The Cost Of Compromise.

Not Brownshirts, Greenshirts: If you believe yourself to be in the midst of an existential struggle; and that every day which fails to bring you closer to absolute victory brings you one day closer to absolute defeat; then compromise isn’t just ill-advised, it’s morally indefensible. The goal must be power. Not power in combination with others, but power alone. Power that can be wielded without reference to anybody else. Absolute victory – the salvation of the biosphere – can only be secured by winning absolute power.

IF THE GREENS are to survive 19 September, they’ll need to draw inspiration from – of all people – the Nazis. Preposterous? Only if you refuse to understand that both the national-socialist and green movements have at their core an unwavering conviction that if they fail, then everything they hold dear will be lost. What separates the Greens from the Nazis is, of course, what they hold dear. Hitler and his followers were fighting for a myth – the German volk. The Greens are fighting for the survival of a very real and very vulnerable biosphere.

But what sort of inspiration could possibly be drawn from the political tactics of the most evil political party in human history?

The answer can be summed-up in a single word: compromise. If you believe yourself to be in the midst of an existential struggle; and that every day which fails to bring you closer to absolute victory brings you one day closer to absolute defeat; then compromise isn’t just ill-advised, it’s morally indefensible. The goal must be power. Not power in combination with others, but power alone. Power that can be wielded without reference to anybody else. Absolute victory – the salvation of the biosphere – can only be secured by winning absolute power.

This was Adolf Hitler’s crucial insight. He looked at the Weimar Republic, with its pure system of proportional representation, its multitude of competing parties, its fragile and ineffectual coalitions, and he bet his entire movement on the German electorate growing increasingly impatient with the political paralysis in Berlin. For a few years, from the mid-1920s until the onset of the Great Depression in late-1929, it looked as though he would lose his bet. But the collapse of the German economy, the descent of millions into poverty and despair, and the complete failure of “democratic” politics to meet the crisis, saw the Nazi’s share of the vote skyrocket.

Hitler’s contemporaries expected him to do what any other party leader would do in the face of such unanticipated electoral success: cut a deal. But the Nazi leader wasn’t interested in deals. Why would he enter into a coalition with the very parties who had proved themselves so incapable of doing anything to alleviate Germany’s suffering? Openly contemptuous of his electoral rivals, he didn’t promise to work with them, he promised to abolish them. Only one party, he said, could rescue Germany: the National Socialist German Workers Party. It would govern alone, or it would not govern at all.

As conditions in Germany grew steadily worse, and as the political centre crumbled and fell apart, it became clearer and clearer to the state bureaucracy, the army and the large capitalists, that if the Nazis were not given what they wanted, then an increasingly desperate German electorate would shift its support to the Communist Party. Rather than make a red revolution inevitable, the powers-that-be made a brown revolution possible. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Within six months his National Socialists were wielding absolute power. It was given to them to save Germany, but tragically they came close to destroying it. The human cost of Nazism’s fanatical pursuit of racial purity was colossal and its ultimate failure inevitable. Why? Because the German volk wasn’t real.

But anthropogenic global warming – climate change – is very real. And every day that is lost to compromise and drift does indeed bring global ecological catastrophe closer. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, everything human-beings hold dear is at risk of being overwhelmed by a disaster greater than any which has hitherto confronted human civilisation. To avert this impending global tragedy an international political movement is required. A global movement which absolutely refuses to compromise with the political, bureaucratic and corporate entities whose failure to take decisive action to combat climate change imperils human survival – along with that of just about every other life form on the planet.

The leaders of green parties around the world have largely chosen to turn their faces from this most urgent of political priorities. Rather than take a bet on the peoples of the world growing increasingly willing to throw their support behind an uncompromising international movement dedicated to radically reducing greenhouse emissions and implementing a “Green New Deal” to redirect the world economy away from fossil fuels and exploitative industrial production, these green leaders have opted to “do a deal”. They have joined hands with the very people who created the crisis and who have consistently declined to end it.

