The Green campaign launch
The Greens’ campaign launch got a lot of positive coverage yesterday despite my pessimistic concerns before the weekend. And in some ways the contrast to Winston Peters and NZ First’s launch at the same time seemed to help emphasis the clean Green brand.
The Herald has focused on the growing number of celebrities endorsing the Green campaign. Meanwhile the Dominion Post noted that Greens voters are not the stereotype you might expect, as typified by the MCing from Outrageous Fortune star Robyn Malcolm. Malcolm pithily summed up the new Green economics; no other party can respond to our future needs until they start talking about unsustainable grown and consumerism:
“The one simple provocation I have is just use less. In the midst of this rampant consumerism it is a joy to think in terms of using less, buying less, less in all things except for wine, shoes, chocolate and sex.”
TVNZ and TV3 both had coverage of the events too.
Jeanette’s speech talked to those people who are thinking green thoughts and doing green things and now considering for the first time voting Green:
The Prime Minister says this election is about trust. OK, I’ll sign up to that. Who do you trust to work for real sustainability, not just greenwash? Mother Coke and Father Pepsi, or the Real Green Thing? Who do you trust to take urgent action on climate change and to prepare for rising oil prices? To get our cities moving with a functioning public transport system before they build yet more motorways? Who do you trust to give you the right to know where your food comes from? Who do you trust to keep New Zealand GE free? Who do you trust to invest in preventative health care rather than waiting till you are sick?
Meanwhile Russel focused on the need for the voters to vote with our 900,000 nion-voting children and young adults in mind, both what they need now and what future we will leave them:
In a time when Labour and National are competing as to who has the longest motorway, who has the audacity to call out ‘the emperor has no clothes’ - oil will never be cheap again?
In a time when Labour and National are competing as to who can waste more billions on motorways; who has the audacity to say to the Road Transport Forum we don’t care that you’re funding the Labour and National party election campaigns, we need better public transport.
Only the Green Party has the audacity to say the emperor has no clothes, that building an empire on oil is like building an empire on sand.
Only the Green Party will build a decent public transport system now. We will make it safe to bike and walk to work and school.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
>>In a time when Labour and National are competing as to who has the longest motorway, who has the audacity to call out ‘the emperor has no clothes’ - oil will never be cheap again?
Audacity, indeed.
Oil isn’t a problem, Russel. We’ve solved it. Time you did what you demand of others - change your antiquated thinking
BetterPlace.com
October 6th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
BP, that’e even sillier than me saying “We’ve solved it. The bicycle is the answer”.
Read the words at the top of the page. “Better Place is working to build an electric car network…” - i.e. it hasn’t happened yet.
And I can’t see any of the near minimum wage Farmers retail workers whose picket in support of their wages claim I’ve just been on over my lunchbreak affording to buy one to get to and from work any time in the foreseeable future.
Electric cars may be a part of the solution BP, but they are not and will not be the solution. There will have to be many solutions, depending on place, purpose and individual circumstance of commuter travel.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Am I the only person who does not know who this Malcolm shelia is?
October 6th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Yes Bro, you are. See WikiPedia.
And BP - to think that the forthcoming lack of oil isn’t a problem is a strange statement. The world divides into two camps - those who think there isn’t going to be a lack of oil and thus there is no forthcoming problem, and those who believe there is going to be a lack of oil, and we are in schtuck because there simply wont be the time for an orderly transfer to the post oil society. You seem to be the sole representative of the third way. I do hope you’re right.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Yay!!!!!! Some one who plays make believe for a living endorsing the green party.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Ahh…has played roles in Shortland Street and Outrageous fortune, no wonder I have never heard of her.
Kiwi TV = Crap.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
>> i.e. it hasn’t happened yet
Neither has you public transport network.
We need to consider a variety of options, including public transport, but the rhetoric in the post above, such as “who can waste more billions on motorways” suggest you’ve already arrived at the conclusion that more roading is unnecessary.
>>There will have to be many solutions, depending on place, purpose and individual circumstance of commuter travel.
On that we agree. I just wish the rhetoric was a little more balanced, and a lot less religious.
