Posted on 13-2-2003

Labour Party Bows To Greed

Huge anger as Labour Party capitulates to global greed. Two key players
comment.

Speech by Jeanette Fitzsimons in reply to the PM s Statement to Parliament,
10 February, 2003

No Confidence Motion:

I Move that the amendment be amended by omitting all the words after this
House has no confidence and substituting the following words:

in the Labour-led minority government because of its determination to allow
the release of genetically engineered organisms, exposing our health, our
environment and our economy to significant risks; because, despite there
being some positive elements in the Government s programme, its economic
policies fail to address poverty and inequality; because it has failed to
demonstrate any significant leadership in its programme of action on
sustainable development; fails to invest in our young people with a tax
funded tertiary education system, continues to perpetuate Treaty grievances
in areas such as Ngawha; and continues to erode New Zealand s sovereignty
by using New Zealand forces to support US led operations in the Gulf, by
trading away New Zealand s rights through secret GATS negotiations and by
supporting corporate globalisation policies which endanger our unique
identity.

As we sit here in the safety and comfort of this House all our debates and
deliberations are overshadowed by the horror of an imminent attack by the
world s mightiest military power on what has become an oppressed, poor and
suffering third world country. Yet while New Zealand - and the world -
talks of war, the Prime Minister remains fixated with abstract concepts of
growth.

What is not recognised is that this Government s No. 1 goal of 4%
cumulative annual growth in the size of the economy - a goal shared by all
western nations and many others as well - leads inevitably to resource
wars, of which this war to grab more oil is just one example.

What is missing from the Government s agenda today is a recipe for growth
in human and ecological wellbeing. Surely that is the task of government?
But instead it is replaced with an abstraction - growth in GDP. A number
has been placed on this abstraction - 4% a year. That number has over the
last three years become the overriding goal of this government.
Improvements in human and ecological wellbeing, reduction of poverty,
sustaining the planet, are now only to be allowed if they contribute to
meeting that 4%.

The transition has been very subtle. The incoming government in 1999 seemed
to have a genuine desire to work for real social and ecological goals.
Economic growth was a means, not an end. That is why the Greens supported
them on confidence and supply Now that has subtly changed so that 4% annual
cumulative growth in GDP is THE end, and everything else must serve it. GDP
is both too narrow and too generalised to measure anything useful. It does
not tell us if the poor are getting poorer and most of society's wealth is
held by a few. It does not tell us if we are paying more and more to
control pollution and crime rather than real goods and services. It does
not tell us if we are plundering the environment to produce short term
monetary returns.

This message, on which Green parties around the world were founded and on
which many eminent economists have written, has been distorted by those who
wish to ridicule it, including I m sad to say, by the Prime Minister and
the Minister of Finance. They claim that the Greens are anti-growth. We
are, of course, anti growth in poverty, pollution, war, working hours,
child abuse, diabetes, heart disease&.But these all contribute to the
growth you measure with the simplistic GDP ruler. The sort of growth all
other parties are striving for is increased by oil spills, smoking, car
crashes, murders, dog attacks, toxic wastes. Let me tell the House, then,
about a Green recipe for growth.

We need growth in education and training for our young people. We need
growth in preventative health care, low cost affordable housing, public
transport, the minimum wage, the use of rail and coastal shipping for
freight, solar wind and wood energy systems, a huge range of organic
growing technologies to reduce the use of pesticides and add export value
to our food products; cleaner production technologies in industry; waste
recycling and reuse; plantations of a much more diverse range of species,
including natives, for timber production; clean and employment rich ways of
processing the wall of wood.

These things will not happen as a result of a generalised goal to grow GDP.
They will only happen if they are targeted directly. Alongside this growth
we must accept there needs to be shrinkage in some industries. Fossil
fuels. Pesticides. Long distance trucking. Armaments. Tobacco. One-trip
containers. Products designed for obsolescence. There have been many
attempts to quantify the effects of continued growth in resource
consumption and pollution. They all show we are near the end of the line.
The recent WWF report calculates that at present growth rates humanity will
be using twice the biological capacity of the planet by 2050.

A 4% compound growth rate gives a doubling time of less than 18 years. So
unless we are very careful about what we allow to grow and what must
shrink, we are talking about twice our present demand for energy by 2020
and four times by 2038. Can we double our roading and sewage and water
systems in 18 years? And then quadruple it in another 18? Where will we put
them? Can we double our use of pesticides? Plastics? Steel? What will our
cities look like in 2020 with double the area of asphalt and what will they
look like in 2038 with quadruple the present paved area? What do we do with
the mountains of obsolete products and the myriad of useless plastic junk
that plagues our lives? Do we seriously not care whether our garden grows
weeds or vegetables - so long as it grows fast?