New Zealand’s Green Party has proved to be no exception in this respect. Its co-leader, James Shaw, not only refuses to bet on the people coming round to the need for urgent and ruthless change, but he has also fetishized “compromise” to the point where any attempt to draw a line in the sand is met with a rolling of eyes and statements like:

“Finding the path of least resistance. There’s that horrendous phrase about politics being the art of the possible, which can be read two ways.

“You can do things, it’s a really expansive notion. And there are some moments where we have changed things.

“And then there are others where you can only do what is possible. Maybe moving from naivety to experience is being able to live in both those worlds at the same time.”

Unfortunately for Shaw, humanity has only one world to live in, and it is running out of time. As the climate crisis deepens, and the failure of democratic politics to adequately address the need for radical change opens the way for more uncompromising parties, the politicians who continue to throw in their lot with the problem, rather than the solution, will be swept aside. For Shaw and his increasingly irresolute colleagues the electoral broom is approaching with unnerving speed.

Over the past three years, all the voters have received from the New Zealand Greens are pallid non-solutions. These, the fruit of the party’s craven unwillingness to call Labour and NZ First’s bluff, have been justified as the best outcomes available from a dispiriting range of “realistic” options. Together, they have brought the Greens’ nothing but a steadily declining share of the Party Vote. Political “realism” is Labour’s brand. If all they are offered in September is a choice between compromises of ever-decreasing effectiveness, then many Green supporters may elect to make no choice at all.

The only virtue to which the Nazis may lay claim is their willingness to risk everything for the opportunity to put their ideas to the test. Their unwillingness to compromise with reason cost humanity dearly. How supremely tragic (and ironic) it will be if the Greens’ willingness to compromise with greed and selfishness ends up costing humanity everything it’s got.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 9 June 2020.

The Greens Used To Be So Likeable – What’s Gone Wrong?

Once Were Likeable Eco-Warriors: The Green Party's parliamentary line-up is now a very long way from Rod’s beaming optimism, Jeanette’s grandmotherly wisdom, Sue B’s and Keith’s commitment to social justice and peace, Sue K’s safe food, and Nandor’s illegally resinous dreadlocks. Today's Green Party is fast taking on the character of a political cult: filled with zealots determined to enforce their policies on what we should be permitted to drive; what we should be encouraged to eat and drink, what it is acceptable for us to think; and what we should be allowed to say.

THERE WAS A TIME when it was really quite hard to dislike the Greens. Back in the days of Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons; of Nandor Tanczos and Sue Bradford; of Sue Kedgley and, yes, even the rather dour Keith Locke. There was also that bloke who called himself the “Musterer” (instead of the “Whip”) whose name I have completely forgotten. [Ian Ewen-Street – thankyou Google!] When they first made their way up the steps of Parliament, back in 1999, I called them “The Magnificent Seven” – so perfectly did they cover all the bases of ecological politics.

If you counted yourself among the Left of New Zealand politics, and you didn’t vote for the Greens, you needed to be able to supply yourself with a very good reason why not. The Party made not voting for them a lot harder by being so damn nice. They practiced politics in the way most people agreed it should be practiced: by sticking to ideas and to the policies those ideas gave birth to; by refusing to get down in the gutter with those politicians who seemed to regard politics as an excuse for being personally vicious and cruel.

On Wednesday afternoons, during the General Debate, you waited eagerly for the Greens’ turn to speak. It always came as such a welcome relief from the personal attacks, the snide remarks, and the puerile arguments which their fellow MPs resorted to. Invariably, the Greens’ contribution would be about something real and important. There was always an argument for listeners to follow – an argument based on, and backed up by, facts. You know, evidence. It was like the sun’s rays breaking through clouds: proof that somewhere out there, beyond all the bullshit and braggadocio, there remained a world of light.

It is still possible to catch an echo of the Magnificent Seven in the 2017 intake of Green MPs. Chloe Swarbrick, in particular, would not have been out of place in that special company. Sadly, however, Swarbrick is the exception. For the most part, her Green party colleagues have lost that tremendous likeability that made it so hard for the Left to vote for anyone else.

