Moving To The Right.

Eyes On The Right Prize: In the key electoral real estate of Auckland, Act has already overtaken the National Party. The same is true of rural New Zealand and the small provincial towns that serve it. A torch-passing moment may be at hand: the historical supplanting of the dominant right-wing party by its tightly disciplined and pitch-perfect challenger.

CURIA RESEARCH’S (i.e. David Farrar’s) latest poll for the Taxpayers’ Union bodes very ill for the Left. Although Labour retains a commanding lead with nearly 45 percent of the Party Vote, and in spite of the fact that National still languishes in the low 20s, the gap between the parties of the Left and the parties of the Right has shrunk from nearly 20 percent to 12 percent. The direction of travel in New Zealand politics is no longer towards the Left. Unmistakeably, political sentiment is shifting rightward.

Let’s begin with the Greens. Historically, this has been considered the most left-wing political party in the New Zealand Parliament. Debatable from the outset, this characterisation has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Certainly, the departure of such recognisably left-wing Greens as Sue Bradford and Keith Locke made the designation tenuous – at best. Such ideological positioning that the Greens have undertaken since they re-entered government in 2017 has caused many observers to locate the party at the extreme end of radical Identity Politics.

Not that observers any longer have much opportunity to observe the workings of the Green Party up close and unmolested by its official gatekeepers. In its early days, under Rod Donald’s and Jeanette Fitzsimons’ leadership, the party made a positive fetish out of its openness to the news media and interested members of the public. Over the course of the last decade, however, this openness has decreased to the point where, at the party’s latest AGM, no part of the proceedings (apart from set-piece speeches from the co-leaders and a final media conference) were open to the news media.

Green supporters would, of course, object that the conferences of the main parties have for many years been similarly restricted. While that objection is true of Labour, it is less so of National. Besides, such a bare-faced defence of public exclusion sits very uneasily with a party calling itself Green. Clearly, the ultra-democratic, libertarian principles of the early Green movement have long since been replaced with … less friendly … concepts.

Perhaps it is this sense that the Greens have changed, that they are not what they were, that lies behind their 3-point loss of support. Alternatively, it could be the increasing difficulty in distinguishing the political style and content of the Green Party from that of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party which explains the shift of support from the former to the latter. Whatever the explanation, Labour will be feeling both relieved and concerned at the transfer of allegiance.

Without the influx of former Green support, Labour’s numbers would not have looked anything like so solid. The Green defectors masked the exodus of yet more of Jacinda’s 2020 supporters in a generally rightward direction. Without them, Labour’s strategists would have been fielding questions about what the mainstream news media would have delighted in calling “a precipitate loss of support”.

Being spared that headline, while gratifying, would, however, have been of only limited consolation to those same Labour strategists. The last thing they need is a Green Party hovering over the 5 percent MMP threshold, while Labour is struggling to hold a position in the mid-40s. Happiness and security is Labour at 45 percent and the Greens at 10. (Labour at 50.1 percent would, of course, be better, but elections like 2020 are once-in-a-lifetime events.)

Labour’s woes, however, must seem like the purest joy to a National Party spiralling down towards electoral destruction. One can only imagine how devastating it must have been for its strategic leadership to observe the approaching throng of former National supporters: the mostly female supporters who deserted Judith Collins for Jacinda almost exactly one year ago; pass National by and just keep right on marching to the beat of David Seymour’s Act-ivist drum. Naturally, some of them returned to the National fold, but nowhere near enough. National’s upward tick of support was well within the margin of error. Set against the roughly equal amount of support that had bled out to Winston Peters and NZ First, there really was very little to celebrate.

Only in Act were the champagne corks popping. Seymour and his team must be wondering where, exactly, the upward curve on the graph is going to stop. Could it really keep climbing all the way up to and beyond 20 percent – the figure at which surpassing National becomes practically an arithmetical certainty?

Curia Research has only hopeful things to tell them in this respect. In the key electoral real estate of Auckland, Act has already overtaken the National Party. The same is true of rural New Zealand and the small provincial towns that serve it. A torch-passing moment may be at hand: the historical supplanting of the dominant right-wing party by its tightly disciplined and pitch-perfect challenger.

