As Frog indicated, we knew only that ‘a government bill’ would be introduced under urgency.  At about 10.30pm on Wednesday night, we were presented with one paper copy of the bill,  no electronic version to facilitate distribution to caucus members or our researchers; no supporting documentation, no regulatory impact statement, no evidence in support, and this was ‘graciously’ given only on the basis of keeping the strictest confidence.

We were obliged to speculate about the harm that the bill was intended to remedy and the need for the secrecy and urgency; we were required to second guess what the intent and real purpose of the bill might be, and it was not until about 8.15am on Thursday that we got access by phone to a ministerial adviser who confirmed that our speculation was more or less on track. 

We learned in the course of the debate that the Maori party, as a confidence and supply partner, had the bill  ten days earlier.  (I must say in passing that they made good use of the time – Rahui Katene delivered some very fiery and well crafted speeches opposing the bill , and good on her for doing so!).

I have it on good authority that the Act party, on the other hand, was as surprised as we were by the content of  the bill, and had as little prior warning of it. Indicative of the parlous state of the Nat – Act relationship perhaps?

Despite my direct questions, Labour was rather coy about confessing when they were given access to the bill, which leads me to assume they saw it well in advance of the tabling.

My point in all this is that the process demonstrates that the two old parties are locked into the game of making deals with each other, without making any  attempts to build consensus across the House, which they might otherwise have done had they approached us in a reasonable fashion about the ‘error’ they sought to correct. 

Had we been taken into their confidence about the problem (which they have been aware of  for ten months!) we could well have negotiated a process that would have allowed us to air our misgivings, to draw on appropriate legal advice, and even potentially to cooperate in drafting a piece of legislation that would then have gone through a proper process of public and parliamentary scrutiny and delivered an appropriate outcome. 

We have had an MMP parliament for nearly 15 years – how much more time do these guys need to get up to speed with the ‘new’ reality, and to respect and indeed to utilise the possibilites for the more consensual form of politics that it presents?  Maybe the next generation…?

One comment in terms of the substance of the bill – I repeatedly asked the government during the debate for evidence that since the police stopped retaining youth particulars ten months ago, their task of identifying and apprehending young offenders has been more difficult.  I’m still waiting for an answer, which leads me to suspect there is no such evidence, and so the law change was not only procedurally undemocratic but also unnecessary!

That’s not a worldview that I could ever sign up for, but nor is it one that gives cause for offence in an open democracy.

Unfortunately for them, Act supporters are at risk of being tarred with the racist brush, probably unfairly for the most part, given the latest outpouring of anti-Māori bile from their ‘leader’ Donald Thomas Brash.

A few months ago the best political theatre in town was the high farce of a former National party leader taking over the leadership of a party of which he was not a member, offering the MAD (mutually assured destruction) option of ‘make me your leader or I will call upon my rich mates to fund an alternative right wing party’.

Donald spoke of the renaissance of the right, a leap up the polls to 15% or more, of a new coalition that would put steel in the spine of the NACT coalition, etc, etc, etc….

In the real world of course Act continues to bounce along the bottom of the margin of error in the polls.  It has a much less assured grip on its security blanket electorate as some ambitious National party aspirants vie for the Epsom candidacy, and are unlikely to want to give Banks, that other former-Nat, the easy ride that Richard Worth allowed Rodney Hide in 2008.

Desperate times, so Donald reaches into his bag of dirty tricks and pulls out the race card, the same trick that worked (a bit) for him in 2004.  Māori, apparently, are a privileged lot who live off the fat of the land and enjoy enormous rights and privileges not available to non-Māori, and Donald doesn’t think it’s ‘fair’.

What seems to elude Donald Thomas is the reality of Māori featuring at the wrong end of all the statistics about health, education, employment, life expectancy, incarceration, housing, income – but then when did he ever let the facts get in the way of a politically expedient tall story?

For their own sake, you would think that a posse of Act-ites would lock their leader in a room with a couple of  Treaty educators, copies of some good social histories of New Zealand, a set of social and economic statistics, and maybe a copy of the new Wai 262 report.  Maybe if he worked his way through that lot he might get a clearer picture of reality – or could it be that he knows the truth already, but is willing to deny it and assert the opposite purely in the forlorn hope of political gain?

Fortunately the last barrier he mentions doesn’t apply to us in New Zealand!

The GOP currently has two very strong factions. One is made up religious conservatives, many would say ultra-religious, while the other might be best described as extreme economic libertarians. Together, they have transformed the political landscape in the States starting in the mid-1960′s.

Many before now have noted a certain hypocrisy in Christians that are also hard-core capitalists, but this issue has never gained much traction among Republicans, who are known for putting differences aside when it counts, closing ranks to present a unified front to the electorate.

But now it seems the issue is being aired within the GOP and publicly too, courtesy of Ayn Rand and in particular due to the recent feature-length film of her epic book, Atlas Shrugged. The film came out a few months ago and has become a must watch for Republicans. Right-wing media, including Rush Limbaugh and FOX presenters like Glen Beck are pushing it hard. Apparently the entire Republican leadership has nibbled popcorn while watching.

Ayn Rand is pretty well-known in the States, but many don’t know much of what she stands for beyond an extreme form of individual freedom. So maybe that’s why some religious Republicans, including a group called The American Values Network has chosen to publicise Rand’s very blunt views on religion. With statements like “I am against God” and “[religion] is a sign of a psychological weakness…I regard it as evil”, it’s not hard to see why these folks are finding the cult of Rand a bit hard to swallow. As Eric Sapp puts it:

She argued that people had to choose between following her teachings or those of Christianity and other religious traditions. Rand said religion was “evil,” called the message of John 3:16 “monstrous,” argued that the weak are beyond love and undeserving of it, that loving your neighbor was immoral and impossible and that she was out to undermine the idea that charity was a moral duty and virtue.

