Green Party jobs package evidence they’re the only ones serious about the reality we face from climate change

Greens announce policy they say will create 40,000 ‘green’ jobs

The Greens have announced a ‘Green Jobs Guarantee’ policy it says could create more than 40,000 jobs.

The party released its policy in Tokoroa on Wednesday morning to mark ‘May Day’ that celebrates the international labour movement.

It wants to set up a Green Jobs Guarantee scheme to create 40,797 jobs with stable working conditions and good incomes.

The party also wants to establish a Ministry for Green Works – modelled off the disestablished Ministry for Works – to create around 25,000 jobs in the construction sector and a further 16,857 jobs from economic activity the Ministry generates.

It would expand the Jobs for Nature scheme to create an additional 15,797 jobs over four years.

The party’s plan would create these ‘green jobs’ by setting up a Future Workforce Agency/Mahi Anamata to plan for future workforce needs and link different workstreams that are currently under-resourced.

It wants to fund a renewed Jobs for Nature programme by partnering with local government, community organisations, iwi and hapū to support conservation work.

Part of its plan for the revamped programme would include short-term projects to provide jobs in areas facing high unemployment and longer-term projects to create training pathways.

Its Ministry of Green Works would be an expanded Rau Paenga, which is part of the Crown Infrastructure Delivery organisation.

“From the West Coast of the South Island, to Ohakune, to Tokoroa, in the last year alone, we’ve heard the same devastation driven by the same political decisions to let offshore companies decide the fate of regional communities,” Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said.

“No more. Today, we launch our Green Jobs Guarantee, which will directly create at least 40,000 jobs across this country to rebuild our infrastructure, plant native trees and restore biodiversity, build homes and an economy that we, New Zealanders, own – and can genuinely be proud of.

“In a time of global volatility, after a forty-year economic experiment that’s failed regular people and is currently seeing record numbers leave the country, it’s time to take back control and build our resilience.

“A better world is possible, and this is how we build it,” Swarbrick said.

PREACH!

The Greens have got to get out of their middle class woke identity politics noose and actually start promoting the economic realities climate change is bringing to us.

This is an astoundingly brilliant policy proposal that is focused on actually doing something about climate change and the economy rather than cancelling people for misusing pronouns, mispronouncing Te Reo or suggesting female NZ comedians aren’t that funny.

Huge steps here towards Chloe’s actual agenda to make the Greens the largest civic movement in NZ under the shadow of the Green ‘failure’ in the Australian election.

Personally I think the Greens did pretty well to hold up their vote in the Australian election, but the conclave factional results created by the Australian preferential voting system didn’t help them this time around as the Liberal vote collapsed.

That’s more a failure of Australia’s voting system than a failure of the Greens.

The Greens didn’t help themselves (they rarely do) with some of their woke policy positions which were targeted by the alt-Right.

They face the same threat from the Taxpayers’ Union here in NZ, but that’s always been the reality. If the Greens can lean into their green job programme at a time when climate change is more apparent than ever alongside a wealth tax that continues to attract Labour left voters, the Greens have every chance of hitting 15% in the next election.

The Greens have to focus more on solutions than parading their diversity as if mere diversity alone is the sole reason to vote for them.

I don’t give a shit whose bussy they like, I care about actual solutions to the actual problems we collectively face, not shrill pure temple identity politics dogma that drives voters away from the movement rather than recruits them.

This Green Job policy is the Greens at their best, adopting Max Harris’s idea for a Green Ministry of Works (an idea TDB has been championing for a decade) is an actual solution.

We face a Political Right that currently are attempting to gut the entire  State by half if ACT get their way.

The Right intend to amputate the State, the Left must argue for a bigger State paid for by taxing the ultra rich to provide the public services that builds the egalitarian values of this country.

It is good to see the Greens taking about the issues rather than having to defend their woke candidate selections.

If Labour fail to include a real wealth tax, the Greens have political momentum to take Auckland from them again.

 

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