It is important not to let the imagination run too wild at such moments. Older voters who backed the late Jim Anderton’s Alliance in the early 1990s will recall the days when its poll numbers soared past Labour’s, driving its centre-Left rival down to a humiliating 15 percent. But Labour, led by the steadfast Helen Clark, surged back into contention and, eventually, into the role of senior partner in the Labour-Alliance Coalition Government of 1999-2002.

National, too, can climb its way out of the hole it has dug for itself since the departure of John Key and Bill English. A fair amount of metaphorical blood will have to be shed to aid that ascent. But that is unlikely to prove an insuperable obstacle. National has never been averse to spilling a little claret.

Ironically, a fight to the finish between National and Act for the right to rule the Right may prove to a an electoral winner. Providing National chooses a personable and intelligent leader: someone capable of building a coherent and productive team. And if that team is equal to developing a policy platform which “Middle New Zealand” finds credible. Then, allowing a battle of right-wing ideas to rage between themselves and their equally engaging rivals in Act may actually end-up building the overall strength of the Right. Such an ideological struggle would certainly signal where all the intellectual and political action was.

If the Greens were still the party of Donald and Fitzsimons, it is possible they could goad Jacinda’s Labour into a similar battle of ideas. God knows, she and her party badly need to re-learn the art of arguing from first principles. Sadly, neither the Greens, nor Labour, any longer seem equipped to generate the collective excitement and individual commitment that keep the voters coming back for more.

When the smoke of the battle against Covid-19 finally clears, what additional achievements will the parties of the Left have to set before the voters – and what plans?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 19 October 2021.

A Movement That No Longer Moves.

Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as their wholly-owned subsidiary. No more.

A PAIR OF SCANDALS, one afflicting Labour, the other the Greens, raise troubling questions about the state of the Left.

There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as their wholly-owned subsidiary.

No longer. What remains of the New Zealand trade union movement is now little more than a collection of powerless political supplicants. Every three years their leaders gather to thrash out a list of requests (demands would be altogether too strong a word!) to be tentatively inched across the table towards Labour Party representatives empowered to decide which of these the next Labour-led government might, at some point, and only after lengthy consultations with all the other stakeholders, be prepared to enact.

It’s a transition which has taken more than 40 years to complete: from a mass political party born out of, and filled with representatives of, the organised New Zealand working-class; to what the political scientists call a “cadre party”, composed of professional politicians and careerist chancers, more than willing to watch the working-class, many of them homeless and hungry, queue for food parcels in the rain.

It is precisely this lofty detachment from the suffering of others; this ability to weigh all appeals in the scales of partisan political advantage; that explains the appalling treatment meted out by the Labour Party organisation to the young women, all of them party members, who came before their governing body seeking some measure of redress – some semblance of justice.

On Monday, 9 September, the National Party’s chief pollster, David Farrar, a man well-ensconced in the many intersecting networks of the capital city, blogged about the Prime Minister’s Office staff-member at the centre of the women’s accusations of sexual assault, harassment and bullying: “I’ve heard that his role makes him invaluable to Labour’s election campaign. Labour have decided he must be protected.”

The Prime Minister’s barely-suppressed fury at being kept only minimally informed about the purpose and progress of the party’s inquiry into the young party members’ accusations, lends Farrar’s charge a daunting ring of authenticity.

Coming hard on the heels of the trial of another young man accused of sexual misbehaviour at a Labour Party youth camp, this present case (for the exposure of which we are all indebted to the journalistic efforts of The Spinoff’s Alex Casey) makes a paraphrase of Lady Bracknell’s famous quip in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest irresistible.

“To preside over one sex scandal, Mr Haworth, may be regarded as a misfortune; to preside over two looks like carelessness.”

But if these latest revelations raise serious questions about the transactional morality currently defacing Labour’s reputation, the censoring of an 80-year-old feminist by the Greens has caused many of their supporters to respond with anger and deep, deep disappointment.

The removal of Jill Abigail’s opinion piece: an essay politely critical of some aspects of transgender activism; from the Green Party’s website, Te Awa, is but the latest example of the bitter rancour and division which this issue is constantly provoking across the entire New Zealand Left.

Scores of women, among them some of New Zealand’s most distinguished feminists, have put their names to an open letter calling upon the Greens to reaffirm their commitment to all women’s rights, including their right to freedom of expression. Until such a recommitment is forthcoming, the signatories longstanding support for the Green Party at the polls will be withheld. The negative electoral ramifications of this dispute are likely to be substantial.

There was a time when the Greens presented themselves as the “elves” of the left-wing movement. Otherworldly they may have seemed, in their tie-dyed skirts and embroidered braces, but they were capable of performing spectacular electoral magic. Like the shimmering inhabitants of Tolkien’s enchanted forests, they appeared benignly disinterested; refusing to sully themselves with the dirty politics practiced by the other political parties.

“The Greens are not of the Left,” quipped the late Rod Donald, “the Greens are not of the Right. The Greens are in front.”

Theirs was the high, cold call of conscience, raised above the cacophony of partisan self-interest and ideological intransigence.

The Left already misses it.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 13 September 2019.

Green Party Lesson No. 1: Anticipating The Direction Of Political Sniper Fire.

Not A Good Look: Golriz Ghahraman (then an intern for the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) poses alongside Simon Bikindi - the Hutu singer-songwriter whose "killer songs" played a deadly role in the killing of 800,000 to one million Tutsi tribes-people during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Ghahraman has come under intense criticism for not making clearer this, and other, associations with war criminals. That the Greens did not anticipate such attacks should be of real concern to the Ardern Government.

IN POLITICS, as in war, the aggressor’s first strike is almost always directed against the defender’s weakest point. That being the case, the National Opposition has clearly identified the Ardern Government’s lacklustre political management skills as its primary target. Their secondary target, equally clearly, is the Greens. This should be the cause of considerable angst on the Government’s part. The Labour-NZ First Coalition’s political management skills will improve with practice. Improving the Greens political skills is a much taller order!

The Greens face a number of serious problems at the moment, not the least of which is the extremely heavy workloads being borne by the most experienced members of their tiny caucus. James Shaw, Julie-Anne Genter and Eugenie Sage, as Ministers Outside of Cabinet, have their hands full just bringing themselves up-to-speed with their portfolios. Of the remaining five Green MPs: one is an Under-Secretary; one the Party Whip; another is campaigning to become the next Female Co-Leader; and the remaining two are complete newbies.

Unsurprisingly, it was one of the latter, Golriz Ghahraman, who this week found herself in the cross-hairs of David Farrar and Phil Quin, two of New Zealand’s most deadly political snipers.

Both men’s attention had been drawn to what can only be described as the unnecessary grandiloquence of Ghahraman’s CV. Describing her fairly modest role in the massive UN exercises known as the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and the Special Tribunal for Cambodia (ICTs) in terms that made her sound like Geoffrey Robertson and Amal Alamuddin Clooney all rolled into one, really was asking for, if not trouble, then most certainly some pretty close enemy scrutiny.

That Ghahraman was not well-placed to withstand such scrutiny, raises two obvious and important questions. Why did she draw attention to her participation in these ICTs without fully disclosing her potentially controversial roles as a member of the defendants’ legal team? And, why didn’t the Green Party carry out the same sort of due diligence exercise on Ghahraman’s CV as Quin and Farrar? At the very least, these simple precautions would have allowed Ghahraman and her Green Party colleagues to anticipate precisely the sort of attacks that eventuated.

The obvious lesson which the National Party will have drawn from this incident is that the Green Party – or at least those responsible for its communications strategies – are in the grip of a conception of politics that places far too much emphasis on marketing and spin. Only the most inexperienced (and cynical) public relations flack could consider it “okay” to leave out of a politician’s most immediately accessible biography (the one on her own party’s website!) something as potentially explosive as the information that she had helped to defend people accused of genocide and other, equally horrifying, crimes against humanity.

