The campaign thus far

It's been an exciting campaign this election for the Greens, especially to see us climb up and up in the polls! Now we're well into the final two weeks, and we'll be pushing really hard to make sure that translates to many more new Green MPs on polling day.

Today I helped launch the Wellington transport policy, with a press conference on a trolley bus. Then I did some doorknocking in the afternoon.

As the Green Party's list candidate stationed at Victoria University, that was the main focus of my campaign - though with exams over, and everyone dispersing, the campaign has all but wrapped up there. Of course I want all students to remember to vote, and know that they can vote early too!

At Vic we handed out lots of fliers, and spoke to heaps of people; participated in We Are the University demonstrations to ensure education is made a priority at Vic; put on a successful gig; signed up lots of volunteers (I'd like to say it's the most successful year for Greens@Vic ever!); had a sausage sizzle.

And of course we ran the Wellington's Crappiest Flat competition. I recently did an energy audit on the winner's place, and found the unsealed, damp ground the flat was built on was making the floorboards rot, and everything in the house mouldy. As shown in their photos, their drawers needed to be cleaned of mould every month or two, and so their clothes constantly smelt of mould (one of the flatmates saying their friends at uni pointed this out to them one day).

With the subsidy of 60 percent for insulation for landlords with low income tenants (students!) that the Greens got National to fund through our Memorandum of Understanding (and the further 200 000 homes we'd like to see insulated in the next term of Government), I hope landlords like this one see the light and insulate! The mould issues were damaging the landlord's investment, as well as the students' health (with issues like eczema flaring up). Of course, if landlords don't insulate, the Green Party will be introducing minimum standards for rental housing if we get the chance, as no one should be able to rent out unsafe, substandard housing. At least many landlords are convinced by the subsidy, but not all are for some strange reason.

Last week end, before kicking off the final two weeks at a lovely BBQ at Wellington Central Candidate James Shaw's place, we had the Young Greens' online launch which saw us using a Google+ hangout, which was lots of fun. And we also got the many young candidates videoed, talking about why we are standing for such an awesome Party.

My campaign opening speech!

Here it is.

It was a few months ago now, but it feels like the campaign really is heating up now, so I thought it was still a good time to post it. Enjoy!

Kia ora koutou,

It’s great to see so many of you come in support of the Greens@Vic campaign launch party for election 2011! I’m Zachary Dorner, the Greens@Vic Candidate, and I’m excited to be sharing the stage with the awesome James Shaw, our Wellington Central Candidate, and one of our hard working Green MPs, Dave Clendon.

Thanks to the awesome Greens@Vic organising team for helping make this night a success. And thanks heaps to Sophie and the Realistic Expectations for coming to entertain us, and Martin Wilson for providing sound and lighting gear.

The theme of this campaign launch, and of the opening campaign around the country is “What are you looking forward to?” Today at Vic we’ve been asking many fellow students that question, and you can get your photo taken too tonight by our roaming photographer Simon.

We’re asking this question to help us all think about what the future might hold. JS/DC has already outlined what an important year this is for New Zealand, and the question is doubly important for young students like us to ask.

John Key seems like a nice guy and all, and I’d certainly want to have him at my place for a beer and a BBQ. I do, however, have a number of bones to pick with him at this hypothetical BBQ that will never happen.

First question for John – Why did you cut taxes for your rich mates, then cut Working for Families, Kiwisaver and Tertiary Education funding on the grounds of not having enough tax revenue? (You got free tertiary education John, the least you could do is invest in my generation’s education, and our future prosperity.)

Second question – Why do you hate young people? OK, that might be a little bit unfair, but someone looking in from the outside at your policies might conclude that you do. For students like us, if we are looking for a job, we face an uphill battle. (Youth unemployment is at 19%, and even well qualified people are struggling to find work, like you and I should be, come the end of our degrees. That’s a problem with your poor economic management John – not very good for a Party that prides itself on economic management.)

Third question – Why do you hate young people? This time the question is a little fairer. When you grew up, you could swim safely in our lakes and rivers, now you’re allowing this to become all but impossible for us. And when you were young you would have thought the weather came and went, but the overall climate would stay the same. But in the last nine months you subsidised big polluters by $800 million to ensure there will be more floods, more freak weather events, and no stability or certainty left in the climate for people in my generation.

Now, John – I would say – if that is your real name, there are really great ways you could change all this. You could join the Green Party or adopt our policies. The Green Party will create a future we can all look forward to.

By supporting the Green Party, you are supporting tertiary education.

By supporting the Green Party, you are supporting Green jobs for all, and a prosperous economy.

By supporting the Green Party you are supporting affordable, warm and healthy housing – and that includes the Wellington student flat.

And at this point John Key would be like “OMG, that lyk totes makes sense now. After today, which is Friday, I will get straight to work on that Green economic vision that is so much better than my current one, which is non-existant.”

Yes, my friends, that is the type of advocacy I am capable of. And that is why I am your candidate, for Victoria University, and the Green Party, this election year.

I come from a place of social and environmental advocacy that started while listening to Bomber on Channel Z – an awesome radio station, for those of you not old enough to remember. I built up a Green group at school, Onslow College out in J-ville. Now I am studying economics and environmental studies at Vic, I spent last year as VUWSA’s Environmental Officer, and this year I am campaigning for the Green Party through Greens@Vic.

