Overall, the German green party Alliance ‘90/The Greens has the most number of MPs in a Parliament, with 68 out of 622 (10.9%).

Proportionally the Luxembourg green party, The Greens, has the highest proportion, with 7 out of 60, giving them a proportion of 11.67% of the House, marginally higher than the 11.57% the Green Party of Aotearoa has.

New Zealand: Green Party of Aotearoa
14 out of 121 in the New Zealand Parliament (11.6%)

Austria: The Greens – The Green Alternative (Die Grünen – Die Grüne Alternative)
20 seats out of 183 (10.9%)

Denmark: Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti)
16 seats out of 179 (8.9%)

Germany: Alliance ‘90/The Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen)
68 seats out of 622 (10.9%)

Luxembourg: The Greens (Déi Gréng)
7 seats out of 60 (11.7%)

Sweden: Green Party (Miljöpartiet de Gröna)
25 seats out of 349 (7.2%)

Switzerland: The Greens – Swiss ecological party (Grüne Partei der Schweiz/Les verts – Parti écologiste suisse)
15 seats out of 200 (7.5%)

Support for the center-left environmentalist party has risen to 28 percent, seven points higher than in Forsa’s previous survey.

The Social Democrats (SPD), traditionally Germany’s largest center-left party, are polling at 23 percent. The SPD is normally the senior member in coalition governments with its partner-of-choice, the Greens.

Add up the numbers!  If that happens, there will be a Green-led Government in Germany, with the SPD (our equivalent is Labour) as its minor partner.  The CDU (our equivalent is National and ACT) would be in Opposition, because, despite being the largest party bloc, it has less support than the Greens and the SPD combined.

How quickly things can change in politics!

Germany has to wait another two years for a national election.   We in New Zealand  have another seven months, but we have essentially the same very democratic electoral system as Germany, so it could happen here.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could soon start to replicate the German polling here in Aotearoa/New Zealand.  It’s up to you all, and our Green MPs in Parliament, to make it happen.

Kia kaha!

Everyone is suffering trauma of one sort or another. My friend, who was in the Cathedral Café when the rocks came down. My relations with badly damaged houses – who won’t have proper water and sewage for quite a long time.

But it’s not all lows. In the heart of Aranui I saw celebration of community. In one place there was a big fire place on the front lawn, with a pile of wood, where neighbours had been cooking food together. The next door neighbour commented that “it shouldn’t take a disaster to bring us all together”. But together they now are.

Tears came to my eyes last Thursday morning as I watched the Student Volunteer Army mobilize at the university. Hundreds of high-spirited students arriving with their shovels for another solid day attacking the ‘liquifaction’.

It also made me think. The Facebook Generation is making history, not only in the Middle East, but also in our own country. The selfless dedication of the Canterbury students was something to behold, and should inspire us to greater efforts to help the people of Christchurch.

Greens’ vigilance on Gillard merits praise – John Armstrong

The Greens have got some unwarranted stick for blocking Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard from addressing Parliament while it is officially in session. They were right to do so.

Their intervention has produced a compromise which most people will struggle to see as much different from what John Key had originally proposed. That saves face for him.

The compromise is significant, however, in the huge symbolic difference between what will happen tomorrow and what Key had hoped for.

The Australian Premier will be speaking to a meeting of MPs which coincidentally is being held in the parliamentary chamber outside sitting hours with the permission of the Speaker. The meeting will not become part of the official record, normal rules will not apply and the meeting will carry no special status.

The Greens’ objection to Key’s plan was made clear to MPs during closed-door meetings some months ago. Had it been ignored, there was a strong possibility they would have refused leave for Gillard to speak – only one MP’s refusal is required to halt proceedings. That would have been humiliating for her and acutely embarrassing for Key.

So what, after all, was wrong with the original plan? The Greens had two reasons for blocking Gillard.

The first follows the British constitutional line that the floor of the House remain sacrosanct and only the people’s elected representatives should tread it. This flows from English history; that MPs should not be threatened or unduly influenced by “strangers” – such as the King’s soldiers.