The incident will also have alerted National to the fact that the Greens have learned absolutely nothing from the parliamentary bullying meted-out to their colleague, the former Green MP, Keith Locke.

It was the Labour Party’s Opposition Research which dug out of the pages of Socialist Action, the Trotskyite newspaper which Locke edited for many years, a nugget of pure political gold. The Socialist Action League had been an enthusiastic early supporter of the Khmer Rouge – the revolutionary party led by Pol Pot which, in 1975, toppled the right-wing military government of Cambodia. As the editor of Socialist Action, Locke had celebrated the Khmer Rouge takeover as a “victory for humanity”.

In vain did Locke attempt to explain to his parliamentary accusers that, at the time the offending articles were written, neither he nor the Socialist Action League were aware of the wholesale “politicide” unfolding in the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. John Pilger’s shocking revelations that the Khmer Rouge had murdered millions of Cambodians, however, rendered Locke’s after-the-fact explanations utterly ineffective. He had written in support of Pol Pot – and for many MPs that was enough to place him beyond the pale of political respectability.

The point of this cautionary tale? That a political party – especially one which, like the Greens, attracts radicals and activists of all kinds – not only needs to keep its institutional memory alive, it needs to keep it kicking-in. The most important lesson to be drawn from Locke’s experience is that political parties need to conduct exhaustive research into the backgrounds of all its candidates, so that areas of weakness and vulnerability can be identified early and, if possible, neutralised by preventive revelation.

It is supremely ironic that Ghahraman, Locke’s successor in the role of Green Spokesperson for Global Affairs, was a member of the Special Tribunal for Cambodia’s prosecution team for bringing the mass murderers of the Khmer Rouge to justice. Ironic, too, that she, like Locke, has seen her credibility in the Global Affairs and Justice Spokesperson roles severely damaged by a failure to anticipate how the Greens’ enemies, however unfairly, might turn the actions of her past, no matter how well intentioned, against her.

After Ghahraman’s ambush, Jacinda Ardern will be acutely aware that improving her government’s political management skills is not simply a matter of keeping her own Labour Party safe from political snipers, but that the job also entails teaching the Greens how to anticipate – and then dodge – their common enemy’s bullets.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 30 November 2017.

Let’s Not Lose Our Tempers: If John Key Wants A Riot Outside Sky City – Don’t Give Him One!

Setting A Trap? The readily predictable consequences of his decision to host the signing ceremony of the TPPA at the Sky City Casino – mass protest action, with a high probability of violence and property damage – may be exactly what the Prime Minister, John Key, wants to happen.

 

ON THE FACE OF IT John Key has made a serious tactical blunder. By insisting on hosting the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) in New Zealand, just two days before Waitangi Day, at the country’s most notorious beneficiary of crony capitalism, he would appear to have given his opponents an unparalleled opportunity to rally their forces and reinvigorate their campaign.

 

Frankly, I’m suspicious. Because John Key is not prone to making tactical blunders. Which raises the worrying possibility that the readily predictable consequences of his decision – mass protest action outside Sky City, with a high probability of violence and property damage – may be exactly what he wants to happen.

 

The Chinese philosopher-general, Sun Tzu, wrote: “If your enemy is of choleric temper – irritate him.”

 

Few would argue that, at present, the opponents of the TPPA are in a very bad mood indeed. Even fewer would suggest that they have not been extremely irritated by the National Government’s decision to host the official signing of the TPPA at Sky City in Auckland on 4 February.

 

Is John Key setting them up?

 

That might be the case if it was within John Key’s power to refuse to host (or, at least, delay) the signing ceremony. To decline this honour (as the NZ Herald describes it) would, however, involve a tremendous loss of face by Key’s government. It was, after all, New Zealand that set the whole process in motion more than a decade ago. It would be an unthinkable humiliation for its government to ask another signatory to host the signing ceremony.

