this new funding. We’d look to best practice abroad and previous experience here at home to create a mechanism that works. Where our approach differs with Sir Paul’s analysis is the urgency with which we want to address the serious environmental threats we’re facing.

The science around climate change means it’s no longer good enough for our industry leaders to be, at best, “environmentally benign”, as he suggests. We can do much better than that. For the sake of our children, we actually need to drive a step-change in our economy.

The clean technology sector is not simply the next latest fad, as Sir Paul argues — it’s much more significant than that. Any new technology that lowers our environmental footprint is clean technology. The possibilities are endless and can include such diverse technologies as biofuels, nitrification inhibitors, biodegradable packaging, or a computer programme that manages a smart electricity grid. Clean technology will enable us to have a prosperous economy and a stable climate.

If this is the direction the world’s economy is moving, through necessity, why wouldn’t we want to secure a big piece of that action? If we don’t turn some of our best R&D minds in the direction of solving the urgent environmental challenges we face, we’ll forever remain technology importers, rather than technology exporters.

The example of Denmark is telling. The Danish Government recognised early the potential for wind turbines and set in place the drivers for innovation and investment in this promising sector. They didn’t “pick winners”, they simply created the right environment for Danish wind turbine companies to secure 50 percent of the world market by 2001. Our approach is no different.

In agriculture, the OECD sees New Zealand as well placed to develop greenhouse gas mitigation technologies and sell these technologies abroad. If we don’t develop these technologies here, a very large part of our economy will become increasingly unproductive and vulnerable to sudden market closure as other countries take their climate obligations seriously.

The Green Party’s economic plan is not about picking winners in the way Sir Paul Callaghan argues, but it is about recognising critical sectors in our economy that need to transition rapidly to more sustainable ways of producing. Our plan creates the right private sector drivers to grow a sustainable economy. And it’s a plan now shared by many others: the OECD, the UNEP, the ILO and the IOE to name a few.

Russel Norman

I wonder whether he had thought through the implications for democracy of preventing one of the major newspapers in New Zealand from working in Parliament.

Aside from being heavy-handed, all these restrictions on what people can and cannot photograph in Parliament look a bit precious, and have the effect, intended or not, of further divorcing ordinary people from Parliament.

Instead of being encouraged to turn up to Parliament and view it as ‘their place’ all these rules, and the sometimes officious way people sitting in the Gallery are treated, alienate people and make Parliament feel like some other planet, rather than ‘their place’.

I note that MPs in the UK Parliament have been debating similar concerns – namely, that all the tightening of security and rules around visiting their Parliament are making Parliament seem ever more divorced from ordinary people.

As well as undermining freedom of expression in the media, I fear the Speakers ruling could have a similar effect here.