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Dear Holly,

Thank you for your letter dated 5 April 2012 regarding affordable housing in Christchurch. I have outlined the Government’s responses to this issue below.

The Canterbury Earthquake Temporary Accommodation Service (CETAS) is a joint service provided by the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Building and Housing. It provides:

• a matching and placement service into appropriate temporary accommodation
• financial assistance for additional accommodation costs
• social wellbeing coordination for earthquake affected households

Since April 2011 the CETAS team has dealt with over 1800 people who have asked what to do about housing and at present is helping over 300 households needing temporary accommodation. The team looks to the private rental market first, and has assisted more than 500 households into accommodation there.

As you are aware, the second option is for CETAS to place people in temporary villages in Linwood Park and Kaiapoi and soon at the new village at Rawhiti Domain. The existing parks are being well-used, with 71 families having stayed before shifting back into repaired homes. The average time in residence is 12 weeks.

Providing affordable long-term accommodation for people in Christchurch is a key policy issue that officials at the Department of Building and Housing and officials from the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority are tasked to investigate and to inform relevant Ministers. The Minister of Earthquake Recovery and I have also asked Housing New Zealand Corporation to accelerate the repairs of 500 quake-damaged state houses in Christchurch.

You mention in your letter the influx of tradespeople to begin rebuilding and repairs in Christchurch and the effect this may have on the availability of appropriate housing. I can assure you this matter is being considered by me and other relevant Ministers.

Thank you for taking time to write to me.

Kind regards,

Hon Phil Heatley, Minister of Housing

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Dear Ms Walker,

Thank you for your letter which I received on 5 April 2012 about the lack of affordable housing in Christchurch.

I am pleased to read that you have also sent your letter to Hon Phil Heatley, Minister of Housing as he is the appropriate person to address this issue.

I would, however, like to mention that any person having difficulties meeting their accommodation costs can contact Work and Income to test their eligibility to an Accommodation Supplement. This supplement is income and asset tested and is available to people on a benefit and also to those in work.

If you have a specific case, I am happy for you to raise it with my office to consider further.

Thank you for writing.

Yours sincerely,

Hon Paula Bennett, Minister for Social Development

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What do you think about their responses?

Beyond Today: a values story

We need the quants, and the poets, both. We need the activists and the Members of Parliament, the individuals, and the collectivists.

We need Green values. We need us all.

Let us begin.

So ends Beyond Today: a values story, to be launched at the Greens’ AGM on June 1, 2012.

May 30 is the anniversary of the 1972 launch of the Values Party, and the whole day on June 1 will be about Values: a Values reunion, fortieth birthday celebration and book launch, co-located with the AGM.

Beyond Today: a values story is all about the Greens. It’s a book about the past, and a hopeful future. It’s taken me the best part of a year to write, in my moonlight hours; and it owes Pundit quite a lot, because the first drafts started here.

It’s prefaced by a quote from Paul Kingsnorth, who isn’t hopeful at all: he writes blogs with titles like “On the correct management of despair” and thinks that the best way to spend his time now is climbing The Dark Mountain. “Join us,” he writes “we leave at dawn”.

As Kingsnorth – environmentalist, recovering activist – tells it, the green movement has been taken over by “quants”, has lost its way in the corridors of business and power. He writes witheringly of eco-socialism: “a conflation of concepts that pretty much guarantees the instant hostility of 95% of the population”.

He dismisses sustainability, concurring with Alex Steffen, that for too many people it means trying to sustain the anthropocene, not the Holocene, in which we make and shape the world, and it’s all about what our species wants - not the climate in which we evolved, or the Nature of whom we are part.

He thinks green politics has lost sight of its roots and sold its soul:

I can’t speak the language of science without a corresponding poetry. I can’t speak with a straight face about saving the planet when what I really mean is saving myself from what is coming. … I am leaving. I am going to go out walking …

Beyond Today: a values story is my answer to Kingsnorth, because I think he and I are talking about the same things: ecocentrism, transformation not business as usual, but above all, the importance of a story, a clear and simple story about what it means to be green.