Enough said, you might argue. There is enough there to raise the hackles of both the religious and non-religious alike. The American Values Network thought so and released a short video putting this case and asking why Republican leaders think Rand is so cool.

Not being a religious frog, I don’t think morality must come from faith. But of course many Republicans do and though the GOP considers itself a broad tent, I can’t see how it can easily continue to carry this moral paradox.

Then again, stranger things have happened in politics.

Blackball speech – Time for a Green Change

30^th April 2011

(speech as delivered was slightly different)

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi o te motu, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.

It’s great to be in Blackball again this year to be part of this great Mayday mix of food, entertainment and politics. Thanks to everyone involved in the organisation.

I very much appreciated being part of this afternoon’s opening of the memorial wheel for the Pike 29.  I couldn’t be here on Thursday, having earlier promised to attend the Service and Food Workers Union event in Nelson for Workers Remembrance Day, but I want to add my voice to those mourning the guys who were lost to our community in the mine. No reira, e nga mate, haere, haere, haere ki Hawaiki Nui, Ki Hawaiki Roa, Ki Hawaiki Pamamao. Apiti hono, tatai hono. Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate.

It is a national disgrace that these guys will now only be brought from the mine as an inadvertent consequence of some future decision based on commercial grounds.

I know on Thursday Helen Kelly spoke about the responsibility of employers to provide a healthy and safe workplace. I am certainly going to be monitoring the Royal Commission of Inquiry to see that it fulfils its responsibility to determine whether Pike River Coal did all it could to meet that responsibility but also that successive governments did all they could to create and maintain a framework for mining to occur that would achieve maximum workplace health and safety. I guess it’s no secret that I believe shortcomings will be found on both of those grounds.

And that’s not a surprise. I spoke last year about the central idea in capitalist economic theory in which big capital extracts as much profit as it possibly from people’s labour and from the environment, which it regards as “raw materials”. It’s an amoral process, in which if costs can be reduced, they will be. This National Government sees its fundamental role as allowing this process to occur with as few obstacles as possible, and at the same time dismantling the role of the State, to create fresh opportunities for profit maximisation.

Since I spoke last year, the Government has kindly provided me with yet more examples:

• The new law allowing workers to be sacked for no reason at all within their first 90 days of work
• The new law denying trade unions right of access to their members’ workplaces
• Wave after wave of attacks on beneficiaries
• Effectively nothing to create new jobs, thus maintaining high demand for jobs and keeping wages low
• No new state houses (despite the waiting list of 10,000)
• Tax changes that greatly benefited the rich while leaving the poor worse off
• Ongoing dismantling of our ACC scheme and preparation for its privatisation
• Significant cuts to DOC’s budget, with nearly 3,000 species on the endangered list and in the International Year of Biodiversity
• The Minister’s refusal to agree to new marine reserves

There’s also been progress towards the TPP, the free-trade agreement being developed with the United States and others. We have mostly been attacking it because it will involve compromising on important NZ laws, allowing tobacco companies, for example, to sue the NZ Government for smokefree initiatives, and requiring changes to our patent laws to allow big pharmaceutical giants to maximise their profits at our expense. But some of you may recall that last year I also made a critique of free trade agreements and globalisation in general: fundamentally these are about lowering national boundaries so that big capital has access to the cheapest labour and cheapest natural resources wherever they are in the world.

In that light you may want to note a couple of other developments:

• The Government changing well-established employment law because Warner Brothers didn’t like it
• The Government issuing an oil exploration permit (which requires drilling) to the Brazilian company, Petrobras, which has a poor safety record, without it having to submit any plan to deal with an oil spill, and without there being any realistic way at all of dealing with an oil spill.

In both cases, you may observe that these companies take all the profit. All we get is the wages, in return for all the risk.

Last year I outlined the Green Party’s overall approach to turning things around. We say that the relationships between economy, environment and people need to be reversed. Rather than people and the environment serving the economy, we need to re-engineer a smart economy as a set of tools for achieving our goals of environmental protection and a fair, just society.

Over the past week or so we have fired off an opening salvo in this election campaign with a leaflet with the theme ‘Looking Forward’. In part that reflects that long-term thinking that the Greens are well known for. But it’s also meant in the sense of “what are you looking forward to?” We are asking everybody to engage in thinking about what they most want to see – effectively setting those environmental and social goals we want to achieve. There’s been an extraordinary diversity so far, but also some really consistent themes.

Closer to the election the Greens will issue a number of concrete and robust commitments that we will advance in the next Parliament if you give us your party vote (and remember that’s what we campaign for, not the electorate). In the meantime, here’s some of the things we would do if we led the next Government:

