Striking school children should be seen and heard
with climate change, ever since the problem came to our attention some 30 years ago. And now we’ve got these children getting ready to march in the streets to point that out to us.
I’m not about to tell any student that they should take time off school to participate in these protests.
Nor am I about to tell them that they shouldn’t. In my view, that is their choice to make.
I find it patronising to tell young people what they should or shouldn’t do when they’re weighing up the risk of being marked as a truant (and any attendant consequences) against fighting for the world they’re going to inhabit as adults, possibly with children of their own.
But do they need to wag school to do it?
I’ve had a number of (adult) interviewers suggest to me they could make their point on the weekend. Honestly, who is going to take much notice of children at the weekend carrying climate change banners and chanting: ‘‘There’s no planet B!’’?
Do it on a school day and look at the attention they’ve been getting ever since the plan was announced.
When you’re fighting for your future, and you are trying to get the attention of those whom you feel have let you down, following the rules and marching on the weekend isn’t going to cut it. A protest isn’t a protest if it’s on the terms of the very people you’re raising your protest with.
It wouldn’t have stopped nuclear warships entering our waters if protesters had waved placards on Auckland’s Tamaki Drive or from the Massey Memorial overlooking Wellington Harbour.
It wouldn’t have helped bring an end to apartheid if protesters had rented side-line advertising space during halftime at the All Blacks v Springboks test matches in 1981.
And homosexual law reform wouldn’t have happened if gay rights activists had stayed in the closet and out of sight.
Should children be skipping school to shout about inaction on climate change? I wish they didn’t feel they had to. I wish they weren’t left feeling like they have to fight for their futures.
That’s why I, as your Green Party minister in this Government, will make sure we bring the Zero Carbon Bill into law.
That law will establish an important certainty in Aotearoa New Zealand, that we can and must reduce the greenhouse gas pollution which is overheating our planet and threatening the delicate balance that maintains our existence.
There may once have been a time when it was considered right and proper that children should be seen and not heard. But when our children feel like they’re fighting for their future, this is not that time.
James Shaw is the co-leader of the Green Party and the Minister for Climate Change. China scholar Anne-Marie Brady looks likely to be able to address politicians on foreign interference despite an earlier decision to block her appearance.
On Thursday it emerged Brady had written to the parliamentary justice select committee asking to submit in person on the committee’s routine review of the electoral system, which has been extended to look at whether there is any risk of ‘‘foreign interference’’ in our elections. The four Labour MPs on the committee voted against this however, as Brady wrote in February long after submissions closed in September.
Brady is known for her extensive research on China and New Zealand’s relationship, including the revelation that National MP Jian Yang worked at a Chinese spytraining school.
National MP and electoral reform spokesman Nick Smith took issue with this and told media about the matter on Thursday night.
The justice select committee is chaired by Labour MP Raymond Huo, who Brady has mentioned repeatedly in her research.
Yesterday, a spokesman for the prime minister told Stuff that after ‘‘reflection’’ the decision would be reversed and Huo would ask the committee to invite Brady at their next meeting.
Huo himself refused to describe the decision as a ‘‘reversal’’ – saying the decision publicised on Thursday was ‘‘purely procedural’’ and it was his ‘‘personal view’’ that the committee should receive new submissions ‘‘from anyone including Professor Brady’’.
He said that if Smith had not filibustered an earlier meeting the ‘‘next step’’ would have been to invite new submissions.
‘‘The set-up from Dr Smith gave him grandstanding but he has let down Professor Brady,’’ Huo said.
He would discuss with the rest of the committee how to handle any perceived conflict of interest.
Smith welcomed Labour’s reconsideration.