In 1988, our National Housing Commission declared, “New Zealand does not have the huge, insoluble problems of homelessness and substandard housing which confront many other nations.”

This was the final report of the then disestablished commission, which to that point had reported detailed data every five years to keep the country and policy-makers informed about what we had once considered the foundation of stable society — a home for New Zealanders to call their own.

I was born six years after that report, and in those years and across my lifetime, deliberate political choices — specifically, political choices by people sitting in Parliament — have shredded that once-guaranteed housing dignity and stability.

• READ MORE: Greens’ rental price control policy: Davidson rubbishes criticisms
• Green Party’s pledge to renters: What you need to know
• The Green Party housing policy

They traded it for a game of Monopoly, which, the pecuniary interests register tells us, also happens to disproportionately benefit around half of the “representatives” in there with interests in more than one property (notably, approximately just 2 percent of the general population are landlords).

This dire situation is the direct consequence of political decisions, and it is disproportionately hurting the 1.4 million renters in this country that our Parliament, by majority, and as an overwhelming majority of comfortable homeowners, continues to structurally disempower.

In spite of this, we have made some slow progress. In 2017, the Greens worked with Labour to introduce Healthy Homes Standards and a slate of amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, removing no-cause evictions and allowing renters to take claims to the Tenancy Tribunal anonymously.

Some standards, we obviously agreed, were better than nothing. A set of rules means it’s clear how a game should be played, but those rules become pretty meaningless if there’s no consistent referee monitoring and enforcing them.

Compliance not tracked
Unfortunately, that’s what the Healthy Homes Standards have become. My parliamentary written questions last year showed the government isn’t tracking how many private rentals are compliant.

It doesn’t know how many landlords and property managers have decided to self-exclude their properties from compliance. It has no tabs on the cottage industry of companies that have cropped up to verify these standards, let alone the variance in their approaches.

This leaves the third of New Zealanders who rent left to shoulder the burden of enforcing these basic rules which are supposed to protect them.

It’s a funny thing that whenever the Greens mention renters, we’re immediately shouted down and told that the problem is, somehow, that landlords aren’t given enough free rein. That the solution is more commodification of basic human rights.

Ironically, this is exactly what the National Housing Commission warned against back in 1988, that shifting of responsibility from the state to the private sector would, “add little to the total housing supply while allowing private landlords and property speculators to make even higher charges for a non-expanding supply of housing… rais[ing] the purchase price of land and rented property”.

We now know, viscerally, how right they were. Whatever metric you choose, we have the most expensive housing in the world.

The Accommodation Supplement, once rationalised in the state-housing sell-off to help support lower income New Zealanders pushed into the private sector, is now paid out to the tune of $2 billion a year with evidence showing it primarily serves to just bid up rental prices and effectively subsidise private landlords.

Special tax preferential
We remain one of the only countries in the developed world that continues to provide special tax treatment and preference to properties, incentivising the flow of capital into unproductive property speculation, or what University of Auckland researchers called, “a politically condoned, finance-fuelled casino”.

In less than 40 years, political decisions have not only made housing one of the major drivers of poverty and inequality in this country, but one of the major determinants of both physical and mental health, not to mention education achievement and school attendance.

So, who pays the cost?

Most immediately, it’s the 1.4 million renting New Zealanders, who Statistics New Zealand tells us spend more of their income on older, smaller, mouldier, lower quality housing.

Renting is no longer a transient state — unless you’re talking about the literal transience which sees renters in this country maintaining their tenancies for, on average, just 16 months at a time.

Almost all of us will know families with children and friends in their 30s and 40s who are flatting. A quarter of retirees don’t own their own home.

This didn’t happen overnight. It happened within a generation of political decisions that sold our human right to housing to the highest bidder.

As depressing as that may be, it makes clear that the status quo is not an inevitability. It can and must change if we want any hope of a fairer society.

The good news is the Greens have unveiled our plan to fix it all.

Chlöe Swarbrick is the Green Party MP for Auckland Central. This article was originally published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

A comprehensive new report by The Aotearoa Circle’ s Sustainable Finance Forum looks at how New Zealand can reform its financial system to help deal with the climate crisis.

Auckland University of Technology academics Dr David Hall and Alec Tang have been on the technical working group for the past two years that has helped to shape the Sustainable Finance: Roadmap for Action 2020 and its recommendations.

“Climate finance is one of the most neglected, yet most important, drivers of the transition to a low-emissions economy,” said Dr Hall.

• READ MORE: Sustainable Finance: Roadmap for Action 2020

The roadmap is an initiative involving major banks, insurers and other financial sector players. It builds on an earlier report co-authored by Dr Hall, Climate Finance Landscape for Aotearoa New Zealand, which was launched at AUT in April 2017 by the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw.

