Anti-Business cuts surely unsustainable?
Cutting funding to the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) shows the Government is taking an unsustainable and anti-business approach to sustainability, said Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman.
The SBN is an organisation that works to promote sustainable business practices in New Zealand. Businesses that are part of the SBN include the likes of Commonsense Organics, Zespri and Green Cabs. Last week the Nelson Mail reported that memberships in the region had more than quadrupled in a year. Now due to funding cuts at the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) the SBN is due to lose nearly half its budget.
“This is economic vandalism pure and simple that aims to save a few dollars in the short term while completely missing the longer term needs of New Zealand. The SBN helps small and medium sized businesses to develop towards the new green economy – this is where the money and jobs are going to be made in the future,” said Dr Norman
“Petty decisions like this fly in the face of common sense. What we have here is a successful rapidly growing organisation being kneecapped for what can only be ideological reasons. The money involved is $250,000.”
This week at the Foreign Affairs and Trade Select committee it was revealed that various Defence Force projects look likely to have cost blow outs to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
“I’m sure this Government will make sure we can find hundreds of millions of dollars to assist the United States industrial military complex,” said Dr Norman
“That will be good news to President Obama. I dare say the President of the United States wouldn’t think anything else the New Zealand government was doing was praiseworthy though.”
The new US administration’s commitment to the green economy is backed up by new research by US think-tank A T Kearney showing that industries with a commitment to sustainability were the clear leaders in the financial markets.
“President Obama wants to move the US away from the dinosaur economy of the past – while the current administration in New Zealand seems intent on making one Neanderthal economic decisions after another. I think, sadly they will discover cutting funding to the SBN will turn out to be a mammoth blunder,” said Dr Norman.
Link to article about US research showing sustainable companies outperform their competitors: