The Green Party co-leaders say 2022 was the time when years of work started yielding substantial results.
They’re heading into the holidays celebrating the Government adopting a moratorium on seabed mining, new momentum behind violence prevention, and concerted efforts on climate change.
The Climate Change Minister James Shaw said he “started the year saying every minister needs to be a climate change minister".
"I can confidently say at the end of the year that pretty much every minister is a climate change minister... ‘cause you’ve got 15 ministers - which is three-fifths of the executive - who have specific, named responsibility. It is the biggest All of Government programme that we’ve ever had on climate," he said.
But the co-leaders acknowledged Covid-19 exacerbated the inequalities within Aotearoa, and that a lot of attention in 2023 needs to be given to those struggling to feed and house their families.
Marama Davidson is very clear “it’s an inequality crisis, not a cost of living crisis”.
“What we are seeing today is the mokopuna of Rogernomics, the mokopuna of slashing benefits and keeping cycles of poverty entrenched.”
She said that had New Zealand tackled its issues around liveable incomes, healthcare, mental health, substance addiction, education and housing affordability, the country wouldn't have seen the spikes in youth crime it did this year.
What didn't help was "further dehumanising solutions that are short-term and designed to excite people's fears", Davidson said.
1News sat down with each political party leader to reflect on the year that's been. Watch the rest of the interviews in this series: Jacinda Ardern, Christopher Luxon, David Seymour, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
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