Posted on 24-7-2002

The Green View
by Green Party Co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons

Six years ago the Greens came to Parliament - at first three of us, then
seven. And things began to change. Issues were discussed that had never
been raised in the House before. The old ways of thinking and acting
practised by the old parties were challenged.

The logging of old growth forests on the West Coast became a regular matter
for debate as we interpreted to Parliament the views of those camped out in
the trees in a cold wet winter. And eventually the logging stopped.

We asked why ships carrying plutonium and high level nuclear wastes were
allowed through our so-called nuclear free zone and introduced amendments
to the Act to stop them. All other parties voted that down.

We asked why it was counted as a great success that the Crown balance sheet
had just grown by $3 billion dollars when that turned out to be made up of
student loan debt to the government and a revaluation of state houses
because they could now earn market rents!

We raised issues of dioxin before most of Parliament could spell it and
linked environmental contamination with ill health.

We asked why we were spending $64 million a year to prosecute adults and
give them criminal records for personal use of a drug but doing so little
to break the crime rings that peddle drugs to children and spending so
little on keeping children safe from drugs.

We asked why so many homes were cold, damp and uninsulated and why NZ
wastes so much energy and we introduced and had passed legislation to
change that.

In the last term we have asked why we are letting a foreign owned company
run down our rail system, close services and fail to maintain tracks and we
put forward a proposal to regain control of our rail network, invest in it
and use it to reduce energy use and get big trucks off the roads.

We ve asked why we have only ever had a roading strategy when we need a
sustainable land transport strategy and over the summer we negotiated such
a strategy with the Government, including ring fenced funding for public
transport, alternatives to roading, cycling and walking facilities.

We have brokered agreements across the House to amend the new Health
legislation so that it will not be thrown out and replaced when there is a
change of government and we ve got agreement from all parties to a sensible
change to the Rating Act that is now saving money for ratepayers across the
country.

And we have constantly and repeatedly asked why there is such a rush to
allow the release of GE into our farms and our environment when non-one
wants to buy GE food and it will destroy our main marketing advantage and
our ability to sell at a premium the clean, green, GE Free food the rest of
the world is crying out for.

Our MPs are seven people who are all experienced campaigners for issues we
believe in. We have stuck to the issues and not wasted time on petty point
scoring and mudslinging and Parliament has not been the same since. These
changes are happening all over the world as Green parties grow in strength.
Just last Saturday the Tasmanian Greens scored 18.4% in the state elections
and increased their representation from 1 to 4 or 5 in a Parliament of 25.
That result is the highest by a Green party anywhere in the world but in
Belgium, in Germany, in Sweden and throughout Europe, Green is the colour
of the future.

Over the six years I ve been in Parliament I ve seen two coalitions formed
and the smaller party destroyed in each case. We have learned the
parliamentary system through holding the balance of power and supporting
the Labour led government on confidence and supply. Thirty pieces of
legislation including key issues like Employment Relations and ACC have
passed only because of our support but we have also voted against some of
Labour s bills - notably the so-called Electoral Integrity Bill. I think
the sight of a Deputy PM leaving his party while still claiming to be its
Parliamentary leader have shown we were right when we said that couldn t
work. So we are in a good position now to add to our team of experienced
MPs a new intake of community based activists, all expert in their fields.
Let's look at what that team could add to a new government. Clean air and
water. Children. Education. Transport - rail. Eco-tax reform.

With all this you couldn't possibly say we were a single issue party. But
that's the way we have been portrayed, because we have said a continuation
of the moratorium on commercial GE release is a necessary condition for
support of, or participation in, any government. Over four years now we
have educated and built awareness of the risks and benefits of the genetic
revolution. We have argued that genetic science and even genetically
engineered organisms in a contained lab can benefit us with new knowledge,
new diagnostic tools and new medicines. But that transgenic organisms are
too unpredictable to release into the environment or our farming from where
they can never be recalled. Because these new crops and animals can have
unexpected and dangerous side effects the world does not want to eat them
and is prepared to pay a good premium to get food that is not contaminated
by them. The formation of the Sustainability Council has shown that this is
not a fringe issue. Their main issue is the damage to our markets and our
economy if we gave up our ability to produce what the world really wants.
Their scientist, professor Garth Cooper, has said that, as a previous
member of an ERMA committee, he was not confident that ERMA was equipped to
protect New Zealand.

Labour's position rests on their assertion that we have the strictest
regulatory system in the world. That belief has been seriously challenged
by Corngate. Whatever you believe about what was in the corn, the record
shows more than a month of official chaos and confusion. The eventual
decision was to resolve the issue by setting an allowable level of GE
contamination in any batch of imported seed while allowing it to be called
GE Free. What is less well known is that the Government itself ordered no
testing. They relied on the testing ordered by the seed company and when
the testing lab told them it had more test results and that it believed it
had discovered the definite presence of GE, the Government did not even
ask for those results. This is what enabled it to reassess the results it
did have and decide that Genescan, the internationally recognised testing
company was wrong about what it had found; ERMA s assessment was wrong; the
Ministry for the Environment s assessment was wrong. It also enabled it to
give us a huge sheaf of papers last week in response to our request for all
documents, which did not include positive evidence of contamination -
because they had never bothered to ask for it.

