Weekly Catchup w/ The Green Party's Ricardo Menendez-March: 20 August, 2025

Just yesterday, the Greens announced their support for five unions filing a legal case against the government in the High Court over their changes to pay equity laws.

The Nurses Organisation, Tertiary Education Union, NZEI Te Riu Roa, Post-Primary Teachers' Association, and Public Service Association argued the new rules breached the Bill of Rights Act and that the case gives workers who have been denied the right to challenge the changes a chance to challenge the government in court.

In that same week, it was revealed that the total cost of the scrapped iRex ferry project had escalated to $657 million dollars, following a final $144m payment to previous contractor Hyundai.

The project was originally scrapped in December 2023 after the total budget amounted to nearly $3 billion.

And the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill recently passed in parliament.

Part of the government’s plan to fully replace the RMA, some of the changes in this amendment bill include: Requiring councils to grant consents for certain energy infrastructure within a year, Removes a range of freshwater planning requirements from farmers and allowing discharges into waterways as long as councils were confident that their planning will improve the waterway within a decade.

For our weekly catchup with the Green Party, Oto spoke with MP Ricardo Menendez-March to get the party’s take on all of these issues