Partly, that’s because the Left itself has changed. Always among the Greens there was a powerful libertarian current. By and large the Greens did not like the idea of the State, or big corporations, or the petty tyrants who run so many small businesses, interfering in the harmless and victimless activities of their fellow citizens.

No one appealed to the libertarian fraction of the electorate like Nandor Tanczos. With this dreadlocks, his skateboard and his green hemp suit, he became a poster-boy: not only for the legalise marijuana movement, but for that fiercely contrarian bunch of New Zealanders who, without him, has veered over the edge into anti-vax and anti-1080 fanaticism.

But, it’s not just the unfortunate way in which the vacuum created by Tanczos’ departure from political life has been filled that’s the worry. Libertarianism, itself, has largely disappeared from the ranks of the twenty-first century Left. Even worse, in the ideological space formerly occupied by libertarian leftism, New Zealand now finds its exact opposite: Left Authoritarianism.

It does not require a very long acquaintance with the Green variety of Left Authoritarianism to realise that, in 2019, the number of activities defined as harmless and victimless has become vanishingly small.

To be fair, there has always been an element of authoritarianism present in the ranks of the Greens. On a number of issues – the Treaty of Waitangi in particular – those responsible for vetting potential candidates have always exercised zero tolerance for anything other than the full-recognition, tino rangatiratanga, line. Until relatively recently, however, this “politically correct” element of the Green Party apparatus was encouraged to keep itself out of sight. Today, however, among party activists and MPs alike, it operates loudly and uncompromisingly in plain sight.

The political and electoral consequences for the Greens are likely to mirror those which overwhelmed the Left generally in the early 1980s. The 1981 Springbok Tour had radicalised a great many New Zealanders who, in its aftermath, were eager to keep pushing for social change. For many Pakeha leftists, however, the concurrent upsurge in Maori nationalism proved too confronting. The aggressive pursuit of “Maori Sovereignty”, in particular, drove many Pakeha out of the so-called “New Social Movements”, where the sovereigntists were most active.

Organisations which considered themselves progressive, such as the aid organisation Corso, may have decked themselves out in the trappings of bi-culturalism, but only at the cost of making insincerity an unwelcome requirement of membership. The upshot was an emptying-out of many of the institutions of the “White Left” – a not inconsiderable number of whom took refuge in the much friendlier ranks of the Labour Party, which, in the early 1980s, boasted a mass membership in excess of 100,000.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the Greens, founded in 1989, attracted a large number of members for whom the precepts of identity politics formed the core of their political ideology. The Greens’ consensus-based decision-making processes allowed these ideologues to operate for many years within the party without the wider electorate paying them much attention. While the Greens were led by the likes of Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons, the influence of the “id-pols” could be managed. Following Donald’s death and Fitzsimons’ departure, however, the Greens parliamentary line-up has become at once less likeable and less representative than the seven-strong caucus which marched up Parliament’s steps in 1999.

The great problem now facing the Greens is that Labour finds itself in possession of the most likeable political face New Zealanders have encountered for many decades. When set against “Jacinda”, the Greens’ James Shaw comes across as a low-energy compromiser. Meanwhile, his co-leader, Marama Davidson, strobes identity politics in a fashion calculated to make a sizeable majority of the electorate feel decidedly queasy.

Neither Shaw, nor Davidson, is likely to hold in place many voters not already completely sold on the Greens’ brand of identity politics. The party is fast taking on the character of a political cult: filled with zealots determined to enforce their policies on what we should be permitted to drive; what we should be encouraged to eat and drink, what it is acceptable for us to think; and what we should be allowed to say.

It’s a long way from Rod’s beaming optimism, Jeanette’s grandmotherly wisdom, Sue B’s and Keith’s commitment to social justice and peace, Sue K’s safe food, and Nandor’s illegally resinous dreadlocks.

I liked them.

POSTSCRIPT: This essay was written before the Greens released their attack ad criticising National's Climate Change policies - mostly by ridiculing Simon Bridges' broad Kiwi accent. That the current leadership initially okayed the release rather proves my point. That the membership loudly demanded it be taken down (which it was) proves something else. That the spirit of 99 hasn't entirely disappeared! - C.T.

