Kate Fulton, Green Party

Creating opportunities and providing essential services so that everyone can maintain a dignified quality of life is of paramount importance to the people who live in this electorate. We should all be able to live in an affordable, warm, dry and safe home. We should all be able to put food on the table and easily access healthcare services. We should all be able to receive a high-quality education, which allows us to find meaningful employment and be paid properly for the hours we work. The Green Party policies are commitments to providing for our basic needs – housing, health, education and employment. We are also committed to creating opportunities for regions, such as in tourism where we will introduce a tourism levy, which will be used to protect the environment and provide regional infrastructure, creating higher paid local jobs and ecotourism opportunities.

We should also all be able to connect with clean and healthy natural environments because it’s the day-to-day interaction which contributes to our wellbeing. It’s one of the reasons why people choose to live on the West Coast or in Tasman. We recognise water as one of our most precious natural resources. Our lives, livelihoods and environment depend on it. The Green Party is committed to cleaning up our rivers and waterways and protecting them from pollution and over extraction. We will make aquifers a matter of national importance, properly protecting our springs, groundwater and underground water sources. We will introduce an excise levy of 10c/l for existing consents for bottled water extraction. With innovative thinking, we believe we can develop sustainable farming practices, which take care of our environment and provide for people’s livelihoods.