He thinks that the best we can do now is prepare for the worst – but to me, the story still matters.

The perspective is that we are headed, very fast, for a big cliff.

The Greens’ first principles in the charter are about ecological limits: ecological wisdom, and ecological sustainability, which “is paramount”.

Expressed as a policy, they’re about ecological economics: a different way of being, in which nature writes the rules, and growth can’t be the answer, because it’s the problem.

It’s this that defines the Greens – makes them not Labour, not left, but Green – along with values.

The Values philosophy is one that looks after the forgotten ones, that says enough: enough of the environment, enough to be happy, enough for you as well as for me.

“Enough” is one of the clues to Green policy. It is the thing that binds conservation and socialism and sustainable society, for all of these, simply expressed, are the same. I have enough now, they say. This part is yours.

And there you have it: a party that pursues, in equal parts, environmental, economic, and social reform.

Politics aside, I think the practical thing is this: how to tell people the Green story – the whole story, not just your favourite bit – when most party members have never heard it.

It’s 40 years since the Club of Rome published its book called The Limits to Growth, 40 years since Values campaigned on zero population and economic growth policies, to sustain quality of life in a finite world – and won 5.2% of the vote in 1975, the same percentage of the vote that in 1999 under MMP would bring the Greens to Parliament.

In the circle of life, or something, in 2012 the Club of Rome is now talking about values, and stories: how when you meet someone new, it’s not facts that you tell them, but stories; and it’s stories and values that make a religion, among the most transformational human forces.

In 1990, some Greens rejected Values. A whole lot more have probably never heard about it. The composition of the two parties is similar, so are the policies, and Values’ is a story of which the Greens ought to be very proud.

Values, the world’s first national-level Green party, 40 years too soon politically, was out in front.

We may now be 40 years too late to change the world in time, but in 2012 the Greens are once again talking Values’ language. Co-leader Russel Norman’s first speech after the 2011 general election was about the Christmas story. Mr Norman, an atheist, spent 20 minutes reminding Parliament of the Christian values of “love and compassion towards each other”, “truth and justice between one another”, and “awe and respect for the natural world”:

St Francis of Assisi wrote sermons for the birds and taught us to live simply and value nature for its own sake … Those values of love, generosity, and a reverence for nature should not sound so out of place in this Parliament. But the talk in here is dominated by a different kind of worship - one of economic growth, at all costs.

It’s those values that will define the politics, and in particular, opposition politics, for the next 40 years.

In its secret heart, Beyond Today: a values story is a think piece. It didn’t start life intending to be a book, and I am a bit shy about calling it one. I thought about it a lot; I hope it makes you do the same.

It doesn’t try to answer all of the questions, such as: how to be a radical party, and start a revolution voters don’t want; and how to reconcile the strengths, but also fatal flaws, in consensus decision-making.

Nor could it. The Greens themselves don’t yet know all of the answers.

It says one thing some members won’t like. The Greens are an ecological economic party, a party that puts the environment first, not a party of the Left – and a party that implicitly, in its first charter principle, stands for diversity and inclusion.

This is not about the Left. It is about all of us. All of us, being human differently – learning how to be different, and celebrating difference, but also learning how to live together. Learning how to live.

The Greens are the “voice of the voiceless” – but not exclusively so.

The quants and the poets are both needed, but I would argue that, right now, the poets ought to take the lead – if indeed that is ever something that poets are capable of. We have no shortage of arguments about numbers and machines, but we do have a great shortage of workable stories. That is to say: stories that don’t just have happy endings, but have convincing plots as well.

– Paul Kingsnorth “The Quants and the Poets” (April 2011)

The bill regulates activities like drilling for oil and gas in the EEZ plugging a huge legislative and regulatory gap that the Greens have called for action on for years. It’s vital that New Zealand has sound environmental management of our oceans and we voted to send the Bill to select committee where we hoped to improve it, however it wasn’t to be.

Ultimately the EEZ bill contains too many serious flaws and risks our environment so we will be opposing it in future readings. We’ll be introducing a number of amendments to try and remedy the many problems with it.

