Green Hawkes Bay

This morning ACT put our a media statement attacking the Greens. It is here.

I have responded with this statement here.

ACT party’s poll-jealousy straw-man

The Green Party Tukituki candidate Quentin Duthie has responded to ACT’s unfounded scaremongering by suggesting he must be jealous of the polls to resort to attacking a ‘straw-man’.

ACT’s Tukituki candidate Duncan Lennox has claimed in a statement that the Greens will bring dire consequences for Hawke’s Bay agriculture, but he does not mention exactly what in the Greens’ pro-farming agriculture policy released at the Hastings A&P Show just last week he is worried about.

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Here is the summary of points Jeanette Fitzsimons covered from our new Agriculture Policy at the launch last Friday: Ag policy launch summary

And voters can compare the full policies directly here: ACT and Greens. Guess which one takes seriously the threat of climate change to our agricultural production and markets?

[addendum: here is the resulting story in the HB Today]

We had a pleasure of Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons’ company at the Hawke’s Bay A&P Show on Friday. It was a busy day at the Show with numerous people stopping at the Green marquee to ask questions. It was heartening to see how much support we have even in provincial areas where our support has traditionally been lower than average.

Jeanette launched the Greens’ Agricultural policy to the assembled supporters, media and public. Baybuzz’s Tom Belford was interested in the Party’s declaration of a preference to work with Labour rather than National. Meanwhile local growers John Bostock and Adrian White were interested in next steps to secure a GE Free environment and get country of origin labelling on food.

The policy launch and Jeanette’s meeting and greeting was in contrast to John Key’s visit the day before: where John had visited for about half an hour, kissed babies, smiled for TV cameras and mainly interacted with supporters; Jeanette was at the Show for most of the day, was regularly offered hugs by adult supporters, spent most of the time speaking about real policy issues and debunked many of the myths mischievously cultivated by National and their right-wing mates such as the ETS killing sheep-farming, and compulsory CFLs and showerheads! Personally, I enjoyed the opportunity to answer peoples’ questions even if the level of anti-Green misinformation is frustrating.

[Addendum: After the event the HB Today interviewed me and ran this article in their rural supplement]

The Green Party Tukituki candidate Quentin Duthie suggests that Hawke’s Bay may see the return of railcars or passenger trains to the east coast of the North Island in the near future.

“There are still a number of Silver Fern railcars operating in New Zealand. With the electrification of the Auckland rail network, we may find these are freed up to service provincial routes like the Wellington to Napier to Gisborne line, or a return to the full train service like the former Bay Express.

A Silver Fern railcar

HB Greens are proud to bring Green MP Keith Locke to town.

Contrary to some rumours, National was invited but both Chris Tremain and Craig Foss indicated they had other commitments at that time. Unfortunately, this time was the only one that Keith Locke is in HB for so we could not shift it. National is welcome to send any spokesperson if they wish – we’d all love to hear their intentions with foreign affairs. All parties with candidates in Napier and Ikaroa Rawhiti have been invited.

Download the PDF poster here for printing: NZ in the world