• Increase the minimum wage (and index it to the median wage, along with MP salaries)
• Compulsory quality standards for all freshwater streams, rivers and lakes
• Recovery plans for all threatened species in NZ and realistic support to help DOC achieve that in partnership with communities
• Building resilience in rural areas by relocalising economies (encouraging local food and energy production,  local goods and services and Government services)
• Plan for energy independence from oil
• Return to a planned system for making electricity generation decisions in which all the alternatives are considered and the ones that are best for the public are chosen
• Reprioritise Government spending (less on roads and more on “nice to haves” like education and health)
• Repeal the anti-worker laws
• Cancel the plans to sell SOEs and privatise government services
• Retain our economic sovereignty by much tighter restrictions on foreign ownership of NZ land and assets
• Incentivise research and development to help build a clean tech economy that delivers higher wages by making higher value products, at no net cost to the environment
• Help make the 100% Pure brand real, by reducing taxes on people’s work and replacing the revenue with new taxes on waste (including Carbon emissions) and resource rentals
• Create green collar jobs by directing both public and private investment into areas that are job-rich and help protect and restore the environment
• Build 6,000 new state houses
• Legislation to require rental properties to be healthy and warm
• Extend our home insulation scheme to schools and other public buildings
• Introduce a capital gains tax to redirect investment into productive activity rather than housing speculation and fund other policies like first $10,000 of income tax free, progressive electricity pricing, extending the WFF in-work tax credit to beneficiaries, reinstating the training incentive allowance
• Incentives for new and more diverse forestry
• Encourage businesses whose profits are retained in the communities where they were obtained
• Encourage community- and cooperative-owned businesses
• Sharing the cost of rebuilding fairly by a temporary levy on those with higher incomes rather than making the poor pay by service cuts or are kids pay through more borrowing

That’s a programme that would provide immediate benefit in the places and for the people who need it most, but maybe more importantly would put in place the correct relationships between economy, environment and society and establish a virtuous cycle whereby the whole system would continue to improve. And it’s all practical, and achievable by reprioritising spending and tax reform. Big business would hate it!

The fact is that NZ faces big challenges. National is steering the ship with blinkers on and without using the radar. If it is re-elected, its programme – whether through ignorance or malice – will be an acceleration of these policies that have done so much to unravel NZ’s social fabric and benefit a few to the cost of so many. The Greens have chosen to focus on hope for a better society and on a programme of practical, achievable and fiscally responsible steps that will be good for you, for me and our planet. Party vote Green!

Some of it’s obvious, like the layered approach to everything. In the surface layer John Key has the job of being relaxed about everything (except those situations that call for ‘mild concern’ in the emotional register), and generally smiling and waving a lot. This gives the impression of a traditional National Government that understands that its prime objective of retaining power is usually best met by not doing very much. Beneath this level, however, there is a deeper layer of hard right ideological zeal, where many of the Government’s actions are clearly oriented towards maximising the efficiency with which big capital can extract profit from the environment and from labour, along with other articles of faith like privatisation and reducing the role of the State.

Then there’s the scary balloon tactic, that they seem to use for almost everything. An extreme version of  their plan is “floated” drawing public fear and ire in equal measure, and then when Government announces a much-scaled back version of the idea the theory is that the sense of relief  that things won’t be as bad as first thought mutes further effective opposition. My guess is that they rather fell over themselves on this with Schedule 4 mining. Their initial plan was exactly this: they were going to propose a green light to mining in half a million hectares of the most precious conservation land, of course intending that what they actually mined would be much less than this. But then they had internal Cabinet conflict and developed the two category approach: three areas with a green light and everywhere else slated for further investigation (read: mining if things work out with the first phase). Again, no doubt the plan was to trade away Great Barrier Island, but they left themselves too big a problem, because with just 3 areas proposed none of the others stacked up: Coromandel too politically sensitive, and Paparoa hard to mount a case for underground mining of low grade coal in a National Park.

Bait and switch is similar, and some people have theorised around mining that the plan all along was to distract the public with big mining plans, while the real plan was something else – increased powers for the Minister of Economic Development over public conservation land, for example. Probably there has been an element of this, but those who argue it was the main purpose are overlooking the aggressive way in which both Brownlee and Key invested political capital into the mining plans.

A personal favourite of mine is the false dichotomy. Nick Smith and Gerry Brownlee gave us plenty of examples, like “greenies are hypocrites if they oppose our mining plans, because they all want to keep their cell phones and laptops”. Classic! Easy enough to deconstruct and demolish for readers of this blog, I’m sure, but likely to be superficially persuasive to those without the time to do that.

And of course the mining debate has seen the usual dirty tricks: for example serial use by Government members from the Prime Minister on down of a quote from Metiria applauding a refusal of an extension to a mining operation in Golden Bay as if she had been praising the approval of the Pike River coal mine under Paparoa National Park (which we opposed), despite this having been unambiguously corrected in the House.

There’s more, but you get the idea. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to see John Key this week saying two themes emerged from the public consultation over mining: opposition to the Government’s plans to mine in Schedule 4 (agreed, that was indeed a very strong theme) and public support for increased mining elsewhere in the public conservation estate. Excuse me? Just 1.5% of submitters supported this, and 99% of submitters opposed further mineral surveying work because they thought it would lead to pressure for increased mining. Then Gerry corrected his Boss, saying that actually this wasn’t the basis for the mandate for increased mining they are claiming. Instead they are going to ignore this and rely on some poll results (which actually show a minority of New Zealanders favour more mining).

This bizarre claim of a mandate cannot be the advice they have received from Crosby-Textor, and I wonder if perhaps there is some sort of public holiday happening in Australia, which could explain the flaky political management being shown. In the face of the strength of the 2precious2mine campaign and the incredibly strong public opposition the only sensible political response is to cauterise the wound with a complete backdown.  To instead fight on, as the Government is attempting, is to invite one’s opponents to wreak further damage. I, for one, fully intend to take up that invitation.