 

But if Key has no option but to host the signing of the TPPA, he most certainly does have a choice as to where it takes place. Which raises the question: Why Sky City? The ceremony could just as easily have been staged at the exclusive Millbrook Resort outside Queenstown. This was where President Clinton stayed in 1999, and where the Intelligence Directors of the “Five Eyes” nations gathered just a few years ago. Far away from New Zealand’s major cities, and easily defensible by a relatively small number of police and security personnel, the Millbrook Resort would not only have offered splendid “visuals” but also the smallest chance of disruption.

 

Which brings us back to Sun Tzu.

 

What does the Prime Minister know, that the people he is goading into besieging the Sky City complex do not know?

 

My best guess is that over the summer, Key and his pollster, David Farrar, have been drilling down deep into New Zealanders’ thoughts and feelings about the TPPA. Judging by the Government’s actions, this is what they have discovered.

 

That most New Zealanders are quite relaxed about the TPPA. Any fears Kiwis may have had about it in 2015 were allayed by a combination of Helen Clark’s pre-Christmas endorsement of the agreement, and the mainstream media’s generally positive coverage of the final draft. The media has painted the TPPA as being nowhere near as bad as even some of its supporters feared it would be, and that, overall, it will be of considerable benefit to New Zealand Inc.

 

It is also highly likely that the polling data has revealed the opponents of the TPPA to also be dyed-in-the-wool opponents of John Key and the National Government. Such people can be used, as they were used in the 2014 “Dirty Politics” furore, to reinforce the prejudices of National supporters, and shift the views of those who describe themselves as being undecided. This is especially likely if they can be manoeuvred into behaving in ways that cause “mainstream New Zealanders” to view them as irrational and potentially dangerous “nutters”.

 

Something John Key is reported as saying in this morning’s (22/1/16) NZ Herald also makes me think that Farrar’s polling may have revealed that Prof Jane Kelsey is viewed by a majority of New Zealanders as being akin, politically, to Nicky Hager. That is to say, as a left-wing “stirrer” hell-bent on embarrassing the Government. How else should we interpret this morning’s thrust from the Prime Minister:

 

“I suspect people who are vehemently opposed are, broadly speaking, opposed to free trade agreements because the arguments they have put up have been proven to be incorrect. It doesn’t matter how many times we say Jane Kelsey is actually wrong, in the end she doesn’t want to believe she is wrong, and the people that follow her don’t want to believe that.”

 

When I read those words, my instant reaction was “uh-oh”. A politician doesn’t dismiss someone of Jane Kelsey’s standing in those terms unless he is pretty damn sure that a majority of the electorate already shares his views.

 

If that is the case, then an angry protest, or, worse, a violent riot, outside the Sky City complex will rebound, almost entirely, to the Government’s advantage. Not only it will reinforce the prejudices of Key’s supporters, but it will also alienate those who are still making up their mind on the TPPA.

 

Anarchist Or Agent Provocateur? The vandalism of masked "Black Bloc" protesters in demonstrations overseas has played directly into the hands of a news media primed and ready to broadcast images of violence and destruction.

 

It is, therefore, vitally important that any protest against the signing of the TPPA be absolutely non-violent. Every effort must be made to persuade anyone planning on forming, or joining, some sort of “Black Bloc”, to refrain from doing so. Masked militants are a gift to agent provocateurs from the security services. The experience of mass, anti-capitalist protests overseas is that Black Blocs are easily infiltrated and used to supply the mainstream media with the most provocative and violent footage from the protests.

 

The fight against the TPPA must not be waged on the streets – where John Key wants it to be waged – but in the hearts and minds of those New Zealanders who are still not sure that the agreement will, in the end, be good for their country.

 

If John Key wants a riot at Sky City, then that’s the very last thing the anti-TPPA movement should give him.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 22 January 2016.

Thank God For Nicky Hager!

Man Of The Hour: Nicky Hager with a copy of his just released book, Dirty Politics. Photo by Mark Mitchell.

IF NICKY HAGER did not exist it would be necessary, for the survival of our democracy, to invent him.

A full review of Nicky's book will follow just as soon as I have read and digested its contents.