>>You seem to be the sole representative of the third way. I do hope you’re right.
It’s blindingly obvious what is going to happen.
If the price of oil rises, cars will be powered by alternative means. Not all oil use must be displaced for the price to stabilise or go down, only some of it. If the oil price doesn’t rise, we’ll continue much as we are.
The technology is not a pipe dream. It is already here.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I agree Shortland Street is crap BB. Outrageous Fortune is in another class altogether, and is very, very funny (and I don’t think that is just because I live in West Auckland).
October 6th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Celeb endorsements - yech! Gets attention I guess, but effectively meaningless. Hopefully no one votes on the basis of who has the best celebrities…
October 6th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I thought playing the NZFirst & Green launches back to back was hilarious.
On the one hand, we have an egomaniac with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer - “I did it my way” - preaching to what appeared to be an old-peoples retirement village.
On the other, we have “but think of the children!” emotive marketing, also with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, accompanied by acoustic guitars and, of course, lots of rug-rats.
The Green do looked like the more fun gig, I must say.
I’m not expecting the others to be any better. Hopefully they’ll be just as funny!
October 6th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Perhaps the greens could get Britney Spears to release their mental health policy!!
October 6th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Mahatma Gandhi
October 6th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
If you’d played “Monkey Gone To Heaven” you would have had me. Now there’s a killer environmental song, not this fey hippy-folk nonsense….
October 6th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I have a feeling that climate change and Green issues just became irrelevant given the nature of the govt accounts.
This election is now all about the economy, can you TRUST the fools who put us in the situation we now face or do you throw them out on their ear for gross mismanagement of our economy.
October 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
And vote in more of the same under a different name.
October 6th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
>>I have a feeling that climate change and Green issues just became irrelevant given the nature of the govt accounts.
Yep. People will be voting with their wallets until at least 2018.
What a mess the left have put us in….again….
October 6th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Some good idea’s over at Kiwiblog on how to get ourselves out of the mess, I particularity like this one
“10% GST
10% company tax
Flat 10% income tax
First $10k of income tax-free
10k tax credit per child
10% excise tax on petrol and diesel (GST component also used for roading)
Minimum wage reduced to $10 an hour (yep)”
October 6th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
10% capital gains, actually make that 10% on ALL forms of income and you might have a sensible tax system.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Come to think of it I might not drop GST at all but I am in favour of a capital gains tax on investment properties but NOT on the family home.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Watch out, that’s Green policy big bro!
October 6th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
- “Only the Green Party has the audacity to say the emperor has no clothes, that building an empire on oil is like building an empire on sand.”
So Russell would have left the oil in the ground?
Can his fellow Greens here please explain how this would have benefits humanity or the environment?
And since his standard of living appears to be considerably higher than mine, can he explain how he does it without using oil?
October 6th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Valis
Toad will be able to confirm that I have never been against a capital gains tax on investment property.
I have always been of the opinion that residential property is a foolish investment anyway, if you want to invest in property then the only way to go is commercial.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
A capital gains tax on property will drive up rents. Go to the UK and Europe to see this in action.
Residential property can be a foolish investment, but that is true of any investment class, including commercial. As with anything, if you know what you’re doing, it is lucrative, especially with a left/Labour government, and your properties are located in Wellington.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
“So Russell would have left the oil in the ground?
Can his fellow Greens here please explain how this would have benefits humanity or the environment?
And since his standard of living appears to be considerably higher than mine, can he explain how he does it without using oil?”
Please quote the reference where Russel or any other Green said any of these things. No, I didn’t think you could.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
BP
While what you say has some merit I do think it is wrong that people can effectively write off their tax obligations simply because they have rental properties that lose money.
If people have leveraged their family home to the hilt to invest in residential property then they deserve everything that is coming their way.
We have far to many taxes that can be avoided, that is why I have always been a huge fan of low personal taxes and a rise in the rate of GST, even the richest man with the best accountants cannot avoid paying GST.
