always a favourite guest, imnofox sat done with Duncan Garner and the AM Show gang to discuss the campaign

Duncan: “Campaigning for the election is well underway, with numerous parties gunning it out to form the next government. We’re joined with the now former Prime Minister and former Greens co-leader, imnofox. How are you?”

imnofox: “Yeah, I’m good. Great to be back on the campaign trail, really.”

Duncan: “So over the last term, you’ve been a Minister and Prime Minister in the Greens/Labour/TOP/UF coalition government, perhaps a truly MMP government, as they call it. How do you think a coalition with 4 parties has gone?”

imnofox: “Well, I didn’t have great expectations. We had a three-headed government the term before with National, the Liberals, and New Zealand First, and that really was a mess, three heads pulling in three totally different directions, all prioritising their own personal expansion over good governance. So that was the standard- before that we’d only had two party coalitions. But this term really showed that you can do coalition government effectively with multiple parties. We demonstrated a successful government that was able to work incredibly cohesively together in a constructive manner because nobody was out to best the others, everyone was united in the goal of good governance on our common ground.”

Duncan: “But there’ve been instances when you haven’t been united, I’ve seen many cases where Greens and Labour voted differently to TOP and UF on bills, and even on amendments to some government bills.”

imnofox: “You can’t work together if you don’t respect your differences. On member’s bills we almost always let each party vote the way they wanted to, because it was government policy, and on the rare occasion some of us have supported opposition amendments that other parties disagreed to, that just shows the respect each party has for each other. It’s quite constructive in a multi party democracy.”

Amanda: “So at the end of the term you got some action on plastic waste, but what’s next?”

imnofox: “Yep, not too long ago we passed the regulation to prohibit the sale of single use plastic bags, protecting our oceans and waterways and saving ratepayers money. We also declared plastic packaging and various single use plastic items as ‘priority products’ under the Waste Minimisation Act 2008, requiring producers of these products to join mandatory product stewardship schemes where producers are made responsible for the full lifecycle of the product. So what next? We’ve got to ramp up our onshore recyclable processing, ideally for those soft plastics. The stewardship scheme will really help with that, but course it won’t be everything. We’ve also got to stop shipping our plastic waste overseas to countries like Malaysia and Thailand, where it’s just ending up being burned and dumped, just making pollution worse. So we need to quickly stop dumping our own waste in developing countries and deal with it responsibly at home: anything less is environmental nationalism.”

Mark: “But if they’re taking it, making a mess in their own country, why should we care?”

imnofox: “Oh Mark, we all share the same ocean with the same endangered species living it. We still depend on the same climate. Preventing plastic waste from being dumped or burned on the other side of the globe is in our own best interests- even though we should be acting responsibly towards other nations anyway.”

Duncan: “Don’t you think all these climate change prevention or whatever programmes will be economically harmful?”

imnofox: “What is the economic impact of doing nothing? There’s $19 billion of property at risk from climate change impacts, along with 2000 kilometres of roads, 5 airports, 50 kilometres of rail, and 133,000 people potentially affected by increased flooding and coastal erosion. That’s the immediate impact by 2050 of climate change on our economy. Westpac is reporting that we’re $30 billion better off if we start taking climate action now rather than later, at the last minute. That’s why we’ve got to take action, and start taking it now.”

Duncan: “Well that’s all we’ve got time for right now, thanks for joining us, imno, and good luck on the campaign.”

imnofox: “Thank you Duncan, see you next time.”