In some ways it has been great to have a time for some reflection after attending all four in rapid succession, as it has given me the opportunity to draw out some common threads. There was a myriad of issues discussed, and this itself was one common theme. The Government we have now is not a traditional National Government that largely muddles along, trying to hold on to power by not rocking the boat too much. While that’s the picture they have tried to create, with Mr. Key’s state of permanent relaxation, this is cover for a radical agenda of change. In the Prime Ministerial statement at the beginning of this year he devoted a section to the environment, entitled “Unlocking Resources”. In this he referred to his government’s intention to mine in Schedule 4 land regardless of the public consultation process and echoed the line from Irrigation NZ that any drop of water reaching the sea is wasted, in foreshadowing his intent to remove “obstacles” to using more water in Canterbury.

The speech was widely – and correctly – interpreted to be a greeen light to the miners, loggers, dammers, dairy converters and supermarket and subdivision builders: under this Government the natural environment is not something that is treasured for its own inherent value, but is rather a set of resources from which to squeeze maximum short-term profit. I call it John Key’s war on the environment. Its results have been to activate people on both sides of this clash of values. We environmentalists are recruiting new members and rallying the old ones, while dusting off (and sometimes relearning) old skills around organising protest strategy and tactics. On the other side of the fence people with dollar signs in their eyes are taking their “implements of destruction” out of the cupboard. At one conference an organiser was heard to give Gerry Brownlee thanks for re-activating the environment movement. To a point that’s true – record numbers of submissions, petition signatures and people demonstrating in the streets. But it’s also very much a gauntlet thrown down: we face multiple fresh threats across a wide range of issues and everywhere in the country (land and sea), and a government friendly to those threats. We need to be strategic and disciplined in our defence of the environment or we risk being spread too thinly and not lasting the distance.

Part of the trick of doing this is to engage directly with the central issue: New Zealanders love our natural environment and our treasured places for their inherent value. Our relationship with the bush, mountains, rivers and lakes, the tussock landscapes of the McKenzie Basin, coast and undersea worlds is as much a spiritual and emotional one as it is physical. These inherent values have no place in John Key’s worldview, but most New Zealanders understand the need to protect and restore these places for what they are or can be again, and that these values are not measured by the short-sighted commercial calculus of extractive industry. Yes, it’s important to also make the arguments about the shonky numbers Brownlee has advanced to justify mining National Parks and the irreparable damage such plans will cause to our international trading brand. Yes, it’s also important to point out the biological reality of our interdependence with the natural world and the dire consequences to us from its destruction. But it’s still more important to evoke the love New Zealanders have for our natural world, and to call on them to protect it for its own sake and for our grandchildren’s.

Time to make the economy serve our environmental and social goals, not the other way around.

Does he stand by his statement “Notwithstanding the public consultation process, it is my expectation that the Government will act on at least some of these recommendations and make significant changes to Schedule 4.”?

The government has no answer.

The Karangahake Gorge, walkways and reserves are not part of the protected areas in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act but this is a beautiful area for walking and appreciating the now softened ravages of past mining. The Gorge itself is a narrow winding cut between steep forested hills with the Ohinemuri River snaking down from Waihi to Tikapa Moana (the Hauraki Gulf).

In the old gold mining days great slugs of cyanide laden mine waste would come lurching down the river from Waihi with a visible mass of desperate eels swimming ahead of it trying to get to fresh water. Today the river looks healthy enough but it remains vulnerable to any leaching from the toxic mine tailings from the failed Coeur d’Alene mine at Waitekauri and the enormous waste dump at Baxter’s Rd, Waihi.

But the latest mining threat comes from Australian mining company “Heritage” who have a permit to re-open the Talisman Mine at Karangahake. They have the mining permit but are still seeking a joint venture partner from China and have not yet applied for RMA consents to undertake mining activity.

Tangata whenua and other local residents at the meeting expressed strong opposition to the latest proposal. We sat talking in the old hall with the legendary wooden dance floor and the murals of the “good old days”. The only wealth left from the past gold mining is the stories and songs and old brick remnants. This heritage draws people to the Karangahake to reflect on a gold rush that stripped the land and polluted the water. The Karangahake people are not convinced by the spin doctors of today with their “surgical mining” from their “boutique mines”. Once bitten, twice shy.

The NZ Government has courageously undertaken to provide daily briefings to ‘stakeholders’ on progress in the Copenhagen negotiations and our country’s positive role in that.  Jeanette Fitzsimons and I have been looking forward immensely to the opportunity to learn about how New Zealand is playing its fair share on turning around the greatest threat to humanity we have yet encountered.  And straight from the horse’s mouth – I hope that is taken in the positive spirit it is meant.

We were particularly grateful and impressed, given that the Green Party is in opposition and we have preferred to come independently rather than as part of the official delegation, for fear of surrendering the integrity of an objective judgement.  So we were anticipating the briefings with a mixture of admiration – and a touch of apprehension lest we let the side down.

Upon arrival over the weekend, we learned that, to make things easier for stakeholders, the first briefing would be at the delegation’s hotel on Monday morning at 8.30.  So I arose early, travelled in the dark and cold, and turned up at 7.45, breathless principally from the cold.

In the lobby I met the ambassador, then Ministers Groser and Smith.  There would be no briefing that morning, I was told.  They would start Tuesday morning, at a time and place to be conveyed to us.  No problem.  I headed for the conference, grateful that circumstances had prompted me to be early.

We learned subsequently that Ministers had met with NZ business groups shortly thereafter at the conference.  That was good, I thought.  It will enable government and business to come to an understanding of how to interact synergistically to save the planet – ensuring that New Zealand plays its fair share.

Monday evening by 10.00 p.m., we had not been advised of Tuesday’s briefing.  I reluctantly phoned in to the senior Minister’s chief adviser, not wishing to distract him from his critical tasks.  The briefing, he said, would be at the conference site in the NZ delegation room at 9.30 a.m.

