Steve Richards may own a hospitality venue named after a royal fool but is re-standing for the Green Party at the upcoming election to prove it’s no fool’s errand.
The Tasman resident and owner of Jester House Cafe who lives by “green choices” will recontest the West Coast-Tasman seat in the 2023 General Election.
Steve achieved 2341 votes in the 2020 election, 18,412 votes behind four-time winner, Damien O’Connor of the Labour Party.
He says he’s standing for the same reasons he did three years ago, and that is for the electorate and Aotearoa to take “drastic action” on climate change and social issues such as resource depletion.
“I feel like I’m better equipped now to portray that message of the even greater importance of decarbonisation of the economy, of sorting health inequality in New Zealand and doing something about the general state of the environment,” he says.
“That stuff I can articulate much better now having had the experience from last time, so that’s the reason why I’m standing again apart from all the other green reasons which are more important than they were three years ago.”
Steve says while the new local eBus service was “brilliant”, the public and other political parties still can’t identify that climate change is an “emergency”.
“We’ve shown already, with some incentives getting people on those eBuses… but making general consumers aware that their choice to go to Bali, or Europe, or wherever they choose to fly to is a climate choice and that they’re choosing themselves over climate,” he says.
“Transport is such a huge part of our carbon emissions, not just in New Zealand but in this district as well, so trying to get people to embrace a different way of travelling is a very big one we can do.
“Some of the major things I think the Green Party has done in the last few years is really keeping that climate stuff at the forefront,” he says.
Steve says he has taken part in plenty of Green Party initiatives, like the One Billion Trees planting programme to support banded rail birds in the Moutere catchment.
