Government Essay
Question - Do political parties in New Zealand follow this Ideology? Choose three specific policy commitments each from different New Zealand political parties and discuss the extent to which the policies reflect a clear ideology.

It is important for New Zealand parties to have a clear ideology and policies since the 2014 election is coming up. Ideology typically refers to a series of political beliefs, ethical ideals or principles. Do these New Zealand parties follow these ideologies through their policies? There are parties which have different ideologies in which they follow through their policies, such as the Green party and the Labour party. Although, some parties such as the National party do not necessarily follow some principles of the ideology

The Green party abides by an environmentalism ideology. The ideology of environmentalism is a relatively new ideology in a political sense, due to recent uprising of concerns about the harm done to the natural world due to economic production (Heywood, A. (1997). The Green party’s policy of banning the commercial release and growth, development and field-testing of genetically engineered trees, follows the environmentalism ideology (Browning, S. 2011). Producing genetically engineered trees will have the potential have unforeseen impacts on our forests; the wider environment and health of organic ecosystems (Browning, S. 2011). However, genetically engineered trees could also benefit the environment in some aspects, which would then essentially follow the ideology of environmentalism. For example, by producing genetically engineered trees, inevitably there would be more trees thus improving the efficiently of clearing carbon dioxide emissions therefore refining the air quality; which by the way is one of the Green party’s policy. Another benefit for producing genetically engineered trees is