That was New Zealand’s first report on domestic climate finance, and several recommendations have since been implemented, including the establishment of the $100 million Green Investment Finance Ltd, a publicly-backed green investment fund, and the adoption of the mandatory climate risk reporting and disclosure requirements for all major New Zealand businesses.

The new Roadmap for Action 2020 takes this to the next level, publishing a series of commitments by financial sector actors to achieve more sustainable outcomes through their activities.

“Collectively, we need to change the way investment and lending decisions are made, so that environmental, social and economic factors are integral and negative impacts, both immediately and over the long term, are avoided,” the report says.

Dr Hall said the Sustainable Finance Forum sought to achieve this through changing mindsets, transforming the financial system, and financing the transformation.

Republished from AUT News.

Joe Biden is almost certain to be the next president of the United States, ushering in a welcome return to engagement with the climate crisis after four years of denial. Great news for the Pacific.

In contrast with Donald Trump’s premature declaration of victory and desperate calls to “stop the count”, Biden is modelling patience, with around 10 percent of ballots still to be tallied.

But he let his confidence in the eventual outcome show with a tweet promising his White House will rejoin the Paris Agreement, 77 days after the official exit of the United States, reports Climate Change News.

• READ MORE: Biden to address US, takes slim lead in Georgia, Pennsylvania
• US networks pull the plug on Trump’s live address due to ‘lies’
• Landslide that wasn’t: What the elections say about America – by Marwan Bishara
• Other Asia Pacific Reports on the US elections

That is the easy part. Much harder will be delivering emissions cuts, after disappointing Senate results for the Democrats.

They could yet scrape a majority — subject to a January run-off in Georgia — but do not have the 60 seats needed to pass a framework climate law.

A Biden administration will have to get creative to submit a credible 2030 climate target to the UN next year, as required under Paris.

Biden made climate change a cornerstone of his vision to recover the American economy from the impacts of covid-19, with a US$2 trillion plan to drive green investments and create jobs, reports Chloé Farand of Climate Change News.

Blue wave never materialised
But the blue wave Democrats hoped for in the Senate has failed to materialise, dampening Biden’s prospects of passing climate legislation.

While Democrats are confident they will retain control of the House of Representatives, the Senate election is down to the wire, with both sides having 48 seats as of Friday.

The contest is so tight, the Senate majority could be determined on January 5 in a hotly contested special election for at least one, and maybe two seats in Georgia.

Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 5, 2020

Even with a slim majority in the Senate, Biden would need some Republican support to pass climate legislation. Under US Senate rules, policy changes beyond spending and taxation require at least 60 of the 100 senators to agree to move the issue to a vote.

Bipartisan backing will be required to introduce a clean electricity standard, for example, which would mandate a transition to zero carbon electricity generation by 2035 and help deliver on a campaign promise. So would a carbon pricing mechanism.

“Control of the Senate will have a huge impact on climate policy in the US,” said Jamie Henn, cofounder of US environmental group 350.org.

“There’s little hope for passing sweeping climate legislation if [Republican majority leader] Mitch McConnell keeps his claws on the gavel. There’s a lot the president can do through executive authority, but to really rise to the scale of this crisis, we need the votes in the Senate.”

Without congressional backing, “a sweeping economic regeneration policy… will not happen in the next two years,” said Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.

“Then we have to look at it as a stage process.”

Republished with permission from Climate Change News.

The Green Party say voters have given a strong signal they are valued in the New Zealand government, and they have ambitions for executive roles in the next one.

With special votes still to be counted in yesterday’s general election, the party has 180,224 votes or 7.6 percent of votes nationally, which wins them nine list MPs as well as the hotly contested third place for party vote share.

It is a spot that is typically a scramble between the smaller parties, and can bestow the possibility of negotiating a key place in a coalition government.

• READ MORE: ‘ We will … govern for every New Zealander’, says Ardern after Labour victory
• Jacinda Ardern promised ‘transformation’
• More NZ election stories
• Preliminary election results

However Labour’s sweeping victory with 64 seats gives the party enough seats to govern alone.

Green co-leader Marama Davidson told RNZ’s Guyon Espiner she is very happy with the outcome, which should give them 10 MPs.

In 2017 the party got 6.2 percent of the party vote.

Electorate win in Auckland Central
This year’s one electorate win was for Chlöe Swarbrick, number three on the party’s list, who polled better on election day than polls had showed in the lead-up, and won the Auckland Central seat off the opposition National Party.

She beat Labour’s Helen White by 492 votes, however Labour won that electorate’s party vote. The only other Green Party member to have ever held an electorate seat was Jeanette Fitzsimons, for Coromandel in 1999.

