Hampden: A top team has been put together by organisers of a Hampden debate on economic sustainability, and they want the Government to match it.
The Hampden Union Challenge Debate on the sustainability of growth and the need to reduce oil dependence will be held on February 19, after attempts earlier this year to get a team from the Government failed.
It is being organised by Hampden Community Energy, whose chairman, Dugald MacTavish, is pleased the National Party has agreed to send a team, but wants senior Cabinet ministers involved.
Hampden's team is a "triumvirate of professors" - Australian adjunct Prof Richard Denniss (an economist and executive director of the Australian Institute and co-author of Affluenza: When too much is never enough), Associate Prof Susan Krumdieck (a mechanical and systems engineer with Canterbury University, at present preparing a sustainability report for the Dunedin City Council) and Associate Prof Bob Lloyd (a physicist at Otago University, who prepared a report on the implications of peak oil for Dunedin).
In July, Waitaki MP Jackie Dean told the Otago Daily Times that she was assembling a team to represent the National Party and promised to thrash the Hampden team.
"We think that the assumption that any growth is good is so fundamental to Government policy that senior ministers fear the implications of loosing to such a strong team," he said.