When you look at it like that it is patently absurd to focus solely on
growing the physical economy - and even services use stuff - twice as many
lattes is twice as much water and detergent to clean cups. Quality of life
is what matters - and on some level we all know that no amount of
televisions, fast food or even good coffee can substitute for clean air,
clean water, and safe food or for the sense that how we earn our livelihood
is also helping create a better world. Our system at present is eroding
our life support systems and people s basic sense of dignity that comes
from meaningful work.

If we target all the social and ecological improvements we need, and ensure
that all of them can occur within the limits of the biosphere to produce
resources and absorb wastes, we will have a sustainable development
strategy. This Government cannot have a Sustainable Development Strategy
because it has specifically made it subservient to that abstract goal of
4%. Instead the Prime Minister talks about sustainable growth, which means
growth that never stops, rather than growth that sustains human society and
ecological systems. So I was deeply disappointed but not at all surprised
to read the document that purports to be an action plan for Sustainable
Development, released at the end of January. It is basically a rewrite of
existing documents like the Growth and Innovation Strategy. It has no
timeframes, no targets, no practical steps and no plans to change the
culture of the public service to understand and practise sustainability. It
is light years behind other nations. And it is not even mentioned in the
Prime Minister s speech, which shows how important it is as a guide to this
year s programme.

The Minister says SD is about growth. It is not. Nowhere in the world is
that accepted. It is about meeting human needs while living within the
limits of the planet.

We are pleased to see some targeting of good growth in the Prime Minister s
statement. We welcome statements about making more students eligible for
the living allowance; help for low income families; more information and
opportunities for education about the Treaty; more funding for mental
health. But they are broad statements with no specifics and we will have to
wait to see if they mean anything real. There are so many aspects of our
wellbeing that will be denied the growth they need while the dominant goal
is just to make the economy 4% bigger every year.

The list is long. Of particular concern are the rights, protections and
opportunities that New Zealanders are being denied and will be further
denied as this government continues selling out this country's right to
control its own destiny to the transnational corporations that pull the
strings behind the scenes at the WTO.

The PM makes much of the success of the Film Fund in making triumphs like
'The Whale Rider' possible. Yet her government, secretly negotiating
further give-aways in the latest GATS round, may be about to give foreign
film companies the same access to state assistance for film making as New
Zealanders. That's what the National government in the 90s did when it
refused to make a GATS reservation on radio and television services. This
means that the current Labour government is not able to implement the
Labour Party's policy on local content quotas for broadcasting because it
would breach our GATS obligations.

The current round of GATS requests made of New Zealand includes the whole
category of Environmental Services, and this includes ''Nature,
biodiversity and landscape protection services''. In other words, foreign
corporations are seeking the right to replace our Department of
Conservation, and gain control of and profit from the care of our natural
heritage. This would be truly selling New Zealand's birthright - and for
what? Every time we give a foreign corporation the right to provide, and to
profit from providing, public good services (like water supply, education,
conservation, research and development, health, broadcasting, etc.) on an
equal footing with New Zealand public providers, we effectively de-skill
and disempower ourselves. We also worsen our economic situation, as these
corporations repatriate surpluses that were once available for
re-investment in New Zealand. We further narrow an economic skill base that
has already been shrunk by our obsession with exporting agricultural
commodities (because we can batter open markets for them via the WTO)
rather than diversifying into knowledge-based primary and secondary
production and producing quality rather than quantity, high value rather
than high volume exports.

Those crude commodity exports also come at too high an environmental and
social cost. The US Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, is not happy
about New Zealand moving to full food labelling, including GE content, as
it may constitute a non-tariff trade barrier. This is another example of
how the government's obsession with trade liberalisation at any cost is in
danger of depriving New Zealand of its sovereign rights, and New Zealanders
of important rights to know what they are eating and to make wise food
choices.

The Green Party will continue its efforts this year to prevent the release
of genetically engineered crops and animals into our environment, our farms
and our food supply. We will also continue to explain to the people of New
Zealand why it is that this Government cannot see the obvious economic
truth that NZ s future prosperity lies in supplying what the world market
wants, and that is GE free clean and natural food. As the Prime Minister
has just said, repositioning up the value chain as a supplier of highly
desired and high value goods and services. Except they are about to close
the door to that opportunity in October by lifting the moratorium on the
release of GMOs.

It cannot see it because in its pursuit of perpetual growth it has set its
sights on a free trade agreement with the US and it knows that a
precondition of that is free entry for US GE crops and products and no
labelling of GE foods.

The NZ public has made it clear in survey after survey that it does not
want our farming, our exports, our food or our environment compromised in
this way but it is non-negotiable for this government because of their
prior commitment to pleasing a foreign power. It was this desire to please
President Bush that committed us to joining a war against the people of
Afghanistan - a fruitless war in terms of its supposed objective, catching
Osama Bin Laden. Now the focus has shifted from Afghanistan and the
promised reconstruction is not happening - a destroyed country is largely
being left to rot while US adventurism turns elsewhere. The obsession not
just of NZ but of other countries and particularly the US with growth is
about to plunge us into yet another, and worse, war against an already
impoverished and suffering people. There are two reasons for that.

