Greens MPs Lan Pham and Scott Willis generously took time out of their busy schedules to travel to Waimate and meet with members of the community. Representatives from the Glenavy farming and wider community, Glenavy school board, Waimate doctors, and Why Waste Waimate were present to speak with Lan and Scott and provide them with some thoughts on how the proposed incinerator is impacting our community.
As the Waimate incinerator proposal has been included in the Government’s fast-track plans, Lan and Scott provided everyone with valuable insight into the likely fast-track process. It was quite an eye-opener to learn that the Bill, as it currently stands, does nothing to protect existing consent holders. This could have wide-ranging effects on important food producers in the area, including the district’s hugely important dairy sector.
The Greens have stated that proposals included in the fast-track will not be certain if the Greens form any part of the next Government.
Lan Pham
Lan is the Greens spokesperson for several roles, including environment, bio-security, customs, land information, water services, statistics and women. Lan’s background is in Freshwater Ecology where she gained her masters at the University of Otago and worked in both public service and grass-roots conservation and freshwater habitat restoration (DOC, Working Waters Trust), including working with mana whenua, farmers, schools, and community groups across Waitaha Canterbury, Ōtākou Otago and Murihiku Southland.
Lan served two terms on Environment Canterbury (Regional Council for Waitaha Canterbury). She was also a certified RMA Commissioner and was appointed an Independent Freshwater Commissioner in 2021.
Scott Willis
Scott is the Greens spokesperson for energy, regional development, rural communities, small business and manufacturing, sports and recreation and Dunedin issues. Scott is also associate spokesperson for justice(firearms)
Scott and his partner Jenna lived overseas in neo-peasant and activist communities, where Scott worked as an intern at the European Parliament. He co-founded an NGO to work on climate solutions and ran that for 12 years. During that time, Scott experienced the high points of successful projects and the low points and frustrations of trying to change the status quo at the flax roots. Scott has been Green through all of this, whether in a governance role, as an academic or activist.
More recently, Scott worked at a Kaupapa Māori organization, in charge of a home upgrade programme to deliver energy wellbeing to some of our most vulnerable, and was a director at Climate Navigator, a sustainability and climate risk consultancy that helps communities, businesses, and agencies decarbonise and adapt.
For years, Scott has worked on community energy – developing and running Aotearoa’s first peer-to-peer electricity retailer, attempting to build Aotearoa’s first community wind farm, helping solarise communities – and was on an advisory group at the Electricity Authority. We can have cleaner, cheaper, smarter power, and I’ll work for that. Healthy housing is a passion. Scott has worked to deliver energy well-being since 2007 and conceived and built NZ’s first Climate