The second reason is that giving Gillard the full honours would have set a worrying and dangerous precedent. As Green Party co-leader Russel Norman says, no Government could avoid the Chinese President officially addressing Parliament if there was such a precedent.

The Chinese would take refusal as a massive diplomatic snub. But going ahead would provoke a huge uproar if, in Norman’s words, “the No 1 enemy of democracy” was allowed to lecture a chamber filled with democratically elected MPs.

What message would that send? Key may yet have reason to thank the Greens for their vigilance.

The ‘highlights’ of the report tell us that :

Inmates incarcerated under the three strikes law (striker inmates):

• Make up 25 percent of the inmate population as of April 2009.
• Receive sentences that are, on average, nine years longer-resulting in about $19.2 billion in additional costs over the duration of their incarceration.
• Include many individuals currently convicted for an offense that is not a strike, were convicted of committing multiple serious or violent offenses on the same day, and some that committed strikeable offenses as a juvenile.
• Inmate health care costs are significant to the cost of housing inmates. In fiscal year 2007-08, $529 million was incurred for contracted services by specialty health care providers. Additionally:
• 30 percent of the inmates receiving such care cost more than $427 million.
• The costs for the remaining 70 percent averaged just over $1,000 per inmate.
• The costs for those inmates who died during the last quarter ranged from $150 for one inmate to more than $1 million for another
• A significant portion of the increased workload due to medical guarding and transportation is covered through overtime.
• The large leave balances of custody staff, to which the furlough program has contributed a significant amount, will eventually cost the State from $546 million to more than $1 billion.

The 3 strikes regime set out in the National – Act bill is not the same as in Californian, but does lead us down the same path, pretending that tougher and longer sentences will make us safer, despite all the evidence that the outcomes from such regimes are always that inmates, prison officers, police and the public will be less safe if this goes ahead. 

Rev. Ron Givens, who visited New Zealand recently warning against us adopting a similar regime, told us that the Californian State budget spends almost 18% of its budget on Corrections, and less than one per cent on primary school education. 

Does that sound like the sort of social spending, or indeed the sort of society, that we aspire to?

A remarkable 96% rejected the government’s proposal; 95% do not think that enough attention has been paid to the wishes of Aucklanders and 94% do not think the Government has officially asked them what kind of Auckland they want.

The Auckland Governance select committee report back will be presented next Monday, and people will then have a clearer picture of the more or less final shape of the government’s intentions. 

Until then I am bound by the confidentiality of the committee process, but suffice to say I’m not planning to crack open the bubbly to celebrate the overall outcome.

It was a remarkable afternoon in the House, made more so by the presence of the Maori King Te Arikinui Tuheitia Paki.  The Bill was supported by all but one of the parties in Parliament, so there was quite a celebratory tone and some powerful speeches, many in te reo. I made the effort to say something sensible on behalf of the Greens (you can go here to see if I succeeded!)

As well as (at last) recognising the rights of mana whenua, and that the river was taken illegally by a combination of military and legislative action, the bill puts in place some very positive practical remedies.  It sets up a River Authority, with equal numbers of mana whenua and government appointees, who will work under a co-management arrangement with the primary goal of restoring the health and the mauri of the river.

This model is new for New Zealand, and no doubt it will hit some speed bumps, but it could also inform the format of other settlements still to come.

I would seldom suggest that people read legislation for fun, but in this case it is worth a look at the preamble to the bill (click on Download PDF, preamble is p.6) and the 1^st schedule (starts at p.85) which gives the flavour of what has been agreed and the vision and strategy for the future.

The proof of the deal will be in its implementation, as ever, and one hopes all the goodwill expressed today translates into action and positive outcomes for the River and the Waikato – Tainui people.

I suspect the Speaker was a little less diligent than usual in his timekeeping, when it came to the final speech from Hon. Nanaia Mahuta, and that was a good thing, because she spoke with remarkable honesty and with a passion worthy of the occasion.  Following the vote there was an immensely satisfying waiata and haka performed by those in the gallery.

A memorable day, and now the House goes into recess for a week, so we can all get on with our other work around the motu!