The climate change march
Steve Braunias’ Secret Diary of ...
GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN
I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony — and I couldn’t ask for a better vocal harmony group than the youth of today. I’ll be with them at the climate change protest. I’ll be singing at the top of my voice. I’ll be absolutely blasting it out. I’ll teach them the one about giving prisoners the vote. I’ll teach them the one about passing a law that will reduce the MMP threshold from 5 per cent to 4 per cent so that a small party — like say the Greens — can get into Parliament. I’ll teach them so many, many things! In many ways the protest march will be just like school.
JUDITH COLLINS
Their little protest is not going to help the world one bit. If they really want to help the world then they ought to put their little minds to work, and figure out what to do that will make a difference, and so my advice to them is to cleave to their own self-serving ambitions during a long, studied, and essentially joyless political career. Everyone will feel better for it.
WINSTON PETERS
I could tell them a thing or two about the way the world works. We pay a lot of money for people to get educated — attending school is compulsory in this country. That’s the way the world works. But you know what they say. Youth is wasted on the young.
The elderly are this country’s future.
NIKKI KAYE
I’m not deaf or blind to some of the challenges the world faces with climate change. But it does rather feel like a little bit of a political stunt to be marching in school time. The added danger is that younger children will think this is appropriate behaviour, and want to join in.
Imagine that! Thousands of children, infants, toddlers, babies, all screaming and yelling at the same time!
Just the thought of it makes me want to close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears.
SECONDARY PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT MICHAEL WILLIAMS
The impact that next Friday’s strike and protest march will have on the world’s climate change is probably zero. I’m very concerned that students are wasting their time. It certainly has a meaningless aspect to it. No doubt some of them will make the most of it, but I think the vast majority will fail to see that it has any value, because it doesn’t. In many ways the protest march will be just like school.
SIMON BRIDGES
The world is a pretty complex kind of thing, isn’t it, and I just don’t know if kids know enough about it to take the fairly radical step of wagging school just to attend a protest march against climate change, which I appreciate is a problem, you know, it’s definitely had a bit of an effect, it’s hot, then it’s cold, who can say what that’s all about, but at the end of the day it’s not a problem as serious as Capital Gains Tax.
And so a couple of chants as they march along and maybe eat at McDonald’s afterwards — I don’t know if that will really achieve anything, but I mean there’s nothing wrong with chicken McNuggets, they’re very good value, you can have them with or without the little sachets of BBQ sauce or sweet ’n’sour, although putting that to one side, at the end of the day I think school children should put a lot more thought into how they want to communicate their ideas.