How do the three main political parties understand sustainability? That’s the question for the final panel of the day-long economics conference the Green Party’s organising this Friday, in Parliament.
After a full day exploring the issues of global and national sustainability, neo-classical and ecological economic theories, and how New Zealand can practically pursue sustainability in business, agriculture, trade, energy, and through fiscal and monetary policy, it’ll then be the turn of the MPs.
Up on the panel are Dr Nick Smith, National’s Minister for the Environment, Labour’s finance spokesperson David Cunliffe, and myself. The hope is that each of us can offer our insights into what sustainability means and how it can be achieved through informed economic policy.
It is not totally clear what the present Government makes of sustainability. John Key describes his Government’s policies thus:
The driving goal of the new Government will be to grow the NZ economy in order to deliver greater prosperity, security and opportunities to all New Zealanders. It will be going for growth because it believes in the power of economic growth to deliver higher incomes, better living conditions and ultimately, a stronger society for New Zealanders. My Government views economic growth as the platform upon which a stronger NZ will be built. It views political leadership from this Parliament as essential to achieving that goal.
It will be interesting to learn from Dr Smith what the Government thinks about the relationship between growth and sustainability in 2010.
Helen Clark’s Government addressed sustainability thus:
My government sees its most important task as building the conditions for increasing New Zealand’s long-term sustainable rate of economic growth… the appropriate mix of policies can, over time, return NZ to the top half of the developed world… Economic growth is a means to an end, not the end itself. It is about creating real opportunities for us all – a richer, more inclusive, more diverse and dynamic nation, and about creating the resources to enable governments to provide better social services.
Russel Norman has described the Green view as follows:
We believe that a sustainable society, one which lives within its resource limits and leaves some space for the natural world, is a society best placed to avoid ruthless competition for ever diminishing resources …The next economic wave is the green economic wave and, if New Zealand wants to prosper, we must prioritise research, science, and technology spending in areas such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green tech manufacturing, green design, and energy efficiency.
Clearly there are subtle, and not-so-subtle, differences between the three parties on this question. It’s our hope that Friday’s conference will give us all a chance to dialogue on this critical issue and see how much common ground we can find among us.
