KEY POINTS:
The Green Party said today it wanted to be in government but would wait until closer to the election to say whether it would support Labour or National.
In his speech to the Green Party conference today, co-leader Russel Norman labelled National and Labour as "Father Coke and
Mother Pepsi", saying they were "so similar".
He said National and Labour were moving closer together "towards a grand coalition" on climate change.
Each one was outbidding the other to appease emitters and "do the least" to address New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol commitments.
This was a "disgusting retreat from principle by Labour and a disgusting return to simpering denial by National".
He said Labour had shown leadership in keeping nuclear ships and Springbok rugby teams out of New Zealand in what had been brave moves.
But with climate change the "biggest moral issue of our time, Labour has lost its guts".
He also rubbished Labour's record on clean water, saying the country's rivers were "quite literally so full of crap" these were dangerous to human health.
Referring to them in his speech as "National-Labour", Dr Norman also said the parties seems to share a philosophy that beneficiaries and children "must suffer" whereas the Greens wanted benefits and minimum wages raised.
At the party's AGM today, there was a discussion on a process for deciding its preferences for government negotiations after the election.
Dr Norman said the party's "first goal" was to be the largest party in Parliament with co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons as prime minister.
But the Greens were realists and knew it took time to build the green political movement.
It needed to "figure out" what kinds of relationships it wanted to have with other parties after the election.
Dr Norman said the Greens would assess the policies and programmes of the other parties in the lead-up to the election to determine which parties it could work with after the election to form a government.
"We will announce our preferences for post-election negotiations prior to the election. We believe that voters have a right to know how their votes will be used in government negotiations.
"But at this stage we haven't even seen all the policies of the parties so it is still too early."
Dr Norman told reporters an announcement by the Greens on which party it could back would be "towards the end of the campaign" because a number of important policies - such as National's on tax cuts - would not be released until the campaign.
"We are keeping our powder dry. We will look at their policies and we'll make an announcement."
To get their support, Labour and National would "both" have to improve their performance on sustainability and social justice issues "so that they'll have an emissions trading scheme which both reduces emissions and does it fairly - those are the kinds of issues we'll be looking at".
Labour had not performed as the Greens would have wanted it to.
"After 8-1/2 years, our rivers are in worse state than at the beginning."
As an "independent party of principle" the Greens would be encouraging and cajoling the other parties to be realists and face up to the pressing issues.
The Greens were not going to be anyone's "lackey" and would stand up for itself, he said.
But it was not ruling out formal coalition arrangements.
"No absolutely not. The Greens want to be in government, the Greens want to be in a position to make things better for New Zealanders. That's what we want to do."
- NZPA