This essay (minus the postscript) was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 23 July 2019.

The Incredible Lightness of Being Green.

Putting The Blue Into Green: The party’s male co-leader, James Shaw, openly touts for the support of “green” capitalists: as if the profits to be extracted from re-branding corporate greed as an “ecologically sustainable business ethos” will somehow render its actual production less dependent on environmental despoliation and unrelenting human exploitation.

IF IT’S PERMISSABLE to talk about “Red-Greens”, then why not about “Blue-Greens”? Surely an abiding concern for the natural environment is something which transcends narrow ideological considerations? And, if that’s true, doesn’t it make perfect sense for an environmental party to position itself squarely in the middle of the political spectrum – from whence it can reach out to both the Left and the Right?

Certainly, that’s what Vernon Tava believes, and the former Green MP, Kennedy Graham, agrees with him. In fact, Graham goes further, arguing that contemporary politics is driven by the followers of three great quests. The quest for freedom; the quest for equality; and the quest for sustainability. Graham strongly implies that the greatest of these three is sustainability. Without a sustainable environment, the quests for freedom and equality cannot succeed. This was the sort of thinking that prompted the late Rod Donald to declare: “The Greens are not of the Left. The Greens are not of the Right. The Greens are out in front.”

A great soundbite – but is it true?

It all depends what you mean by “out in front”. If it is intended to describe the vanguard role played by environmental activists in the 1970s and 80s, then the quip has some merit. Up until then “development” was the dominant – and largely uncontested – paradigm, embraced alike by the Capitalist West and the Communist Bloc. The power of science and technology was being unleashed against an intransigent natural world. “Progress” was the word used by both the Left and the Right to describe humankind’s heroic mission to bend Nature to its will. Felling forests, damming rivers and levelling mountains were all achievements to celebrate. Humankind was winning!

It took the Astronaut’s photograph of “Spaceship Earth” to jolt humanity into the realisation that this bright blue planet is all we have – a dazzling repository of life and beauty in an otherwise barren universe. Not an enemy to be subdued, but our one and only home. If there was a foe to be fought, then surely it was rampant industrialism and the insatiable consumerist societies it was spawning? Whether these societies were ruled by Capitalists, or Communists, hardly seemed to matter. The damage inflicted on the planet’s fragile ecosystems by both ideologies was equally catastrophic.

So, yes. Those who grasped the full social, economic and ecological consequences of the development paradigm were, indeed, “out in front” politically.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is possible to view the Cold War stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union as a conflict driven less by ideology than straightforward geopolitical rivalry. The Russians’ state-capitalist system, at enormous cost, was able to maintain a rough military parity with its corporate-capitalist competitors, but was completely outclassed in virtually all other aspects of production. The Russians never mastered the problems of distribution, and, crucially, suffered from a crippling shortage of domestically generated investment capital. The wonder is not that the Soviet Union fell, but that it remained upright for so long!

With the collapse of “actually existing socialism” in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Chinese Communist Party’s embrace of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (a.k.a Capitalism!) the Greens’ boast that they were “out in front” lost its sting. The imperatives of corporate capitalism were now driving economic activity across the entire planet. Industrialisation and consumerism were being supercharged – and so was their impact on global ecosystems. Those who stood for the planet were now obliged to stand against a capitalist system whose corporate masters refused to acknowledge (and were, in fact, operating beyond) the moral and political claims of the traditional nation state.

But, as more and more of Earth’s burgeoning human population were swallowed up in the capitalist machine, the amount of CO2 spewing forth from its smokestacks and exhaust pipes was increasing exponentially – soaring towards an atmospheric concentration incompatible with the long-term survival of industrial civilisation. Capitalism was facing its final and fatal contradiction: a negation which only its own negation could negate.