The Corngate story has faded from the news, leaving the lasting impression
of the PM s incandescent anger and categorical denials that there was any
contamination or any cover up. But the government response has raised more
questions than it has answered. In particular, it makes me very, very
afraid of allowing this regulatory system to handle arrangements for
release of GMOs.

A few weeks ago the only real question for this election was whether Labour
would have the numbers to govern alone or whether they would need to work
with the Greens. But Labour has campaigned to destroy the vision many had
of a Labour-Green government with its extraordinary position that having
just one policy that we insisted must be part of such a government would
rule out a coalition. In the process they have seriously damaged their own
poll ratings as well as ours and created confusion among voters who are now
casting their votes all over the place as they seek a sharing of power that
will give some balance to Labour.People didn't vote for MMP in 1996 so they
could end up with an homogenised government where everyone agreed all the
time with the Leader. They voted for sharing power, for consultation, for
more voices round the Cabinet table so that a major party could never again
do what Labour did in the eighties or National did in the nineties. In a
desperate bid for absolute power Labour called us pathetic, fringe,
Luddites, anti-science, against growth and unready for Government and paid
thousands of dollars to tell the country our policies will lose jobs
without ever being challenged to say how. We have not returned the name
calling but we have refused to budge on our one bottom line.

Tomorrow you will see ads in the main dailies funded by the anonymous big
business backers of the Life Sciences Network. They will feature the young
talented scientist, Margie Gilpin, whose work was destroyed in the Lincoln
lab break in last January. They will imply that the Greens somehow
supported this stupid action and that we would damage the careers of such
people. What they won t tell you is that Dr Gilpin s work could continue
under the Greens policy. It was in a contained lab and although it used GE
processes in the lab it was not designed to lead to the release of a
transgenic organism. It is just one example of the many uses of genetic
science which can remain contained in the lab. The ad will refrain from
quoting my press release after the attack which condemned the break in and
will not raise the interesting question of how an outsider could have got
past the considerable security and why the police didn t really bother to
investigate and still have no idea who was behind it. Particularly, the ad
won't tell you about the many scientists whose funding has been withdrawn
because of the rush to do mainly GE work. It won't tell you of the bright
future our scientists could have if we positioned ourselves as leaders in
the science that underpins sustainability and which could make the clean
green brand a reality. I want to know who is funding these ads designed to
attack us - is it the multinational corporations who have the most to gain
from release of GE in NZ or is it government money sourced from those Crown
Research Institutes who support and largely make up the Life Sciences
Network? AgResearch, Crop & Food Research, Forest Research, HortResearch
are all listed members.

Voters have punished Labour for their vehement attacks on their most likely
partner in government and Labour support has crashed from a high of 56% in
one poll to a low of 41% yesterday. The kaleidoscope has been shaken and
other small parties are now being considered as coalition partners. Let s
look at their record.

Both Peter Dunne s fundamentalist Christian party and NZ First have
consistently voted with National over the last six years. They have both
voted for a less precautionary position on GE even than Labour. Peter Dunne
voted against more than sixty bills in the last parliament and voted
against the Government on every confidence motion. It's hard to guess what
price United would extract for its support for Labour, as they are very
light on actual policy but their moral conservatism is unlikely to sit well
with Labour . We know Winston extracts a very high price for his support
which is why he has been Labour's last choice in the House in this term. In
return for supporting Labour s fund to invest our super savings in the
overseas stock market and the anti-defection bill Winston demanded and got
the badly-drafted pre-Christmas bill on making areas alcohol free. What
would Winston squeeze from Labour in return for his support? After all, he
s campaigned this election on just three policies. Will Labour agree to cut
off the infusion of new blood that immigration brings to this country? Will
it remove all reference to the Treaty from legislation? Will it tackle
crime by building the dozens of new jails necessary to house all the people
Winston wants to put away? Any deal between Winston and Labour must
inevitably wreck Winston's credibility - or Labour's. More likely, both
would be irreparably damaged.

Which brings me back to the credibility of the Green Party. No-one should
be fooled by Labour s spin that the moratorium would stay in place and the
Greens would bring the government down in 14 months time. Given their
choice of partners, they will find it very easy to extend the moratorium
and run a co-operative full term government. It doesn t cost any money, it
doesn t stop any NZ research and the only people likely to have a GE
organism ready for release in the next three years are the multinationals.

We have worked with Labour before without agreeing with them on everything
and we can work with them again. The pundits have devoted much time in this
campaign to looking at the permutations of which parties could work in
coalition with each other but one thing is certain. Labour and the Greens
are the only possible combination that can form a Government that will
deliver policies that improve our quality of life, while preserving our
environment. The spectre of a right wing coalition forming the next
government of New Zealand has become a distressing possibility over the
last few days. It would be a tragedy if Labour s desperate grab for
absolute power backfired and made this unholy alliance of the right a reality.

We hope Labour - and the people of New Zealand - realise the danger before
it is too late.