Tuesday morning, I arose early again in the dark and cold with purpose.  At the site, I was relieved to get through the extraordinary multitude outside the conference precincts in time for the NZ briefing.  I turned up at 9.25.  The same senior official was there.  So was one Kiwi student observing the conference.  And two NZ officials.  And me.  It was all pleasant and relaxed, if rather desultory in conversation.  But, without the Minister.

At 9.45 the Minister arrived.  The senior official immediately asked for the room to be cleared, which, given the student had already left, meant me.  This was so that minister could brief the NZ press.  I obligingly collected my papers and left the room, as a small phalanx of NZ press entered.

I was a bit unsure what to do with myself, having been bumped for the first briefing on the conference by our Minister who so clearly knew what was going on in the inside.  But I knew that this simply meant that the stakeholder briefing would be deferred to after the press briefing.  Of course, I understood.  It was important for the Government to get the message out to the NZ people, on what it was doing in the global effort to combat climate change.

As it happened, the entry cubicle outside the briefing room was vacated.  No NZ official was within sight.  So I plonked down in the secretary’s chair and began to scroll through my e-mails.  A positive use of time until the Ministerial briefing commenced.

I had been engaged in this pursuit when a figure appeared over me.  I looked up and into the pleasant face of a young official from the Chinese delegation.  She introduced herself.  Her name was Guo Xin.  She had come to enquire about the bilateral ministerial meeting between New Zealand and China, scheduled for 11.00 a.m.  She was concerned. She had been trying to finalise arrangements and had received no reply from the NZ Government.  What was New Zealand intending to do?

I looked around.  Not a person in sight.  What to do? I took the plunge.  I asked her for some details.  Which Chinese minister?  Mr. Xie Zhenhua.  What portfolio, I felt bound to ask?  The reply was unintelligible.  I struggled to comprehend.  She gave me an understanding look. Climate change minister will do, she said.

She looked at her watch.  She was concerned, she said, because time was running out.  The Chinese minister was an important person and his time was not be trifled with.  If it was not confirmed within the next few minutes, she may need to conclude that New Zealand did not plan to proceed with the bilateral.

My thoughts approached panic level.  New Zealand cancel a bilateral on climate change, and no doubt trade, with China?  This must not be.   Wait a moment, I implored her.  I shall clear it up.

I went to the open door into the briefing room.  After considerable un-Chinese style effort on my part, I caught the eye of the senior official, the Minister being engrossed in his briefing.  I wagged my finger and pointed to the Chinese official who, perversely, was just out of his sight.  The official quickly turned away.  Another got up, came over and seriously closed the door, virtually on my nose.

I looked around wildly.  I had to do something.  Guo Xin looked at me expectantly, on behalf of Xie Zhenhua.  I had a choice.  I could have, and, in light of the previous 24 hours and especially the last 15 minutes was sorely tempted, to advise the emissary that the NZ-China bilateral was cancelled.  Now go, and quickly.

But I could not bring myself to do it.  Years of humbling obedience to Her Majesty stood in the way.  Stammering incoherently, I tried to explain, I could not help her.  I could not, I continued, speak for the Minister.  Guo looked at me.  She looked at the seat I was in, and the desk I was at.  She swung around and read the sign.  NZ Delegation Room.  There was a NZ flag on the door.  My accent was unmistakeably Kiwi.  I was dressed in a sober suit and tie.  My hair was grey.  Why was this man suddenly crumbling?  What mysterious pressures were at play?  She did not understand.  She viewed me the way an officer of the law views a suspect.  She knew not whether to cancel the Smith-Xie ministerial or play for the last tiny bit of time left.  China, she said, could use this time for other meetings.  I looked despairingly into her eyes.  Nothing I can do now, I whispered.  I am not part of the delegation.  She turned her head.  I am not, I ventured, mist clouding the eyes, I am not a part of the delegation.  She looked away.  She did not understand this small, strange, country.

NZ-China relations were rescued by the appearance of a young NZ diplomat.  Another young woman.  They struck up immediately.  Yes, of course New Zealand had received the message from the Peoples’ Republic.  No, there was never any intent of declining the meeting.  There must have been a miscommunication somewhere.  Very sorry, from New Zealand to China.  The matter was cleared up, between the two young women, in an instant.

Guo left the room without a glance.

The young Kiwi took my seat.  She smiled sweetly.  We introduced ourselves.  She knew who I was.  Actually, she said, there had been a misunderstanding about the NZ stakeholder briefing.  They had switched the time from 9.30 to 9.00 a.m.  No, they had not sent out any advisory to that effect.  No, nobody had turned up.   Some miscommunication somewhere.  She was very sorry.  Presumably, on behalf of the Minister.  No problem, I said.  Thank you for explaining.

They also serve, who only stand and wait.

The best-known drama has been the leaked ‘Danish draft’.  This has been reported as infuriating the developing world, especially the major emerging economies – China, India, Brazil, South Africa (BICS) – on the grounds that they had not been consulted.  This is unfortunate for the ‘atmospherics’.  UNFCCC chief official Yves de Boer pointed out that it was never an official document. But no unofficial agreement should take documentary form capable of being leaked if it reflects the thinking of only one group’s interest.  The days of the West’s natural right to international leadership are long gone.  The ‘grand global bargain’ that is the condition of success in 21^st century climate change diplomacy is different.  They should know better by now.

There are in fact a number of drafts.  The Mother of them all, the UN text, whose slimmed-down version ran to a voluptuous 181 pages with thousands of square brackets, has been unceremoniously laid to rest.  No mourners were present.