The colour of this capitalist death-machine is, and always has been, blue. Calling yourself a “Blue-Green” is, therefore, oxymoronic. You can no more be a “Blue-Green” than you can be a non-violent boxer or a chaste debauchee. Nor is it defensible to describe yourself as a “Green-Green” – as if rescuing the biosphere can be accomplished without confronting directly the economic system responsible for its devastation. In this regard, the subjective sincerity or insincerity of Vernon Tava and Kennedy Graham is completely irrelevant. Objectively, they are serving the interests of the planet’s enemies – not its friends.

The capitalists’ oft-repeated accusation that they are facing “Red-Greens” is, however, entirely justified. If by “red” is meant a force dedicated to overturning the prevailing capitalist system and replacing it with one in which the three great goals of freedom, equality and sustainability will each become the indispensable guarantor of the other.

From their first appearance in the 1980s, Green parties around the world have presented themselves as both the exemplars and advocates of four foundational principles: Ecological Wisdom; Social Justice; Participatory Democracy; and Nonviolence. Each of these principles is antithetical to the founding principles of Capitalism: The Subjugation of Nature; Human Exploitation; Plutocracy; and Coercive Violence. The dilemma confronting Green supporters in New Zealand in 2019 is just how far the Green Party has drifted from the global Green Movement’s original values. There is a widespread and growing feeling that the Greens’ parliamentary representatives are no longer Capitalism’s enemies, but its enablers.

The party’s male co-leader, James Shaw, openly touts for the support of “green” capitalists: as if the profits to be extracted from re-branding corporate greed as an “ecologically sustainable business ethos” will somehow render its actual production less dependent on environmental despoliation and unrelenting human exploitation.

Only if Green voters are willing to subscribe to the fiction of “weightless” capitalist enterprises that leave no “carbon footprint”, can Shaw’s pitch be rendered credible. Except that, the cellphone in his pocket, the lap-top in his shoulder-bag, both argue against his proposition. If Shaw could only see the horrors attendant upon the extraction of the minerals that make them work; the super-exploitative megafactories in which they are assembled; then he would understand just how crushing the planetary burden off-loaded by his new-found “green” capitalist friends truly is.

As for the Greens’ female co-leader, Marama Davidson. Perhaps the best that can be said of her performance is that it has been distinguished by neither wisdom, nor justice. Nor even by a conspicuous quantum to democracy – participatory or otherwise. Most notably absent has been the founding Green principle of Nonviolence. On the contrary, Davidson’s “woke” faction of the party, caught up in the ever-tightening coils of identity politics, have unleashed a level of emotional violence upon those it deems ideological heretics that must surely make the party’s founders weep.

How different is today’s Green caucus from the “magnificent seven” Green MPs who entered the House of Representatives so triumphantly in 1999. The New Zealand establishment recognised those Greens for what they were: enemies of the status-quo and certainly not the sort of people this country’s capitalists (not even those in the Labour Party!) felt the least bit comfortable about doing business with. Red-Greens they were called: a label which MPs Sue Bradford and Keith Locke wore with pride. Today, to be branded a Red is simply embarrassing: proof only of outdated thinking.

Even so, the National Party leader, Simon Bridges’, enthusiasm for Vernon Tava’s “Blue-Green” initiative is misplaced. Such an obvious example of right-wing “astroturfing” would produce little of electoral value. Besides, all of the time, effort and resources required to draw off enough votes to tip the Greens out of Parliament would, ultimately, be politically counter-productive. New Zealand Capitalism is much better served by leaving the existing Green Party exactly where it is.

Sitting comfortably in the boardroom: sporting a pale-green silk tie and wearing a dark blue suit.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 1 February 2019.

There Can be Only One Green Party.

Spoiler Alert: If the Greens and NZ First fall below the MMP threshold – if only by a sliver of a percentage point – and Labour fails to attract more votes than National, then there is a very good chance that National would find itself with sufficient List seats to govern alone. If the founder of a Blue-Green Party (such as Vernon Tava - pictured above) could demonstrate that his creation had played a crucial role in securing such a satisfactory result for the New Zealand Right, then it would surely not be unreasonable of him to anticipate a very substantial reward.

