Interview with Hon James Shaw

Kia Ora,

Today I am writing about my interview with Hon James Shaw, Minister for Climate Change and Associate Minister for Environment. James Shaw has been one of the MPs that have inspired me a lot. I started off by asking James why he wanted to become an MP and if he always wanted to be an MP.

When he was younger he wanted to be an architect, then he went to high school and took technical drawing. He said the main thing that pushed him to want to be an MP was that he wants to fix climate change. He has this very strong belief that New Zealand can be a role model to the newly developed countries and if we move really quickly then that can help to fix climate change.

When James was in his last year of college it was an election year and he had a panel of MPs for Labour, National and the Green party, who debated the hot topics. He said the Green party MP really spoke to him. So after the debate he went up to the MP and asked how he could help. He has really enjoyed working alongside the Labour Party, he said that it's really cool what they have been able to achieve again.

James Shaw is very passionate about the voting age being lowered to 16 because it would get the youth involved in politics by getting them to vote young. He talked about how there are studies showing that if you vote then you are most likely going to vote again, so if the schools really help push voting then they are more than likely to vote again and get involved.

I asked James what he would do if he was Prime Minister for the day, he said his main focus would be housing, climate change and Covid19. I think it's really cool that James Shaw is so passionate about Climate Change. I asked James what his highlight of being the minister for climate change was, he said that it was passing the Zero Carbon Bill.

James feels really honoured to be the Co-leader of the Green Party, he loves being able to lead such an amazing party, James Shaw’s goal for this parliamentary term is that New Zealand sustains the decrease of Greenhouse gasses. The last question I asked was if he could be an MP not from the Green Party for one day who would it be, and his answer was Hon Kiri Allan so that he could be the Minister of Conservation for the day.

Thank you for reading this blog post, I hope you enjoyed it.