The left have a problem with this of course because it would mean lowering PAYE for the so called rich pr**ks, sadly they are ideologically blinkered when it comes to the “evil rich”
October 6th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
bb, 10% excise tax on petrol and diesel That’s only 15 cents a litre so I presume it’s meant to be in addition to RUCs and RUC-equivalent excise duty of 45 cents a litre. After all, the cost of doing road works doesn’t fluctuate with the price oil so it doesn’t make any sense for Transit’s cashflow to be dependent on the price of oil. The petrol tax is merely a convenient way of applying user pays to road users until someone invents the equivalent an electricity meter for cars, eg GPS-RUCs.
The other tens on the list all make sense. Some molecular scientists have argued that people in an economy behave like molecules in a fluid or gas - more random than rational. Thus the impact of the tax system can be modelled in the same way that mixing colour into a paint base can be modelled. That modelling shows that the most even and consistent distribution of wealth occurs when the tax rate is flat, and the tax revenue is paid in equal proportions to every taxpayer.
The tens don’t quite acheive that because too high a proportion of the tax revenue is still being paid to middle class civil servants. But the 10k threshold and 10k child payment may compensate for that.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Valis,
Well gee, I think it was when Russell opined that “building an empire on oil is like building an empire on sand.”
Yet it appears that Russell doesn’t doesn’t eschew the benefits of oil any more than me. It seems he’s telling us to do as he says, not as he does.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
oil isint a problem… population is.
If we kill off some of the population, localy or globally, we decrease demand for oil while at the same time freeing up more land that was previously used to produces food and cash crops for use in biofuel production. oil ‘problem’ solved, ethical ‘problem’ irrelivant in the first place.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
nuclear war anyone?
October 7th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
“Well gee, I think it was when Russell opined that “building an empire on oil is like building an empire on sand.”
wat, I’m sorry Russel’s metaphor was lost on you. He was referring to the humongous future road building plans of both Labour and National.
“Yet it appears that Russell doesn’t doesn’t eschew the benefits of oil any more than me. It seems he’s telling us to do as he says, not as he does.”
One does not need to eschew the benefits of past oil usage to want to change our future course regarding oil dependence.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:13 am
“kill off” some of the population? Whom did you have in mind Sapient? And how would you do it?
Greens generally favour prevention over cure - contraception, education, etc rather than euthanasia.
Some years ago I saw a rather chilling film called Soylent Green which presupposed an overpopulated world with gated rich communities and everyone else crammed into slums. The soylent of the title was the food doled out each day to the masses. Everyone over 60 was given the ‘opportunity’ to be euthanased. The hero discovers that these voluntary martyrs were in fact processed into - soylent to be fed back to the masses.
I agree that overpopulation is a big issue but how you deal with it is an even bigger one.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Janine,
I was wondering if anyone would bite.
Domesticly I would work on changing social mores so as to encourage safe sex and to ensure that children are familar with the concepts involved and that comprehensive sex education is offfered to all school aged children.
I would make all, chemical, forms of contraception and the emergency contraception pill availible to people of all ages free of chage.
I would scale back benifits slightly for females of fertile age on any benifit and then offer an enhancement to that benifit equal to two too three times the scale back for the period that the is under the effects of the a temporary infertility injection.
I would make abortions legal up to the end of the first trimester in normal cases with a leniancy of afew weeks and up to the end of the second trimster where severe abnormalities, deformities, genetici diseases, etc are present and make it well known that the governemnt will not pay for anything wrong with the child which is detectble during this time. I would make abortions free also.
Internationally I would supply food and money aid only for natural disasters and any aid outside of natural disasters would go only towards infrastructure, to be implimented by this country, in that way people over the carrying capacity would starve and die off until the population is sustainable and/or the infrastructure has upgraded sufficently. I would decrease immigration of unskilled workers. I would, in facilitating the construction of infrastructure, also encourage family planning facilities and the same things stated in the previous section.
The coming wars should help with the rest, that and the market forces of an enforcable market scheme, tourism, and depleting oil.
or we could just knock off everyone with an IQ under 130 as set by todays standards.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
oh yeah, and i forgot euthenasia, gotta have a social norm towards knocking yourself off instead of retiring
October 10th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
>>or we could just knock off everyone with an IQ under 130
But who would be left to vote Labour?
October 10th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
exactly.