Swarbrick’s win means another Green candidate from further down the list is headed for Parliament.

“I’m really ecstatic, completely stoked. We were hoping to stay above five percent, because historically smaller first term government parties do not achieve that,” Davidson says.

“Not only have we defied the results… but we’ve increased our support to 10 MPs. [We have] three new incredible MPs, I’m completely ecstatic.”

The party’s list number eight is Teanau Tuiono (Palmerston North), who Davidson says will be their first Pasifika MP.

Number nine is LGBTQI and Māori activist Elizabeth Kerekere (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti); and anti-poverty campaigner Ricardo Menéndez March (Maungakiekie) is the number 10.

Special votes crucial
Davidson said special votes would show whether they could boost their number to 11, as well.

She said the party would meet together today to discuss what they wanted next; whether they wanted to negotiate with Labour to try to form a coalition government again, what the crucial factors are that they wanted on the table, and what would be the deal-breakers for them.

Davidson said that despite the strength of Labour’s position, she believed New Zealanders would still prefer a coalition.

“People do not want to see just one political party in full power,” she said.

“They totally gave huge [numbers] to Labour, that’s clear, but I think it’s been clear in the polls and the surveys done right up to the election, and the fact Greens swung an extra 2 percent on top of what we were polling – it’s again a clear mandate for not just one party to hold all the reigns of power.”

Davidson said they did not yet have any appointment set up to meet with Labour, and today the Greens would hold internal discussions about what their next steps might be.

“I am being upfront with our strategy here: [talk of a coalition] will absolutely come back to the members, on how well we can see our long term future going into the next term; whether or not we are able to achieve our work programme, our priorities in climate, inequality and environment.

Roles to progress Greens programme
“Whether or not we achieve roles that can progress that work programme. That is what… agreement will come down to for our members. And we won’t be able to pre-empt that for our members.”

In the outgoing government New Zealand First won 7.2 percent of the party vote, but crucially that gave them the ability to swing the balance of power between a right or left -leaning government. They played that position into gaining the deputy Prime Minister role for party leader Winston Peters, three positions in cabinet, an outside cabinet a ministerial and an under-secretary role.

By contrast, the Greens came away poorer: three ministerial positions (including Minister for Climate Change, Minister for Women and Minister of Conservation), and an under-secretary role, but all outside of cabinet.

“Outside of the executive in the last term, the Greens in Government achieved more action for climate change than 30 years,” Davidson said.

But this time around, can they hope for Labour to consider their MPs for ministerial roles or cabinet positions?

“We would want to see roles that would progress [our work] programme, and yes, it would involve some ministerial responsibility at that level,” she said.

“Across all of our MPs, we will be looking at aligning potential roles with the work programme, as a whole not just down to one person.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

When New Zealand Health Minister Chris Hipkins recently quipped that the Green Party is “to some extent the conscience of the Labour Party” he was not simply referring to polls suggesting Labour may need the Greens’ support to form a government.

Hipkins was also suggesting Green policies help keep Labour honest on environmental and social issues. So, what difference has the Green Party really made to New Zealand’s political debate?

Drawing on a study of 57 million words spoken in Parliament between 2003 and 2016, our analysis shows the presence of a Green party has changed the political conversation on economics and environment.

• READ MORE: Ardern’s government and climate policy: despite a zero-carbon law, is New Zealand merely a follower rather than a leader?

In the recent Newshub leaders’ debate, both Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins agreed that “growing the economy” was the best way to respond to the economic crisis driven by covid-19.

Their responses varied only on traditional left-right lines. Ardern argued that raising incomes and investing in training would grow the economy. Collins suggested economic growth should be advanced by increasing consumer spending through temporary tax cuts.

By contrast, Green parties in New Zealand and elsewhere have long questioned the impact of relentless growth on the natural resources of a finite planet.

Green thinking is informed by ecological economics, which aims to achieve more sustainable forms of collective prosperity that meet social needs within the planet’s limits.

The language of economic growth
The impact of this radically different view can be observed in New Zealand parliamentary debates. When MPs from National and Labour used the word “economy” they commonly talked about it in the context of “growth” (“grow”/“growing”/“growth”).

On average, National MPs said “growth” once every four mentions of “economy”. Labour MPs said “growth” once every six mentions.

Green MPs used “growth” once every 20 mentions of “economy”. When they did mention growth it was primarily to question the idea and to present alternative ideas about a sustainable economy.

Our analysis of the most recent parliamentary term (2017-2020) is ongoing.
However, while Labour has recently introduced “well-being” into discussions of the economy, it is striking how the covid crisis has reinvigorated the party’s traditional focus on growth economics.

