Experienced Green Party MP Denise Roche is again the party’s candidate for Auckland Central in the election on 23 September.
This will be Roche’s fourth election as the candidate for Auckland Central. Her team of volunteers has contacted thousands of households in the electorate in recent months.
Roche told Ponsonby News that she has detected a real appetite for change. “A lack of planning during nine years of National Government has produced gridlocked roads, and a housing crisis. Parents are worried for their children’s future, especially with precarious employment opportunities.”
Denise Roche strongly supports the policy announcements which came out of the Green Party conference last weekend. The Green Infrastructure Fund will kick start the green economy, create jobs in the clean technology and infrastructure sectors, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, while Metiria Turei’s policy announcement aims to lift families out of poverty. The families package will increase all benefits by 20%, boost working for families and raise the
minimum wage.
“This policy will change the narrative,” claims Roche. “It's not about dole bludgers, lifestyle options or other right wing rhetoric, it’s about the safety net we always had as a country. Under this Government we have become punitive and judgemental. We blame the poor for being poor. If you have no job or a sick child, it is your fault. That has to change and we’ll change it,” she adds.
Roche goes on to explain, “A single parent has everything stacked against them under this neo-liberal Government’s policies - get sick, miss the bus, miss an appointment and your benefit is cut. We can’t continue to do this in a wealthy country like New Zealand, and more tax cuts for the well off is certainly not the answer.”
Denise was told more than once on the doorstep, that people wouldn’t mind paying a bit more in tax to help make New Zealand
a more equal country again.
Denise Roche thinks the plan to lift the incomes of more than 500,000 low and middle income Kiwi families should be a circuit breaker at this election.
The changes in the nature of work and jobs is something Roche thinks a lot about. She is the Green’s spokesperson for industrial relations as well as for immigration, refugees and ethnic affairs. “We must ensure our young people have the skills they need to survive in a less secure work environment than the one we have today. Employers in the future will be looking for workers who can demonstrate skills like team work, innovation, problem solving, creative thinking and leadership,” she says.
Engaging younger voters in the political process is crucial, she says. “Young people are looking for real people in politics - authentic, honest, in the mould of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. The Greens have those people.”
Despite dropping several places on the Green Party list, due to what she describes as a strong field of candidates, Roche says she has ‘unfinished business’ and wants to continue as an MP, but after examining her motivation to continue as an MP. The Greens will need to poll slightly above last times 11% for Denise Roche to get back into parliament. She is number 15 on the list, with 14 current MPs.
We at Ponsonby News know how hard Denise works in her electorate and in Parliament. She is genuinely in it, as she says, “to change the world for the better. I still have more to contribute,” she assures us.
The Greens have excellent new policies, a team of experienced and new exciting candidates. They are positive, forward-looking, optimistic for New Zealand’s future.
In a troubled world, amongst increasing inequality, the Greens deserve support, and it should not surprise if they achieve 15% this election. That would ensure not only a safe return for Denise Roche, but several more highly qualified new Green MPs as well entering Parliament for the first time.