John - Green Collar Jobs Are Important

Mr Key needs to take more than just dancing tips from Obama - he needs to take note of the importance the United States is putting on moving their economy to sustainability and their workforce to green collar jobs, said Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman.

The Green Party is already ahead of overseas trends when it comes to environmentally friendly, sound economic policies, and a report released yesterday by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) shows that the ‘Green New Deal’ and green collar jobs are vital to the New Zealand economy.

“This report demonstrates that, if we are to protect our export markets, then we need to do a better job of looking after our environment. If we keep trashing our rivers and pumping out pollution then savvy overseas consumers will avoid us like the plague,” said Dr Norman

In Parliament, earlier this week, while answering Green Party questions about the importance of green collar jobs the Prime Minister John Key said it wasn’t his practice to classify jobs – he didn’t care whether they were green collar jobs or not.

“What the NZIER report shows is how wrong the Prime Minister is - if New Zealand doesn’t focus on green collar jobs and growing the sustainable part of our economy, then ultimately there won’t be any jobs because our export markets will turn against us.

“The environment remains central to the New Zealand economy. Two of our biggest export markets are dairying and tourism. It is great news that the Prime Minister wants to create jobs in a recession but is he happy to have workers building nuclear weapons?” asked Dr Norman.

“What New Zealand needs to be investing in are areas that reduce our greenhouse emissions. When we export goods we want them to be high value goods. Rather than dumping low value raw goods on volatile markets New Zealand must be ahead of the game - it is time for the ‘Green New Deal’.”

Link to report - http://www.nzier.org.nz/includes/download.aspx?ID=100168