In the past month I have had the enormous privilege of becoming Co-Leader of the Green Party alongside Hon. Marama Davidson.
I joined this party to be in the company of people who work day in and day out to fight for a healthier environment, a safe and stable climate, a fairer and more equal economy and opportunity for all, and to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and now I have the privilege of helping lead that movement.
I put my hand up for this role after being asked to by a number of people I admire and respect, and I’m asking New Zealanders across this country to also step into our politics. As my friend and colleague the Hon. Julie Anne Genter often says, genuine climate action is going to take community cooperation at a scale we haven’t seen since war time efforts. Changing this system is going to take all of us. We cannot leave politics to the politicians, or we’ll get what you’ve always got.
As your local MP, I see abundant examples of local solutions that we can scale up to solve problems at a national scale. I see local leadership and homegrown answers to big problems that didn’t wait for top-down permission to make it happen.
Whether we recognise that as political or not, the reality is that in frequently having to go around current bureaucracies to make things happen, they role model our communities taking back our power.
In the climate-change-charged Auckland Anniversary flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle last year, it was evident that our current urban infrastructure approach _ that is, paving over surfaces endlessly – only compounds an ever-accelerating problem.
One local solution is the work of local hero Mark van Kaathoven. His creation of an oasis on the berms running down Freemans Bay not only showcases that sponge-city green infrastructure can be beautiful and enjoyable in its own right, adding to biodiversity, creating a cooler microclimate and bringing back birdsong, but also sequester carbon, reduce city noise that otherwise amplifies across concrete slabs and improve our quality of life.
What if we made it possible for local governments nationwide to take the lessons from this flood resilience, streets-beautifying and air-purifying approach? There was a pathway available under the Natural and Built Environments Legislation which empowered a National Policy Statement to do just this, but as the new Government took it to the shredder, we’re back to the drawing board.
Likewise, as our country battles a cost of living crisis, a rampant supermarket duopoly and a mounting waste dilemma, here too we can look for local solutions to the associated problems.
This won’t be the first (or last) time I raise the amazing work that has been done by volunteers at Sunday Blessings, led by Danielle Le Gallais. Each Sunday, a group of volunteers comes together to make hot food for increasingly many who’ve fallen on hard times. They feed sometimes hundreds, with the extra food often escaping landfill in donations from local businesses and cafes, while Orange Sky washes laundry and sparks conversation and Koha Apparel provides new clothing for those visiting.
It’s a testament to ‘less talk, more do’, and an entry point to support our most vulnerable to connect at a trusted, grassroots level to get sustainable, long-term support.
For the Love of Bees offers another example of a community initiative solving a larger problem that I’m excited to see already inspiring other communities.
The Uptown urban farm generates enough kai to feed dozens of local families each week at an affordable price point (reducing reliance on supermarkets), regenerates soil, offers a live classroom in biodiversity and kai sovereignty and is interconnected with other amazing near and far initiatives like Kelmarna Community Farm.
This is how we change our world. From Auckland Central to across Aotearoa, we will transform our politics, our economy and the systems we live within when all of us realise our power to remake the man-made rules of ‘the way things are’, If you want inspiration it’s possible, just look around our neighbourhoods to the leadership that far exceeds anything I’ve ever seen contained within the so-called halls of power. (Chlöe SWARBRICK)
Chlöe Swarbrick, T: 09 378 4810, E: chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz
www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick
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Published: March 2024