First, there is nothing like war to boost the economy. There is no activity
that wastes stuff as fast as war does. It wipes out buildings, water
supplies, farms, communications systems, ships and aircraft and uses up
weapons that are nearing their use by date. That stuff has to be replaced
and replacing it will grow the economy. It is no surprise that some
economists have concluded that the US economy cannot keep growing without
war. Secondly, I want to refer to a very insightful comment by US energy
guru Amory Lovins. He said If we had put our kids in energy efficient cars
in the seventies we would not be putting them in tanks today . He said it
in 1991 about the Gulf war but it is just as true now. The US economy,
serving 4% of the world s people uses a quarter of the world s oil. That is
not just because they are rich, but because they are wasteful. If US
vehicles had used state of the art energy efficiency the US would still
have been self-sufficient in oil and would have had no need to try to
control Middle East politics.

The so-called leader of the free world is a man who would rather accept
hundreds of thousands of dead children than drive a smaller car. Put as
starkly as that our moral compass ought to be clear. We should make no
mistake - this proposed invasion (I refuse to call it a war, which takes
two to fight) is about control of oil. It is about a refusal to adopt a
sane energy policy to use it more frugally and develop renewables. Why else
should the US treat Iraq so differently from North Korea? Even by the Bush
administration s own surreal standards, this sends a bizarre message to
rogue states - disarm, allow inspection, and be invaded, acquire weapons of
mass destruction and you ll be treated with kid gloves.

The brutality of Saddam against his own people and his possession of
horrendous weapons was simply not an issue when the US was funding and
arming him against Iran. What has changed? The weapons search and the
demand for evidence has become a charade. It must be intensely frustrating
for the US not to be able to say publicly to Saddam we know you have the
weapons because we have the receipts . John Pilger points out that the
reason the US wanted to edit Iraq s weapons declaration to the UN is that
it contains the names of 150 US, British and other western companies that
supplied Iraq with its nuclear, chemical and biological and missile
technology, many of them in illegal transactions.

So where should New Zealand stand?

Let us remember what is really going on here. A few men in a room on the
other side of the world have decided to drop 800 cruise missiles on Baghdad
in 48 hours. There are not 800 military targets in Baghdad - it is blanket
bombing, carpet bombing they are planning. The WHO has estimated that will
produce half a million injured, needing hospital treatment that will not be
available. And that s not counting the dead. More than half the Iraqi
population are under the age of 14. So that s a quarter of a million
primary school children and babies burnt, mangled and shattered. Those men
making the decision, and the pilots of the planes, will not have to look at
them and neither will our TV screens dare to show them. Instead people will
talk of collateral damage; unfortunate civilian casualties.

Those in this House who do not want to think graphically about what that
will mean should leave now as I intend to read you a sentence from John
Pilger s personal experience of a village bombed-out by B52s. The children
s skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh
that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. A small
leg had been so contorted by the blast that the foot seemed o be growing
from a shoulder. I vomited.

Those were not Arab children, they were Vietnamese. They were the reason
our Prime Minister and many of the present Labour Government marched in the
street against another US attack on a third world country. Where will they
stand now? I have been puzzled at the Prime Minister s stance so far. We
can be relieved she has not supported Howard s rush to war alongside Bush
and Blair but neither will she condemn it. We have not even seen a
condemnation of President Bush s stated intention to use first strike
nuclear weapons. She has behaved more as a media commentator, assessing the
likelihood of war, than as an actor in the drama, capable of influencing it.

It is not enough to say we will go with the UN. Even if the US can arm
twist another eight nations, four of whom themselves possess weapons of
mass destruction and four of whom may be dependent on the US for aid or
trade, that is not international endorsement, it is a breach of the UN
Charter and it does not make an immoral war moral. There is still no
concrete evidence the weapons exist. The sole grounds for attack seems to
be breach of the UN resolution in terms of co-operation with the weapons
inspectors. But Israel has been in serious breach of a UN resolution for a
very long time, and the five permanent members are themselves in breach of
UN disarmament resolutions but no one is suggesting invading any of them.

This afternoon Helen Clark has called on Iraq to move rapidly to co-operate
with the weapons inspectors to prevent war. That is fine. But why does she
not also call on the US to follow the spirit of the UN Charter? Why does
she not call on Israel to comply with UN resolutions? Why does she not call
on the nuclear states to comply with UN disarmament resolutions and the
Non-Proliferation Treaty? What sort of one-sided message is NZ sending?
Germany and France are using some imagination and trying alternatives. A
greatly stepped-up inspection backed up with UN peace-keeping troops has
the potential to disarm Saddam without killing the Iraqi people. We should
support their initiative.