Two official drafts emerged on Friday.  The first is the Chair’s draft on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA).

It does not pretend to have the status of a legally-binding treaty or protocol for adoption this week. That goal is long since out the window.  The text speaks rather of a possible ‘core decision’ that would govern negotiations in 2010 for a post-2012 commitment period.

The major issues addressed are the temperature threshold, GHG quantitative cuts by both the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’, the year for ‘peaking, and financing.

In the draft, States share the vision of a ‘long-term aspirational global goal for emission reductions’.  This is an aspirational goal, let’s get this right, to save the planet.  States will cooperate to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’, recognising that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not exceed a certain threshold.  Two figures are entered in the draft.  The first is 2°C which is the IPCC’s recommendation (the UN expert panel).

The second is 1.5°C which is demanded by Tuvalu on the grounds that 2°C will spell its death as a nation.  On Saturday the Tuvalu delegate advanced an eloquent plea before breaking into tears.  Yet few were bothered by his poignant plea.  That includes the NZ Government which opposed Tuvalu’s request, a fine gesture of regional unity and bilateral compassion that earned it, not for the first time, the Fossil of the Day award.

Of course the NZ Government has signed off on the IPCC level of 2° and so any change would involve the irksome task of having to return to an indifferent cabinet.  There are so many other aspirational national goals to be pursuing …. coal mining, intensive dairying, oil exploration, free trade agreements, privatisation of prisons.

Sad truth is that even a 2°C threshold is going to be exceedingly difficult to attain, given the accumulation of carbon recently pumped into the atmosphere whose effect has yet to be felt.  And 2°C gives humanity only a 50/50 chance of avoiding ‘dangerous climate change’.  The situation, it has to be acknowledged, is pretty dire.  Not impossible.  Just dire.  Requiring unprecedented global cooperation from all nations – of the kind the NZ Government has shown how not to do.

The draft states that this requires a cut in global emissions by 2050 (off 1990 levels) of 50%, 85% or 95%.  That is quite a range for the negotiators, considering it will determine the fate of the Earth.  Global roulette, Copenhagen style.

The draft then requires the developed countries to cut GHG emissions below 1990 levels in 2050 by an agreed amount.  Three ‘aspirational goals’ are entered: 75-85%; 80-95%; or ‘more than 95%.   What has the NZ Government has committed to?  Answer = 50%.  We did not wish to avert our commercial gaze, you understand.

Crimped?  Yes.  Callous?  Yes. Criminally negligent?  Actually, yes.

The draft says that Parties should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions ‘as soon as possible’.  No specific year is identified for global peaking.  But developed nations would be bound to cut considerably by 2020.  Either by 25-40%; or ‘in the order of 30%; or by 40% or by 45%.

What is New Zealand Government’s view on peaking?  It is a masterpiece of circumlocution.  Read the exchange between Green co-leader Russel Norman and Minister Nick Smith on 26 November.  See if you can translate Dr. Smith’s answer into a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.

Finally, the draft addresses the responsibilities of developing nations.  They would undertake autonomous (i.e. non-binding) curbing of emissions growth in the order of 20-30% off ‘business-as-usual’ by 2020.  All of them, from China to the smallest atoll, are opposing this.  What price the ‘grand global bargain’?

Clearly, it is going to be a long week.

The second draft concerns the proposed amendments to the Kyoto Protocol for the period post 2012.  This is the so-called ‘parallel track’ approach being pursued in the negotiations.  The political reason for the parallel track is because the US reneged on the Protocol and so is not involved in its negotiations for amendment – only in the LCA process. The idea is that, by week’s end, the parallel tracks will be winnowed down into one harmonious synthesis.  The result is that, before week’s end, the most critical and complicated negotiations of all time are rendered that much more difficult.

As Count Oxenstierna said 300 years ago: “Do you know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed”?

Two quick things to clear up.

First, yes we expended carbon getting here, along with the other participants.  But we financially offset this out of our own pocket (I have paid about $1500 this year on flying offsets, and am happy to do this.  One day perhaps, we shall not need to do this, but until then I shall do so).  Also, the Danish Government is achieving the remarkable feat of ensuring that the conference is carbon neutral.  John Key and McCully will do well to meet that challenge for the 2011 World Cup.

Second, it is not, as some NZ Government ministers have said in Parliament recently, unpatriotic for opposition MPs to be here.  In addition to Jeanette and me, Labour’s Charles Chauvel is here.  We are here to understand the process, make a positive contribution to a successful outcome, and critique our own Government where we disagree with its views and policies.  This is what we do back home, inside the House and outside it.  It is called democracy – at the global level, not just the national.  It is unworthy of the any government member to impugn the patriotism of us three.  I shall call them on it in the House if they continue that ruse in 2010.

That said, let me say where I stand on ‘patriotism’.  I love New Zealand as much as any compatriot.  I love Earth equally.  Aotearoa is one component part of the planet and I do not believe we have sovereign rights to take advantage of the other 192 nation-states or the other 6, 750 million humans when we are at a critical state in facing the greatest global threat humanity has yet confronted.  So my national patriotism is subordinate to my patriotism to Earth.  Whereas Earth has historically been seen only as a geological entity in a cosmic context, today the global community is emerging as a political entity.  This requires fine and prudent judgement and we are each obliged as individuals to exercise that as best we can.  Such a judgement can no longer rest on a mindless pursuit of the competitive national interest that devastates the global commons.  Whenever I criticise the Government, it will derive from that philosophical world-view which may well differ from those of the Prime Minister and Ministers Smith and Groser, for all of whom I have considerable respect.

