Deirdre Kent

I am a happy Kapiti Coast resident, living there with my partner Malcolm Murchie?. I have ten grandchildren, work a small health business and play bridge and badminton.

My work history is as a Maths teacher, Tauranga City Councillor and as the Director of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) during the eighties. I have written a couple of little books on lobbying and taught lobbying and campaigning skills.

I became interested in the money system through my involvement in Green politics. As a former Values Party candidate in 1975, and still active politically in the subsequent decades, I was angry and curious that the holy grail of "economic growth" could survive as a politician's aim intact and virtually unchallenged for a quarter of a century. It was when I read Richard Douthwaite's and Michael Rowbotham's books that I realised the way we create money as interest bearing bank debt is making our economy dependent on economic growth. If the economy doesnt grow it collapses, leaving bankruptcies, deflation and massive unemployment. If it continues to grow relentlessly the earth suffers under the burden, power is centralised, human capital is depleted and the gap between rich and poor gets ever wider. Two bad choices. There must be a third option!!

For a while I was interested in reforming the national currency and worked briefly to this end. However, it soon became clear this was an unequal battle and a fatally flawed political goal.

Far more productive and realistic was aiming to foster the creation of sustainable complementary currencies, created at community level on a wide variety of different patterns to stand alongside the current system. Margrit Kennedy's visit to the country and the demise of NZ Banking Reform, which I had co-founded in 1999 confirmed this belief.

After five or six years of researching, I finally had my book published in July 2005 by Craig Potton Publishing of Nelson. Called Healthy Money Healthy Planet, its subtitle is Developing Sustainability through New Money Systems. It describes the current sick money system and the huge variety of complementary or local currencies already in use around the world. The book has been selling steadily ever since.

In January 2006 my partner and I moved to Otaki to a three and a half acre property with fruit and nut trees. We plan to continue the transition to organic. Between us we have 84 descendants so we will always have family visiting and helping.

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Healthy Money, Healthy Planet can be ordered HERE

For more information about the book and promotion events, etc., go to the books website at http://localcurrencies.blogspot.com/ !