What the US wants is our moral support for invasion. Whether the people we
send are military or medical it doesn t matter. Only strong and public
diplomatic efforts to prevent an attack and complete condemnation of it if
we fail will uphold the values on which Helen Clark and the Labour Party
campaigned in the Vietnam days. It would be great to see the Prime Minister
join us in the streets of most NZ cities and many countries of the world on
Saturday, when massive public protest about a brutal and unnecessary war
will erupt worldwide.

Let s hear it now from our Government: an unequivocal condemnation of this
proposed butchery, a refusal to have any part in it; a refusal to see it as
inevitable; a commitment to peace and justice, and a recognition that
unless we develop our economy in a sustainable way war will always be
inevitable.

ENDS


The Labour Government's changes to legislation covering genetic
modification (GM) is a capitulation under industry pressure that will
jeopardise New Zealand's future opportunities rather than preserving them.

The proposals turn a blind eye to growing scientific evidence that releases
cannot be controlled and of spreading GE contamination, as disclosed by the
UK government in the DEFRA report last December. The concept of
"conditional release" is presented as a useful change to the HSNO Act that
currently only allows for full release or full containment. In fact it is
more correctly a "fix up" to legitimate approvals ERMA has already given.
"Existing field trials are not sufficiently contained to prevent leaking.
We have seen examples of controls failing for canola trials, salmon eggs
escaping through mesh, and GE leakage from tamarillo trials," says Jon
Carapiet from GE-Free NZ in food and environment. "In effect the
conditional release category is what we have already - it's just that until
now it has been illegal," he says.

It is nonsense for the Minister to compare conditional release with
'clinical trials'. A fairer comparison would be with medical
experimentation undertaken without the consent of the patient. The examples
given of how Conditional Release would work also beggar belief, especially
the idea of " conditional release" of insects. There is little confidence
that the suggested approach will work. These include: that only one sex of
an organism be released (to prevent breeding), a limit on the number of
released organisms, and most incredibly: a limit on where the organism can
be released

Liability

Proposed 'civil liability' is also far too weak to moderate the biotech
industry and prevent uninsurable GM applications such as environmental
release. Government proposals include amendments to impose both a strict
civil liability and civil penalties regime in 'cases where an activity
breaches the law'. This will cover cases where, for example, the necessary
ERMA approvals had not been obtained or where conditions imposed by ERMA as
part of approval had deliberately not been complied with "The rules are a
jack-up that give industry an ideal defence: as long as they can say" we
obeyed ERMA's controls they are in the clear, and ERMA are not themselves
liable. Damage continues to be socialised onto the public," says Mr Carapiet.

Other changes to HSNO are equally concerning - ERMA's minimum criteria.

The proposals make mention of ERMA's minimum criteria for assessment but
these lack some fundamentals that are vital to protect our future and"
preserve options.' 'There are missing criteria for minimum standards: for
example the criteria of preventing the destruction of New Zealand's
existing " brand equity" which is our economic strength, or ERMA allowing
release that may not cause physical harm but by contamination effectively
deny peoples' rights to choose GE-free foods," says Mr Carapiet.

The cost of MAF

The cost of MAF ensuring that so-called controls are met is also of
concern. Once again the public carry the costs for controlling
private-interest applications of GE, and MAF are being set a task which is
impossible to fulfill. "The cost of the GE experiments in New Zealand are
likely to be huge. MAF are being set up to fail and it could all be a waste
of money as contamination under this regime will inevitably spread," says
Mr Carapiet.

Ministerial Call in powers

Changes to the call-in powers also unlikely to inspire public confidence.
The Minister is noteworthy for failing to see significant ethical and
spiritual issues raised by recent approvals of GE cow experiments. "The
government and their advisors are turning a blind eye to the general
economic threat from the release of GE (conditional or otherwise). They are
missing the `big picture' and following the biotech industry's tune," says
Mr. Carapiet.

More Secrecy blocking OIA information

The proposal also claims other amendments would clarify the rules
protecting confidential supporting information supplied in applications for
ERMA approval when these become the subject of an Official Information Act
(OIA) request. There is concern that a veil of secrecy will be dropped
under the guise of
commercial sensitivity. "Marian Hobbs comments that "There have been no
problems to date in this area'" but we know that is not true. Secrecy over
the composition of the Bt spray being used in Auckland against the Painted
Apple Moth is a prime example of the public being denied basic information
that would allow civil
society to scrutinise what is being done." "The hundreds of thousands of
New Zealanders who have been involved in the process over the last few
years are likely to feel betrayed by the proposals the governement has
announced today," said Jon Carapiet.