In the meantime, as the news media responds to Nicky's revelations, we should ask ourselves this very simple question: "Does this journalist's response to Dirty Politics suggest that he or she is part of the solution - or part of the problem?"

Oh, and thanks again, Nicky. Thanks heaps.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

With Us in Spirit

Quintessentially Kiwi: New Zealanders will only fall out of love with John Key when they cease to admire the image in the mirror he's become.

JOHN KEY must occasionally pinch himself – just to make sure he’s not dreaming.

To be told, after a week of quite spectacular political mismanagement, that your party has risen to nearly 60 percent in the polls is certainly the belief-defying stuff that dreams are made of.

But where did the Prime Minister learn this knack for defying political gravity? What is the secret of his success?

"It’s almost as if he’s a sort of political idiot savant", a friend of mine testily exclaimed a few days ago. "He doesn’t know how he knows exactly the right political move to make at any given moment – any more than Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man knows how he knows exactly the number of match-sticks his brother’s dropped on the floor – he just does."

This sounded much too close to Bill English’s description of John Key "hopping from cloud to cloud" to be entirely comfortable. I mean, outwitting an accomplished conservative politician might be difficult – but it’s doable. Being constantly bested by a Prime Minister whose abilities veer-off into the supernatural – well, that’s just not fair.

These dark musings were not helped by David Farrar’s "Kiwiblog" posting an item purporting to prove that John Key is the antichrist. (Did you realise that he joined the National Party in 1998, which, as everybody knows – cue spooky music – is three times six-hundred, three-score and six – the Number of the Beast!)

As Mr Farrar wickedly noted: "This would also explain why he is beating Goff so badly in the polls."

Indeed it would! And it might also explain another of Mr Farrar’s intriguing tit-bits of information – the fact that the National Government’s share of public support, as measured by the polls, is fully a third higher one year on from the 2008 General Election than it was on the night.

Not even if you go back (as Mr Farrar very helpfully has) to David Lange’s first year (Mr Lange being the last prime minister elected to replace a leader who’d ruled NZ more-or-less single-handed for nine years) will you find numbers like Mr Key’s. In June of 1985, Labour was 2 points behind its National opponents. (Thanks Roger!) In September 1991, Jim Bolger’s National Government was a whopping 20 points behind the Opposition parties. (Thanks Ruth!) And even Helen Clark’s Labour-led government, thanks to the employers’ stage-managed "Winter of Discontent", found itself 4 percentage points behind its rivals.

Obviously (if you’ll permit me to paraphrase Bob Dylan’s enigmatic Ballad of a Thin Man) "something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is – do you, Mr Goff?"

We might, however, hazard a few guesses and/or observations.

The first is that Helen Clark’s government – especially in its third term – wildly overshot the New Zealand political runway.

Kiwi voters were in the market for someone willing to haul the country back on to the "mainstream" tarmac. Someone who could return their lives to "normal" and release them from the uncomfortably negative emotions "Aunty Helen’s" behaviour had aroused.

Mr Key was that "someone". Not as bossy or "politically-correct" as Ms Clark; nor as divisively right-wing as Don Brash. A successful bloke they could admire – but who never made them feel inadequate. A guy they could chat with over a summer barbecue without the slightest embarrassment. Someone whose kids looked remarkably like their kids. Someone, in short, remarkably like themselves.

I think it was North & South magazine’s Virginia Larson who dubbed Mr Key "the candidate from central casting" – and, as events have proved, it was a particularly apt description.

My own metaphor is slightly different. To me, the Prime Minister embodies what the Germans would call the zeitgeist – the spirit of the times.

What America had in President Ronald Reagan, New Zealand has in Prime-Minister Key: a leader uniquely capable of reflecting itself – to itself.

It’s not something Labour can do anything about. To attack John Key is to attack up to three-fifths of the voting public. Like a figure from ancient mythology, every blow you strike against him leaves a gaping wound not on his body – but your own.

His fall can only be tragic – and Labour will have nothing to do with it.

Because New Zealanders will only fall out of love with John Key when they cease to love the image in the mirror he’s become.

