They say, “You can’t beat Wellington on a good day,” yet despite the gale force and rain,
it was indeed a good day on Tuesday 17 May when I formally received the petition of Sunday Blessings and AUT law students asking food be recognised as the human right it is.
This wasn’t just a petition of more than 2,000 New Zealanders received by Green MPs, but the vision we’ve put into active practice over the last few months.
By the time you’re reading this, our grassroots collaboration with Sunday Blessings and Student Volunteer Army will have ensured nearly 3,000 hot meals got to those who need them throughout the Omicron outbreak. This kai was largely diverted from landfill. In a country of five million, which professes to feed 40 million and simultaneously throws out 271 jumbo jets worth of food every single year, people going hungry is a political choice.
This is why we must push ahead, much bolder, further and faster with the programme instigated by my colleague Hon. Eugenie Sage in the last term of Parliament, where as Associate Minister of Waste, she got the ball rolling on the national strategy for waste. This mahi was bolstered by the recent announcement of the Emissions Reduction Plan spearheaded by Green Co-Leader and Minister for Climate Change, Hon. James Shaw, which commits the government to supporting every household and business to prevent food waste, ensuring most households have access to curbside food waste collection by 2030 and massive investment in composting and resource recovery facilities.
Zooming out on that Emissions Reduction Plan, the associated Budget released later that week and the ongoing work our community finds ourselves mucking in on to support the structurally marginalised, it’s no secret things would look rather radically more progressive were the Greens to have more influence in Parliament.
A beautiful insight into the legacy of those Green values, policies and actions goes public this June, with the launch of my former colleague and friend, Gareth Hughes’ book on Jeanette Fitzsimons, Gentle Radical.
I had the privilege to be some of the first eyes on the book in order to write the foreword. It never fails to boggle my mind that we still seem to be fighting some of the same fights thirty years on - fights for recognition of the interconnected wellbeing of people and planet, despite gaining ground inch by inch.
This interconnection and the associated fight will play out likely a bit more publicly than usual over the next few months in the lead up to the local body election. Government’s National Policy Statement on Urban Development and Medium Density Residential Standards are soon required to translate into Council’s amendments to the Auckland Unitary Plan. I encourage anyone who is interested to look back at December 2021’s Hansard records of Parliamentary debates, where the Greens sought to improve design, environmental and community outcomes with several Supplementary Order Papers. Each were voted down.
It’s important to remember that changes to planning rules do not force anyone to do anything with their properties. This is about future-proofing the regulations so that more housing can be built – without requiring more sprawl, more carbon emissions and greater destruction to the healthy soils so necessary for food resilience. Actually getting that housing built, let alone affordably, is a whole other issue.
Reflection on these issues, our place in the world and more, could not more aptly find their place at the rising of a cluster known as Te Kāhui o Matariki. In celebration, June 24th heralds our nation’s first uniquely Te Ao Māori public holiday, Matariki, the start of the Māori New Year. (Chlöe Swarbrick)
Chlöe Swarbrick, T: 09 378 4810, E: chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick
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