Eugenie Sage and I have outlined our views on the bill in our minority report which you can read here.

The Ministry has now failed to prove its position against paying family members to the Human Rights Tribunal, the High Court and Court of Appeal which has cost us all at least $1.4 million. The Ministry need to decide it is time to stop the legal circus and start talking to affected people.

The first people the Ministry needs to engage with are people with disabilities who want to pay a family member to care for them at home. These are the people at the centre of the issue. They must also talk to the carers who have done this work free while others have been paid for it.

The Ministry needs to talk to the disability activists and carers groups. They need to start working on the complex issues of fairness for disabled people and their families in a way that recognises power and what real options exist for the diversity of disabled people in our society.

The Minister of Health has always claimed a floodgate will be opened if the whanau or family member living in the home will be paid.

He talks as if this is attractive, high status and well paid work and people are lining up to do it. My experience with the families who took these cases to court is the opposite.

The work is hard and they have been coordinating paid carers or caring for adult children for free for years. Many disabled people want to leave home and live independently and there are some great options in some communities.

In other places respite care means young people suffering in residential units for the elderly. We need to listen to their experiences and respond positively. We need to audit and protect their rights and pay family if that is the choice the disabled person makes.

The conversation on the value of care and the experience of the disabled at home is long overdue. We also have to get real about the value of work that has never been counted.

Families have been exploited as a cheap option in the health system. There is a cost to making change. However if we prioritise carers over bankers and if we weren’t paying for tax cuts for the wealthy the changes become affordable.

It has been interesting to work on this issue and have nil support from other political parties. Yes its complex and challenging but the central issues of fairness and justice have been ruled on by the courts. It is time to listen and negotiate a fair solution.

It’s clear that momentum is growing around the world against this controversial drilling technique with Germany and the state of Vermont also set to ban it in the last week.

Of the countries that are known to have used fracking, the US, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Bulgaria, South Africa, France all have full country, state or regional bans in place and only China and New Zealand do not.

The fact is, there are legitimate concerns, many unanswered questions, the oil and gas isn’t going anywhere so we shouldn’t rush into it. I’m calling for a moratorium until the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment can assure us it’s safe and I think this is the responsible position..

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Congratulations Keith. It is great to see Keith recognised for his passionate hard work standing up for human rights both at home and around the world.

Keith was awarded Amnesty International Aotearoa’s 2012 Human Rights Defender award over the weekend.

We could devote pages to the campaigns, issues and individual cases (not just high profile but the many more that didn’t make headlines) but instead we invite readers to browse through some of Keith’s posts and remember all the work he did before becoming an MP.

It was an honour to work with Keith and we look forward to the next opportunity to catch up with his latest work.

For those that didn’t see Keith was on Firstline this morning you can catch the interview here.

- Metiria and Russel

These ACE programmes operate in a context which is at the heart of Green educational policy. We believe that schools need to be community hubs where there is an open door to many kinds of activities associated with lifelong learning and community building. We don’t want schools privatised so that community access becomes unaffordable. The positive vision of lifelong learning needs to be valued and nurtured by Government instead of the current League tables and Charter Schools competitive model.

The ACE sector have done an amazing job of working with schools and community groups to sustain adult education and promote the diversity of opportunities for lifelong learning despite the lack of money. I hope the Government will not use the ACE resilience as an excuse to keep a sinking lid on any funds for adult and community education. The greatest way to excite children about learning is for them to see their families engaged in education. When adults are participating in adult education children see the benefits and gain inspiration and purpose.

Hence it was disturbing to hear last week that the ACE sector is still under pressure from the Tertiary Education Commission.

Normally ACE is on a two year funding cycle and has planned accordingly but they have now been told they have to return any unspent funds after one year. This was not written into their 2011 agreement with TEC but is now required. The effect is that of the 23 schools left who deliver ACE possibly half will have to opt out from lack of funds.

Unfortunately the Government has shown that it doesn’t understand either the value or practices of ACE education in the community and is continuing to undermine it.