The research also shows Green MPs mention “economy” primarily in relation to the environment, climate change, sustainability and people, rather than in relation to growth. Their distinct focus is on the connections between the economic system and the environment.

From Labour to the Greens
Despite criticism that the Greens have not focused enough on “environmental” concerns, Green MPs used words related to environment, climate and conservation more frequently than Labour or National MPs over the 13-year study period.

For example, after controlling for the number of words spoken by each party’s MPs in parliament, Green MPs mentioned “climate change” four times more than National or Labour MPs.

This represents something of an historical shift. Atmospheric warming and CO₂ were first talked about in parliament by Labour MP Fraser Coleman in 1979. And Labour’s Geoffrey Palmer was the first prime minister to place climate change on parliament’s agenda.

But it has been the Greens who have maintained the momentum, using their speaking opportunities in the House to hold governments to account, including progressing legislation on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019.

Making women’s voices heard
The Green Party has also made a difference to who speaks. By institutionalising gender balance in their leadership and party organisation, and in the way they select their party list for each election, the Greens have consistently elected a higher proportion of female MPs than the other parties.

Historically, female Green MPs have contributed significantly to debates and policy action on inequality, child poverty, Treaty of Waitangi issues, gender equality and action on domestic violence.

This is significant. Analysis of political language globally, particularly on social media, has shown that politicians who identify as women and people of colour are subject to far higher rates of verbal abuse than their male counterparts. This is also the experience of female MPs in New Zealand, including women representing the Greens.

‘Quantity of life or quality of life?’ A 1972 election ad from the Values Party, political ancestor of the Greens.

A history of disruption
Minority parties often struggle to maintain their identity in coalition arrangements with larger parties, but the Greens have retained a unique position in New Zealand.

In 1972, the Values Party became the first “green” party to contest a national election anywhere in the world. Former Values activists, including the first Green Party co-leaders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, were later successful in taking the Greens into Parliament.

The language of green politics in New Zealand and the questioning of growth can be traced back to these origins. Language and words are significant as vehicles for articulating new ideas and provoking transformative action.

Linguistic analysis therefore shows how influential the Green Party has been in presenting alternatives to the idea that economic growth based on unlimited use of New Zealand’s natural resources is a sustainable option.

If Chris Hipkins is correct and the Greens are Labour’s conscience, it is because
they have effectively disrupted a historical near-consensus among the major parties that economic growth is the only driver of prosperity.

Dr Geoffrey Ford is lecturer in digital humanities and a postdoctoral fellow in political science and international relations, University of Canterbury; Dr Bronwyn Hayward, is professor of politics, University of Canterbury, and Dr Kevin Watson, is dean of arts and associate professor of linguistics, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

By Lucy Handford

New Zealand’s first fully battery powered electric bus hit the road today, thanks to a joint initiative by Tranzit Group, EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority) and Auckland University of Technology.

The 35-seater bus became part of AUT’s fleet, servicing the university’s North-City Campus and South-City Campus bus routes.

As well as providing sustainable transport for hundreds of students every day, it will operate as a mobile research tool providing vital data to understand the economics and performance of electric buses on New Zealand roads.​

“Through the government’s Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund which encourages innovation and investment in low emission vehicles, EECA is supporting this demonstration of EV technology to create awareness and influence change in the sector,” said EECA’s Transport Development Manager, Elizabeth Yeaman.

The $738,500 joint funding from EECA and Tranzit Group has covered the cost of the development and build, charging infrastructure, and the upskilling of Kiwi engineers, meaning New Zealand’s first battery electric bus is also built on home soil.

Kiwi Bus Builders in Tauranga constructed the body of the bus, with electric engines and chassis built by Times Electric Group in China.

Tranzit Group’s Managing Director Paul Snelgrove said the project was an important step in the evolution of bus transport in New Zealand.

Green fleet viability
“There are more than 9500 large diesel buses in New Zealand and, in order to replace these with a greener fleet, we need to demonstrate the performance and viability of electric buses,” he said.

As well as providing a sustainable transport option, AUT will be researching the potential impact of EV buses on the electricity grid and gathering other key information.

This includes energy consumption, battery capacity, battery charging rate, duration and number of trips, mileage (km), average speed, charging duration and electricity consumption, regeneration and braking data.

PhD students Jun Su and Syed Muhammad Arif under supervision of Professor Tek Lie will be using the data collected to investigate the impacts of the bus.

“We’re proud to be the first university in New Zealand to launch a bus with zero tailpipe carbon emissions.

As well as a green transport option, this bus will provide the transport sector with vital usage, impact and environmental data and research to help shape the way forward,” said AUT’s associate director (facilities support) Sonia Simpson.