VERNON TAVA seems content to remain an electoral pawn if, by doing so, he can become a political king-maker. All of the most recent and credible research relating to the study of New Zealand elections suggests that the potential support-base for a “Blue-Green” political party is much too small to carry it into Parliament. The defection of 1 or 2 percent of electors who had formerly voted Green, however, might be just enough to drive an unpopular, ultra-left, “Red-Green” party below the five-percent MMP threshold. And that, in the opinion of many political observers, is the Blue-Green Party’s true electoral objective.

If the Greens and NZ First fall below the MMP threshold – if only by a sliver of a percentage point – and Labour fails to attract more votes than National, then there is a very good chance that National would find itself with sufficient List seats to govern alone. If the founder of a Blue-Green Party could demonstrate that his creation had played a crucial role in securing such a satisfactory result for the New Zealand Right, then it would surely not be unreasonable of him to anticipate a very substantial reward. A high-ranking on the 2023 National Party List, for example? Sometimes, in politics, it pays to play the long game.

It is, therefore, not just National which has a vital interest in Tava’s putative Blue-Green Party; the Greens, themselves, should take his words and deeds very seriously indeed. The party’s uncomfortably close proximity to the all-important five-percent threshold in the latest One News/Colmar-Brunton opinion poll should, of itself, have been enough to provoke some very serious re-thinking about the way it is presenting itself to the electorate.

The Greens leadership needs to decide which of the two dominant perceptions is the more likely to keep it on the right side of the MMP threshold. The perception generated by its Ministers, James Shaw, Julie Anne Genter and Eugenie Sage: one which is, for the most part, of competence, diligence and a somewhat muted commitment to the Greens’ core environmental objectives. Or, the perception reinforced by the party’s co-leader, Marama Davidson, and its foreign affairs spokesperson, Golriz Ghahraman, of a party driven by white-hot radicalism and uncompromisingly “woke” political correctness.

From the hints he has so far thrown out to the news media, Tava’s strategy would appear to be to match the Greens in the “responsible environmentalists” stakes, while highlighting the outlandish and seriously alienating words and deeds of the Greens’ social revolutionaries. The more of the latter he is able to bring to the electorate’s attention, the more likely Tava is to detach at least some of the Greens’ more conservative supporters. The Greens leaders should be aware that there will be no shortage of generous right-wing donors lining-up to resource a Blue-Green Party dedicated to dividing and demoralising the Greens’ electoral base.

Political common-sense suggests that the perception for the Greens to promote is that of competent, diligent and responsible environmentalism. In the interests of presenting Tava with a much smaller target, Davidson and Ghahraman should undertake to turn down the heat and intensify the light. In this regard, their role model should be Chloe Swarbrick who, on the issue of cannabis law reform, has been highly successful at projecting an image of courageous and uncompromising rationality.

Clearly articulated and evidence-based policy is the surest way of countering Tava’s threat. That, and a laser-like focus on the issues around which more and more New Zealanders are demanding urgent action: climate change and the nation’s polluted waterways.

In the words spoken by the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, more than 80 years ago in the depths of the Great Depression: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

The fatal weakness of Tava’s plan is that, among the sort of people and organisations to whom he and his party will have to turn for funds and expertise, the very notion of “bold, persistent experimentation” is anathema. For the Right, a Blue-Green Party is not about trying something; it’s about ensuring nothing is tried.

When it comes to saving the planet, there’s justification for only one Green Party.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 February 2019.

Hard Choices: Genter’s Candidacy Lights-Up The Greens’ Internal Divisions.

The Pragmatist Most Likely To Succeed: The historical pattern of Green leadership elections is clear. Asked to choose between a candidate associated (at least in the public mind) with radical and/or controversial political causes; and a candidate unburdened by an excess of electorally-negative baggage; the Greens have consistently opted for the latter over the former. In the face of historical precedent, therefore, the smart money would be on Julie Anne Genter – not Marama Davidson.

JULIE ANNE GENTER’s entry into the Greens’ co-leadership race presents Green Party members with a hard choice. Either, they will opt for sentiment and symbolism, and elect Marama Davidson. Or, by electing Genter, signal their determination to prioritise cool-headed pragmatism and substantive policy achievement.

