Rod Donald memorial lecture
Written By:
- Date published:
11:55 am, November 20th, 2010 - 4 comments
Categories: greens, leadership -
Tags: heroes, rod donald
I knew Rod Donald through Trade Aid, many years before he was a politician. He and fellow Green leader Jeanette Fitzsimons will always be, for me, among the very small number of politicians for whom I have the utmost respect. I can only wonder how things might be different for New Zealand politics today if Rod Donald not died, so very young, five years ago.
Yes, it has been five years. Hard to believe.
Thanks to a post on NRT I can repeat here that the Green party has established an annual memorial lecture in Rod’s honour. This year Jeanette Fitzsimons will speak on the topic “Democracy in New Zealand: Lost, Stolen or Just Misplaced?”.
When: 16:30 – 18:00, Sunday, 21 November
Where: Christchurch Art Gallery Auditorium
RSVP: chchgreens@greens.org.nz
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The world needs your ideas now more than ever Rod, unfortunately.
(On another note it’s actually Democracy in New Zealand. The website says is but the flier says in.)
Fixed, thanks.
Most of the old ‘peak oilers’ look at the green party under Donald and Fitzsimmons as being as much part of the problem as the rest of them, only the Maori party tried to get a cross party meeting on peak oil and climate change …. the greeds ignored that request 5 times.
Fitzsimmons new about peak oil back some time in 1995, and I am sure Donald had an idea as well, yet for some strange reason he suggested tourism was a ‘sustainable’ industry for the West Coast (as apposed to logging) the question on all our lips at the time “how are the tourists going to get there Rod?”
They killed the green movement, if they had stood up for the environment instead of chasing votes, we might not be looking at the possibility of Transmission Gully and the continued spend/spin that is going into this road to no where.
I am just sad at all the children that have been added to the bottle neck over the past 10 years, with a little knowledge some parents wouldn’t have had them (maybe), – thinking of the pure green ‘fare’ society the green party spin conjured up………………. that will just not materialize.
And least we forget Kiwi Saver …. yeah right.
NOTE MARCH 2000
Original Message —–
From: Jeanette Fitzsimons
To: ‘egor’
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 2:29 AM
Subject: RE:
Well, I don’t get to read many of my e-mails (857 unread at the moment) but I did happen to see yours.
You’re quite right. Shell Oil International is working on the assumption that between 2005 and 2010 world oil demand will outstrip the capacity of the wells to supply.
Then the price will really go up. So get your bike out! Earth matters is a good name – must keep it in mind. Thanks for writing.
The Meeting
A meeting was held on 11 March 2004, between 8.45am to 11am, at Parliament, 13th floor, Bowen House, Wellington.
Present:
* Jeanette Fitzsimmons MP
* Rod Donald MP
* Mike Ward MP
* Roland Sapsford,(#11 on GP list 2001, Strategic Advisor, Development Co-ordinator)
* Mark Servian, (Media Advisor)
* Chris Teo-Sherrell (Researcher)
* Robin? and Sharon? (Taking notes)
The above Green Party members had a 2 hour meeting with Bruce Thompson, who explained the repercussions of peak oil.
«Rod Donald seemed fully convinced that getting the message out was desirable, Jeanette Fitzsimmons had also seemed very determined to go public.»
Bruce Thompson, 18/03/04
It took the ‘peak oil’ party (that was) over another year to mention peak oil, with less than 10% as much information as legalizing marijuana had on their website.