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.
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