I have no doubt that ACE will carry on creatively but people miss out every time a programme is cut and the flow on effects of ACE becomes muted. A small state investment as has been negotiated for Enviroschools pays huge dividends for communities and the country. Let’s join the dots and support ACE, we are all lifelong learners.

The 2012 Australian Budget institutes a raft of new measures to raise revenues, especially revenues from activities that damage the environment. These new eco-taxes will help balance the Government’s books and shift their economy onto a more sustainable footing. Here’s how:

1. A carbon pricing mechanism
Receipts from the carbon pricing mechanism are expected to be A$24.7 billion to 2015/16. The revenue raised is being recycled used for tax cuts for those on lower incomes and a clean energy fund.

2. Resource Rent Taxes
These include a petroleum resource rent tax and a minerals resource rent tax expected to raise A$31.4 billion to 2015/16. These new eco-taxes recognise the one-off nature of resource extraction and will share the benefits a little more fairly across the country.

3. Cancellation of the company tax cut
The Aussie Government will save A$4.6 billion to 2015/16 by not proceeding with the company tax cut scheduled for the 2013/14 income year. The National Government here cut company tax rates here assuming Australia would follow suit as part of a race to the bottom that we can ever win, as IRD have recently argued (p36).

4. Cutting tax concessions for wealthy Australians
By cutting the tax concessions on superannuation contributions for individuals on income greater than A$300,000 the Australian Government will save A$1.4b to 2015/16 which they can recycle into new saving incentives for those on lower incomes.

Of course, the Budget wasn’t all good news. Education and unemployment benefits were ignored, along with a commitment to the cleantech manufacturing sector. But when you compare this Budget to ours, you start to see how poorly the National Government are managing our economy.

National’s programme of deep cuts to public services, poor quality spending on motorways, and collapsing tax revenues means they’re leaving us vulnerable to further economic shocks. And as for the actual economy, they’re not going to leave it any more resilient or sustainable from when they took office.

Russel

This is great news and shows the momentum both in New Zealand and around the world is growing against this controversial practise.

Germany has put the brakes on plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to extract natural gas in places where it is difficult to access, such as shale or coal beds. Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler have agreed to oppose the controversial process for the time being, SPIEGEL has learned.

In New Zealand Energy and Resources Minister Phil Heatley likes to characterise opponents of fracking as ‘greenie extremists’, however Germany’s decision along with France, Bulgaria and states in the US, Canada and Australia to put in place permanent or temporary bans show this is a legitimate mainstream concern. Last time I looked none of these countries were run by greenie extremists!

The fact is, there are legitimate concerns, many unanswered questions, the oil and gas isn’t going anywhere so we shouldn’t rush into it. I’m calling for a moratorium until the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment can assure us it’s safe and I think this is the responsible position.

It is not the first time that Digital Earth has come to New Zealand – Auckland hosted it in 2006, thanks largely to the efforts of Richard Simpson, who was at that time a city councillor – but it is a real feather in Wellington’s cap to have won hosting rights for a much sought after event. Apparently there was even some outfit called NASA in the running to play host!

“With a vision to harness the world’s data and information resources through international cooperation, the ISDE [International Society for Digital Earth] aims to establish a digital replication of our planet which will allow us to monitor, measure, and forecast natural and human activity on the planet.”

We are constantly bombarded with information, and the generation of new knowledge (or at least new information) proceeds at an extraordinary rate.  I have been excited about the potential of the Digital Earth project to utilise and make that knowledge more accessible, ever since the Auckland event that focused on issues of sustainability, defined at the time as ‘humankind’s collective survival goals’.

I am under no illusion that there is a technological silver bullet that will save us from ourselves in terms of challenges like climate change, resource depletion, peak oil, diversity loss.  Some of the information management and spatial technologies do however provide us with some powerful modelling, representational and analytical tools to inform our decision making and advocacy for behavioural change.

There could be significant economic spinoffs from the Summit too, as it provides an opportunity for New Zealand companies with a stake in the technologies and their application to demonstrate what they can do.  Companies like Right Hemisphere have proven that distance is not an insurmountable barrier to successful innovation in hi-tech , even in the highly competitive and demanding aviation industry.  I’m confident that the tourism sector will also work hard to see that the 500-odd delegates in town get a good taste of what Wellington and New Zealand have to offer!