Back to the practicalities.  Saturday morning we registered and got our bearings, and met several delegates for the first time. In the afternoon, we participated in the extraordinary public rally that has probably been broadcast around the world.  A massive and good-humoured crowd – estimated between 60,000 to 100,000, wended its way from city centre to the conference site from 1.00 pm to 5.00pm.  Having confined my protests over the years to the Byzantine dangers of intellectual opposition within the establishment, I had not hit the streets frequently – in fact, not once.  So notwithstanding the Northern cold, this virgin demonstrator had an enjoyable first time, not least linking up with the NZ youth delegation who are bringing a breath of fresh air to multilateral diplomacy.  May their dreams of inter-generational justice be realised.

Back in the office, the sights are strange and wondrous.  Some 34,000 have applied to participate where the limit is 15,000.  This includes 110 national leaders.  John Key will be one, although inexplicably he has chosen not to list himself as the delegation leader, notwithstanding that scores of others have – including Australia, China, Brazil, France, Indonesia, Iran, Italy and Lebanon.  Why is our Prime Minister so half-hearted and keen to distance himself?  Is it because he lacks the vision and sense of reality to understand the magnitude of what is happening around us, or does he wish he wish to avoid any risk of being shown up?  Which is it – dimwittedness or cowardice?

The delegations are huge.  New Zealand’s (of which we are not a part) is 23 plus two from Tokelau.  Australia’s is 114.  Tiny Tuvalu, threatened with sea-level oblivion and making an extraordinary impact on this conference already, has 19.  The US has 194.  China, of course, has 233.  But they are all trumped by Brazil, which has 735.  People are taking the future of the planet seriously.

And that is just the officials.  In my last job before returning home in 2005, I worked for the UN University.  The UNU has 22 here.  Back in 1995, I studied on a fellowship in Dhaka with the Bangladesh Institute for Advanced Studies.  They do research and policy prescription on sustainability issues.  Their country is impoverished, at least materially, their population density is the highest of any nation-state with significant landmass, and they are threatened as much as any by climate change.  The Institute has sent 30 at cost.  And of course, there is Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.  FOE have 250 here.  Greenpeace has 118.  That includes 12 photographers, 2 musicians, a sound-and-light technician and a video librarian.  Just another day at the office.  Should they be here? Of course they should.  We’re talking about the future of the planet.  They have a right, and an abiding interest, and they aim to make a contribution. We thank them for their concern.

In the meantime, the rushed consultation period is coming to a close, hot on the heels of the urgency motion that created this fat invoice to the taxpayer.

In summary, the Government is moving fast to emasculate the already weak ETS and turn it into a subsidy programme for big polluters. You only have until Tuesday 13 October 2009 to have your say.

Use the Green Party ETS Submission Guide to help you get your head around the issue and have your say.

The Guide gives you a simple how-to for making a submission, and highlights some of the bigger issues with the National-Maori Party ETS Bill. We encourage everyone to use this as a starting point and add any other issues that you feel are important. The Bill is so flawed we couldn’t possibly cover them all!

First dig up Southland. Probably farmland at this stage, but could be conservation land once the Minister’s review of Schedule 4 is finished.

Extract lignite, the lowest quality coal, very wet and of low calorific value. Add copious water pollution, coal seam methane and land disturbance from open cast mining.

Then a chemical process will react the lignite with nitrogen from the air and make ammonia, then urea. Lots of greenhouse gas from the carbon in the lignite, but hey, we can capture that and store it underground for hundreds of years, where it will do no harm. That way we won’t have to pay for any carbon emissions. How do we know it will stay there? Well, we think it will for a little while, and even if it doesn’t, how are you going to prove it? Quite a complicated process, trying to monitor carbon dioxide seeping out from the ground. Probably no-one will want to pay to do that.

But I’m getting distracted. There’s a huge market for urea in NZ as a nitrogen fertiliser on farms and currently the plant at Kapuni that makes it from natural gas can’t make enough so we are importing. A good kiwi business, Solid Energy – really wants savings on our import bill.

It’s urea that makes it possible to run five cows per hectare rather than two, and increases milk production.

It’s also urea that causes cow urine to emit higher levels of nitrous oxide and the higher stocking rate also increases it. Along with climate changing emissions it greatly increases the runoff from farms to waterways, increasing nitrate levels and faecal bacteria in the rivers we want to swim in or drink from.

But it’s also urea that makes farming profitable, right?

Wrong. I’ve visited a number of dairy farms in the Waikato recently who have given up using urea and dropped their stocking rate. The extra milk they could produce isn’t worth enough to pay for the urea, for the bought in feed to enable them to run those high stocking rates, and to pay for grazing their young stock off the farm to make more room for milking cows. If they are also able to claim the organic premium, they are laughing all the way to the bank. They also tell me their stock are much healthier, their vet bills halved or better, their soil micro-organisms more abundant. Here’s my Straight Furrow article.

This dog of a project has only emerged because of the Government’s proposed changes to the ETS. These changes mean that there is no cap on the emissions for Solid Energy making the urea, or for farmers piling on more nitrogen.

New Zealand’s emissions will rise substantially, but you, dear taxpayers, will foot the bill.

Muldoon would be proud of this new Think Big, which will no doubt be as profitable as the last lot, if anyone is old enough to still remember them.

The Green Party is analysing the full impacts of this proposal and we expect to be able to give you some numbers when we’ve finished. But as usual, at the moment we have more work on than we can handle.

The Guardian has a great article on the video, who’s behind it and why it is so ripe for a spoof. I’m tempted to do one myself!

