INDEPENDENT NEWS

Green Party A Threat To New Zealand's Future

Published: Fri 19 Jul 2002 03:23 PM
Green Party A Threat To New Zealand's Future
The greatest current threat to the future health and prosperity of New Zealanders is the Green Party, according to Terry Dunleavy, national convener of Bluegreens, a voluntary group which advises the National Party on environment and heritage issues.
"People contemplating a vote for the Greens need to realise that they will be supporting:
- Insecticide residues in New Zealand food crops rather than the harmless genetic modification of crops such as are approved officially in the European Union and the United States, and grown in New Zealand only after stringent investigation by our own Evironmental Risk Management Authority crop by crop.
- Ban on genetic modification which will inevitably slow down, if not halt altogether, vital advances in medical science which gene technology is achieving.
- Cannabis in schools, in spite of repeated warnings by teachers of the damaging effects on the educational achievement of our young.
- Abandonment of our native forests to the opossums which are chomping through them at the current rate of 4 per cent per annum.
- Softer treatment of violent criminals, contrary to the wishes of the 92 per cent of the population who supported the Norm Withers petition.
- Isolation from the real world of international trade which is the lifeblood of an export-dependent economy like New Zealand's.
"To the decreasing minority of New Zealanders who see the Greens as an answer; I say, you have lost sight of the fundamental question in this general election. The Greens are not just a cuddly bunch of starry-eyed do-gooders, they are deliberate promoters of policies which are diametrically opposed to what a clear majority of freedom-loving New Zealanders want for themselves and those who will come after them.
"In economic and external security terms, the Greens view seems to be: stop the world, we want New Zealand to get off. They want to take us back to the cave, and back to the workhouse. That's not where forward-looking New Zealanders, ambitious for our country, want to go.
"Bluegreens urges every New Zealand voter to look at the sound sensible environmental and conservation programme we have been able to persuade the National Party to adopt as its policy for the future, entitled 'A Bluegreen Vision for New Zealand'," said Mr Dunleavy.

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