This essay was originally published in the Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 23 October 2009.　

Fighting to Win?

Lieutenant Russel Norman demonstrates for Labour the Green Party's latest tactic of "looking for areas of common ground where we can work together" in the Mt Albert by-election.

IN contesting the Mt Albert by-election, the Greens are running a very grave risk.

They might win.

"Oh yes," I hear you say, "and Aunt Sally ‘might’ win the next Lotto draw!" How likely is it, really, that the Greens will be able to pump their vote high enough to win the seat?

Well, according to the calculations of the man behind "Kiwiblog", David Farrar, it could happen. Okay, okay, we all know that Mr Farrar is a man of the Right, so there’s a strong temptation to mutter: "Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?" And I’d agree, if it wasn’t for the fact that David’s best prediction for Mt Albert is a Labour win by 3,000 votes. This time, I think it’s fair to say he’s doing nothing more than the math.

How, then, does the Kiwiblogster see the Greens’ co-leader, Russel Norman, taking the seat?

Easy.

"If a poll shows National and Labour neck and neck, and Greens well back, then the Green vote may collapse to [the Labour candidate, David] Shearer. But likewise if a poll shows the Greens at over 15%, maybe even 20% - then they could make a strong play for Labour voters to vote Greens to give Labour a guaranteed future coalition partner (Labour can probably never govern again without the Greens)."

Now I just happen to know (through a particularly well placed source) that pollsters operating in the Mt Albert electorate have discovered that Labour and National are running neck-and-neck. (Mr Farrar, owner of Curia Market Research, may even be one of them!)

The complicating factor, according to my source, is that these same polls also show the Greens support is well up on their election night total of 11 percent – to something approaching, or maybe just a little ahead of, 15 percent.

This would explain why the Greens’ Mt Albert candidate, Russel Norman, has come out swinging against Labour’s Mr Shearer. According to the Greens’ co-leader, the former United Nation’s aid administrator is a "grey machine man" – hand-picked by Labour leader, Phil Goff, to bolster the strength of the Labour’s right-wing faction. Aghast at revelations that Mr Shearer is on record as being willing to contemplate the use of mercenaries in international peace-keeping, Mr Norman is now promoting himself as the only "progressive" horse in the Mt Albert race.

If the Green Party’s campaign organisers are serious about driving a wedge between Mr Shearer and Mt Albert’s progressive voters, they’ll organise a team of crew-cut, clean-shaven, black-clad and combat-booted "mercenaries", wearing forage caps and dark glasses, to march into every election meeting carrying "Private Contractors for Shearer" signs. Mr Farrar’s fellow right-wing blogger, "Whaleoil", has already produced a poster depicting Mr Shearer as "The Haliburton Candidate". (Endorsed, presumably, by Dick Cheney!)

Beyond the pale? A few months ago I would have said "of course!" and probably added something about the Greens not being that sort of political party. Today, I’m not so sure.

A few months ago, if the Greens had opted to stand a candidate at all (and with National polling so strongly across the country, they may well have decided the risk of splitting the "progressive" vote was too great to justify such a strategy) they would have chosen an unknown local enthusiast to fly the party flag, and left it at that.

What they’ve actually decided to do is parachute in Mr Norman, the Greens’ top-gun, along with his newly-acquired coven of media wizards, to use the opportunity provided by the Mt Albert by-election to build and enhance "Brand Green".

Of course, politics being a zero-sum game, building "Brand Green" can only be accomplished by the deconstruction of "Brand Labour". And that could see National’s Melissa Lee do what no Government candidate has done in 70 years – win an Opposition-held seat in a by-election. But, it could also see Mr Norman collapse Labour’s increasingly fragile support-base, unite the "progressive" vote, and pull off an historic victory.

Will it happen that way? Probably not. Mr Farrar’s best guess – that Labour will win with 3,000 votes to spare – remains the most likely outcome. But, in a way, that’s not the point. Simply by standing Mr Norman, and waging an aggressive campaign, the Greens are signalling that all is not what it was on the Centre-Left.

The children have left home.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 8 may 2009.