When you pay $50K, I guess you expect something in return. But when you are banged up in prison facing serious charges, I guess the payee don’t wanna know!

New Zealand’s pig farmers have already been affected by the import of pig meat, most of which is imported from countries with lower or non-existent animal welfare codes, food handling and food safety standards. Cheap imported pork has driven down prices forcing many farmers out of business and leaving many others to consider their options because their returns don’t cover their cost of production.

What I find most interesting about the decision to relax the import standards for untreated pig meat is that there seems to be no thought given to New Zealand’s pig farmer and their pig’s. Allowing raw pork to be imported dramatically increases the risk of PRRS spreading to New Zealand. PRRS means a long slow painful death for infected pigs. It is not preventable and could annihilate the industry here. If that were to happen we’d be only eating imported pig meat. This is unacceptable, when we have pig farmers here making a real effort to farm their pigs in an environmentally acceptable way and taking in to account the welfare of their animals, albeit following years of lobbying from the likes of Sue Kedgley.

What’s more, if PRRS were to be found in New Zealand, the new Government Industry Agreements would require the industry itself to fund half of the response to the outbreak.  This disadvantages the pig farmer even more – they have to pay for the Government’s decision. Our ability to feed our nation from locally grown food is vital to our economy. We need to support our local producers. Their success is our success.

A useful feature of the site is that it focuses on river catchments and that it provides information on water quality monitoring parameters such as turbidity, e- coli, total nitrogen and total phosphorus catchment by catchment.  It includes some basic trend information for each of the parameters and shows where council’s water quality monitoring sites are located.

The initiative of bringing together regional information onto one site is an excellent one because it will help ensure that water quality monitoring parameters are consistent across New Zealand and improve state of the environment reporting. Being able to compare apples with apples is a good start in assessing problems with water quality.

The site includes case studies for how councils are tackling land use and water quality issues around the country such as the Lake Taupō nitrogen trading and an erosion management programme in the Wairarapa hill country.

A useful next step would be to make the site interactive so that the public can easily report water pollution problems. The people that live beside our country’s rivers and streams can serve as the eyes and ears of regional and unitary councils who are often stretched for resources. It would be great to allow them to interact with councils through this website.

The regional councils also aim to include some coastal water quality information on the site, and I look forward to seeing how it progresses.

Here at home, Wellington City Council’s latest figures show that the number of people commuting by bicycle has almost doubled in the last three years. This is despite little dedicated cycle infrastructure in the capital, and little action from the Council to improve it, especially in the CBD. If cycling numbers are growing despite a lack of encouragement, how fast would they grow with better facilities – proper bike lanes, more bike racks, and lower speed limits?

We know now that getting people riding bikes is about providing the right infrastructure for them to do it. The latest published research shows that having bike paths and lanes available is the biggest determinant of cycling rates in a city. It’s pretty clear what we need to do to get the huge benefits of a high bicycle mode share.

Hastings has had dedicated investment in cycling and walking infrastructure from NZTA as one of its ‘model communities’, and cycling figures there have shown the results – a rise of 23% just a year after the iWay program began. Portland’s entire cycling network has an estimated replacement cost of one mile of urban motorway, and that city has seen a 400% rise in cycling numbers in the past 20 years (check out the PDF here). It now has the highest bicycle mode share in the US. In Copenhagen, a city where the bicycle is used for 37% of trips, they’ve just opened a set of ‘Cycle Super Highways’ to create better conditions for commuter cyclists, for the benefit of all road users – because cycling investment doesn’t just help people who use bicycles, it also helps those who choose to walk, drive or take public transport.