Through my experiences I have worked out a magical formula, which I shall reveal to you tonight. Ready? You can change the world, learn heaps of cool shit in the process, and have an awesome time all at once.

And I can see that you all agree, which is why you are here tonight to have a good time, and start changing New Zealand for the better. So make sure you are signed up, to help the Greens@Vic out, and to help out the Wellington Greens this election year.

You will be able to join us in such projects as: votes and vino – heading out to the Wairarapa to get their votes, and to sample some of their delicious wine. The warm healthy rentals competition, where we try and find the crappest flat in Wellington, to make the point that we should set minimum standards on rental housing. We’ll be enrolling young people to vote, and we are planning on creating a student army in the two weeks after exams finish and before the election on November 26, to paint the town Green.

You can also help us with great election moments such as dressing up in costumes, secret late night missions, putting up and taking down billboards in the rain, and so many other fun fun times.

And at the end of it all, on election night when we get more Green MPs elected than ever before and have a great party, you can think “I was a part of making that happen”. So make sure you give your details to one of the people roaming around with clipboards so we can keep in touch.

We also need money, and lots of it if we are to cement ourselves firmly as New Zealand’s third political Party. We don’t have large corporate backers, so we need everything we can get. So even if you, the poor student, put the $2 you have in your pocket into one of our koha buckets tonight, you are still helping make a difference.

So what I am looking forward to? I’m looking forward to a great year. We will have good times, meet new people, and most importantly, increase the Green Party vote. Then we can get to work on creating a New Zealand we can all look forward to.

I'm famous-er!

This blog has been mentioned on another great blog by an awesome Global Young Green (GYG) from Deutschland called Georg (which has now appeared in the blogs that I like box to your right). I suggest you take a look, especially if your interested in active GYGs from around the world.

The GYGs will be having a meeting in Graz, Austria in August. This conference follows the founding conference in Nairobi in 2007, and the less official meeting in conjunction with the Global Greens Congress last year that I went to! Go to their website if you are interested in attending (and contact someone on the steering committee about it as there doesn't seem to be conference info up yet) to find out more. I wish I had the funding, time, and justification of the carbon emissions for a whirlwind trip to Europe to go...

Atleast I get to go to the exciting local Greens Policy conference all the way over in Silverstream this weekend - my first as the Co-Convenor of the Young Greens! Needless to say there will be plenty of discussion about economic issues.

Fantastic.

Dear mum, I'm having a great time at camp!

This last week's been a pretty crazy, full-on one, starting with Waitangi weekend. It was the second annual Young Greens Summer Camp at Jeanette Fitzsimons' farm and it was awesome.

The camp was an action pack time of meeting load of cool people, having workshops on many interesting topics and making decisions about the future of the Young Greens. We came from all over the country, ranging in ages from mid-teens to the "old people" who tagged along and it was great to be on the same wavelength with everyone and to have all our massively intelligent brains working together in harmony. Over the weekend we talked about topics ranging from taking a shit and watching the sun set in the brilliant three-sided composting toilet that looked out over the river (and was still very private) to economics and politics to the meaning of life. Our constant interesting conversations started in the medium hours of the morning (8am) and went till the small hours of the morning (3:30am for some).

Then we got down to business. After probably the strongest election campaign for the Young Greens ever we felt we really needed to build on that momentum and get something concrete down for the Young Greens. So at our AGM on the Saturday we decided on a structure for the Young Greens which will see us moving forward at a brake-neck but environmentally sustainable pace. We now have a Young Greens Executive, which has a representative from each province and is headed by two Co-Convenors. As a particularily inovative feature anyone who considers themselves a Young Green is welcome to attend the conference calls which it uses to meet - even those who are not Green Party members. How's that for oppenness and inclusiveness! The first meeting of this Executive happened just a few hours ago, and went really well. Anyone interested in becoming involved check us out a little more at www.younggreens.org.nz, and/or email me at zachary.dorner@younggreens.org.nz.

Why email me instead of someone else I hear you say? Well, although we elected our first two Co-Convenors ever at the last camp (before we had our Executive) we now have two new Co-Convenors - and I am one of them. It's quite exciting, but a lot of work. A Co-Convenor is like the equivilent of President of the Young Greens, but power hungry people need not apply. It's the Green Party after all, and we believe in real democracy! So it's more of a facilitation role than a "this is how it will be. The end." role. The female Co-Convenor is Georgina Morrison and she's way cooler than I could ever hope to be.

So to end this post a big thank you to all that made the camp awesome, especially Jeanette and Harry who gave us their camp ground on their farm for a few days, and to Gareth Hughes who organised the whole freakin' thing, both this year and last. It was free, which was great, and it's made the future of the Young Greens solid like a tree.

(Photo explanation: I was too busy having a good time to bother taking photos. So out of the twenty I took this was the best one. O well! At least they're gorgeous people.)

Party in Hamilton

On Saturday night I was lucky enough to be in Hamilton where a gig was organised to promote the Green Party. All I had to do was help set up a bit, and speak. The bar, called Altitude, sure was pimped out in Green paraphernalia and although it started off quiet, by the end of the night it was teaming with dancing bodies wearing "I only date boys/girls who vote Green" stickers. Nice.

Above is one of the musical performances of the night. She was pretty damn good I must say. Big thanks to her, the DJs, the local organisers and the bar for a good night out.