In a slick attempt to undermine the US Environmental Protection Agency’s recent ruling that CO2 should now be classified as a pollutant because rising levels of the gas in the atmosphere will “endanger public health or welfare”, a former oil industry executive has stumped up some of his cash to pay for these adverts to be shown in Montana and New Mexico. The ultimate aim of the advert, though, is to derail the forthcoming vote in the Senate on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which now appears as if it might even impact on vital UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

In not so plain English? It’s a simple case of political brinksmanship.

Dear Big oil,

If you kill our climate change bill, we’ll act on the EPA’s declaration of CO2 as a pollutant and achieve the same aims of the ETS through regulation.

Love,

Barack

Dear Barack,

We’ve got more money than you.

Love,

Big oil

I look forward to the outcome of this particular battle. Rumour has it that the Senate version of the climate bill is even tougher than the one that went through the House. We’ll find out over night.

The Greens here in Aotearoa have debated the topic and written our population policy. It was no less difficult a debate for us either. To my knowledge, no other political party has the courage to front the issue.

There was a burst of media in February/March, as the Global Population Speak Out encouraged people like the BBC’s John Feeney and others to do just that – speak out.

The question for debate here is whether population growth is a direct driver of climate change. New research just published claims that the link is very weak indeed.

Dr David Satterthwaite, of the London-based policy research centre and think tank the International Institute for Environment and Development, analysed changes in population and in greenhouse gas emissions for all the world’s countries.

He found that between 1980 and 2005: Sub-Saharan Africa had 18.5 percent of the world’s population growth and just 2.4 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; the United States had 3.4 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.6 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; China had 15.3 percent of the world’s population growth and 44.5 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; Population growth rates in China have come down very rapidly – but greenhouse gas emissions have increased very rapidly; Low-income nations had 52.1 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.8 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; High-income nations had 7 percent of the world’s population growth and 29 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; Most of the nations with the highest population growth rates had low growth rates for carbon dioxide emissions while many of the nations with the lowest population growth rates had high growth rates for carbon dioxide emissions.

It makes your brain hurt to read it, but it does make it clear that the link is not as ‘obvious’ as one would assume.

While many of us take it as read that unfettered population growth is bad for the environment and that unfettered consumerism is bad for the environment, it seems that consumerism takes the rap for climate change.

What do you think?

That table, to the extent it was comprehensible at all, showed there would be a $415m cost to the taxpayer from now to 2013; a saving between 2013 and 2017; but numbers for later years were missing.

The full table occurs on page 33 of the explanatory note to the draft bill. The missing two columns, for 2020 and 2030, show a hefty annual cost to the Crown which by 2030 is estimated to be $2 billion every year. Isn’t that the same amount National can’t find the money for to put into the superannuation fund? It would also fund the completion of Auckland’s passenger rail network – in just one year – and take more cars off the road than the ETS will.

Your suggestions for what they should do with the $2 billion each year after that?

None of the ETS amendments have anything to do with reducing climate change emissions. They are about progressing foreign, trade and industrial growth policies – strengthening CER towards a full common market, and encouraging growth in energy intensive industries.

The measures in the Bill which are copied from the Australian draft legislation include:

• free allocations based on output  so that the more you grow your pollution the more free allocation you get;
• free allocation based on 90% or 60% of the industry average emissions per million dollars of output;
• the industry average is the Australasian average, not the world average;
• adopting the Australian definition of “trade-exposed”  which is what qualifies a firm for free allocation;
• a cap on the price of emissions until 2013 which is effectively $12.50 a tonne (Australia is A$10) when the world price is currently around $26
• a 2 year delay for agriculture to 2015 – the date Australia may bring in agriculture itself;
• phasing out free allocations to industry at Australia’s 1.3% a year rather than 8% in the existing NZ scheme;
• use of Australian data and benchmarking wherever possible.

Funny how this is so easy when aligning with an Australian standard on light bulb efficiency was so hard.

The real irony is that John Key’s cast off Minister, Maurice Williamson, gets the final say. I’ll bet John wasn’t thinking about this when he stashed the unwanted Minister over at Land Information!

Spelling mistake, eh? Let’s get it corrected and move on, a little better informed. Kudos to those courageous souls at Te Runanga O Tupoho, who have seen this project through over a very long time.

Raising benefits is the correct way to compensate for higher prices, rather than the Government’s proposal for a three year transition where the energy and transport sectors only have to purchase one tonne of emissions units for very two tonnes emitted by their products, effectively halving the price from $25/tonne to $12.50. A rise in the core benefit would achieve two things:

• it would give financial relief to the households who most need it, without subsidising those who don’t;
• it would not dilute the price signal  that makes it worth while to save energy and fuel.

So beneficiaries could take their higher benefit and use it to purchase more efficient appliances or vehicles in order to reduce fuel and power costs permanently.

It is not clear from the Government’s announcements so far whether the family assistance measures negotiated  between the Greens and the Labour Party as part of the 2008 ETS legislation will be allowed to stand. First, the billion dollar home insulation fund which is in the legislation but may be repealed by National’s bill, was to have offered 100% subsidy for low income households and a lesser subsidy for those who could have afforded to put up some of the money, and none for those on the highest incomes. When we worked with National to reinstate the scheme, it was a bottom line for them to have no income cap, so 100% funding for poor families was not affordable.

It was also part of the agreement last year, though not implemented through legislation, that every household would get a one-off payment in compensation for the higher power prices, and the CPI based benefit adjustment would occur in advance rather than in arrears. Those changes were to cost $180m but may not survive.

We argued with Labour for a general benefit rise last year, and failed. National should reconsider it this year.