The popularity of cycling was demonstrated in London and Europe earlier this week. In London, ahead of the upcoming mayoral election, 10,000 people braved the British rain to show their support for proper cycling infrastructure. The ride was organised by the London Cycling Campaign, who are urging the mayoral candidates to support its calls for ‘Dutch quality’ cycling infrastructure  – check out the photos here. In Edinburgh, 2,000 people cycled together. In Rome, 50,000 (!) people made it out on bikes, at one point laying their bikes down to protest the deaths of cyclists and pedestrians on the city streets. This echoes 1970s protests in Holland, shown in this video, which provided the catalyst for that country to become world leaders in cycling for transport.

The problems that Holland faced back then are the same that New Zealand is facing now. Spending billions on new motorways kills our communities and creates more congestion, wasting valuable land on concrete and parking. With fuel prices expected to rise even further, New Zealanders want alternatives to burning up their incomes in their petrol tanks. They want safer neighbourhoods and more liveable cities, and the public health benefits that come from increased walking and cycling.

There’s no better time to stop spending billions on the National Party’s so-called ‘Roads of National Significance’ and start investing in cycling.

This step means Deaf New Zealanders can now learn more about Green Party policies and values in their first language.

The Green Party has undertaken this step  as part of our wider commitment to improving access to political information which we believe to be essential to a healthy democracy.

On the topic of improving access to our democratic processes, I am thrilled to see that the Electoral Commission is now accepting MMP Review submissions in NZSL

And you can make a submission here.

This week’s Environment Court decision that coal mining’s contribution to climate change cannot be considered during resource consent processes under the RMA reveals an urgent need for reform.

Bathurst Resources wants to mine over 4 million tonnes of coal on the protected Denniston Plateau, which will produce 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Solid Energy is currently angling for permission to take 4 million tonnes of coal from its proposed Mt. William mine, which will generate a similar amount of carbon dioxide once it is burned.

The fact that the RMA is unable to consider the effects on the climate of pushing at least 22 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere is madness. Mining coal is only once-removed from burning coal and yet our present RMA treats them as unrelated.

The Government has its head down a mineshaft in relation to climate change given this gap in the RMA and also its failure to rein in its SOE, Solid Energy, with its mining plans at Mt William.

A 2004 amendment to the RMA, which we opposed, restricts decision makers to considering only “the effects of climate change” on such activities, not the other way around.

The fact that our legislation that deals with environmental management cannot deal with the most profound environmental issue facing the planet – the changing climate – is nonsensical.

While the inquiry will look into a number of areas (including the conduct of the MMP referendum and the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes), the issue that I believe needs to be focused on is voter turnout.

Last year’s election saw the lowest voter turnout in over 100 years. Only 74.2% of the New Zealanders who were enrolled to vote actually voted on Election Day. What this number doesn’t take in to account is the number of New Zealanders who could have voted (i.e. were eligible) but were not even enrolled. This takes voter turnout down to only 69.57%, a 6% drop from 2008).

Enrolment statistics show that 92.55% of the voting age population (VAP) were enrolled to vote on Election Day. When this is broken down by age, it shows that only 75% of 18-24 year olds were enrolled. That means that ¼ of 18-24 year olds in New Zealand were not enrolled to vote. This is a scary statistic and shows that we need to do a lot more to make sure that young people feel that they can and want to engage in the political process. It’s also concerning that for the first time, enrolment was very low in the 24-29 age bracket. This suggests to me that a trend is emerging where young people who don’t vote early develop a pattern of non-voting into adulthood. We can’t allow this trend to continue.

When submissions were first called, I blogged about this issue, and suggested options like online enrolment, and possibly online voting, need to be explored. I was pleased to see the Electoral Commission agreed in its report on the 2011 election yesterday – it’s just a shame that the Government has not granted them any resources to explore these options.

The Electoral Commission has recently released research on why some people didn’t vote. Over the weekend, Radio NZ also had an interesting piece looking at why people are not taking part in elections and what can be done to turn the trend around. I was quoted along with MPs from other parties, and most interestingly, non-voters themselves about what puts them off.

We need to have a real conversation about how we can turn this trend around and get more people participating in our democratic process, particularly young people. A good way for this conversation to start is for the MPs in the Select Committee to hear your concerns about this important issue.

Please, take the time to write in to the Select Committee and have your say.