Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. Photo / File
Climate change, environmental degradation and social inequality are "deliberately perpetuated to benefit a few at the expense of the many, and at the cost of our planet," Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said, delivering the party's annual State of the Planet speech in Auckland.
"By driving the theft of Maori
land, encouraging the exploitation of Pasifika neighbours, and entrenching the inequality of women and the exclusion of people with disabilities, we, politicians, have supported the wealthiest few to get wealthier at everyone else's expense, to build walls of poverty and disenfranchisement and call them opportunities," Davidson said in the party's annual State of the Planet speech in Auckland.
Climate change and species extinctions had "accelerated due to an unfounded belief that the very market which benefits from this will fix it."
The result was that "we have been divided against each other and told to think of ourselves as free-floating individuals, cut loose and competing against one another instead of working together. We can choose something different, and we must," said Davidson, who confirmed that she would stand again as the Green Party's candidate in the Auckland Maori electorate of Tamaki-Makaurau.
The seat was won in the 2017 election by Labour's Peeni Henare, with a majority of 3,809 over the Maori Party's Shane Taurima, who took 5,587 votes. Davidson was third with 4,268 votes.