Some commentators have already decided that the Greens’ “activist base” will vote in overwhelmingly numbers for Metiria Turei’s “natural successor”. As both a Maori nationalist and a fervent fighter for social justice, Davidson openly celebrates the sort of street-level agitation that the “Baby Boomer” Greens look back on with pride, and which some Green “Millennials” regard as the only “authentic” way of doing Green politics.

The assumption here is that these “activists” constitute a clear majority of the Green Party’s membership. A swift review of Green leadership elections, however, raises serious doubts as to whether the party membership really is as radical as many New Zealanders believe it to be.

Following the tragic death of Rod Donald in 2005, Green Party members were presented with a choice between Nandor Tanczos and Russel Norman. They chose Norman. A few years later the choice was between Sue Bradford and Metiria Turei. They chose Turei. The last contest was between Kevin Hague and James Shaw. They chose Shaw.

The historical pattern here is clear. Asked to choose between a candidate associated (at least in the public mind) with radical and/or controversial political causes; and a candidate unburdened by an excess of electorally-negative baggage; the Greens have consistently opted for the latter over the former.

In the face of these historical precedents, the smart money would be on Genter – not Davidson.

That historical preference for a safe (or, at least, safer) pair of hands is likely to be accentuated this time around by the traumatic experiences of the 2017 General Election campaign.

Just how likely is it that a majority of the Green Party membership stands ready to embrace a candidate who proudly aligns herself with the radical policies of Metiria the Martyr? Do they really want to witness their female co-leader engaging in ideological fisticuffs with the leaders of the Labour Party and NZ First? Are constant headlines highlighting the policy differences between the coalition partners and their activist sidekicks more, or less, likely to see the Greens lift their share of the Party Vote in 2020?

The political trajectory of the Green Party over the past ten years has been towards precisely the cool-headed pragmatism and substantive policy achievement that Genter, more than any other member of the Green Caucus (with the possible exception of Shaw himself) has come to represent.

At her announcement on Parliament’s forecourt, she told the assembled journalists that she wanted to help the Greens develop a “clear, bold and distinct vision for 2020”.

Decoded, her message is all about presenting voters with the sharpest possible contrast between the Greens’ and the coalition parties’ election manifestos. Genter is betting that the Green Party truly is, as she told waiting journalists, “the future of politics”, and that if the Greens’ vision of a sustainable New Zealand is presented in a way that doesn’t frighten the electorate, then the Greens position in the House can be improved dramatically.

That is a goal which can only be achieved, argues Genter, if her party “manages the risks”. Which is the closest thing to a “dog whistle” anyone is ever likely to hear in the mouth of a Green candidate. The message, aimed at what Genter clearly believes to be the “moderate” Green majority, could not, however be simpler – or more brutal: The last thing we need now, after waiting 20 years for a place in government, is another Metiria!

It’s a dog-whistle to which a great many Green Party ears will prick-up and listen.

Assuming the fight remains a straight-forward contest between Davidson’s symbolism and Genter’s pragmatism, the pragmatist will, almost certainly, join Shaw at the top of her party’s greasy pole.

The entry of a third candidate – most likely the Conservation Minister, Eugenie Sage – would, however, signal an effort by the Greens’ “old hands” to blunt the increasingly sharp edges of the Green Party’s internal differences.

The risk, however, is that the membership might fail to take the hint, and that the moderate vote would be split between Sage and Genter – allowing Davidson to come through the middle. Should that occur, the Minister for Women, and the Associate Minister for Transport and for Health will simply have to put her head down and wait for better weather.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 9 February 2018.

What Will It Take For The Greens To "Make A Difference"?

Not This Time - But Never Say Never: James Shaw and his fellow Greens cannot put off forever the hard decision of whether or not to reverse out of the Left-of-Labour cul-de-sac in which they have stranded themselves. As Nandor Tanczos so succinctly put it in a recent blogpost: “players only respect other players”. To negotiate the treacherous rapids of political power successfully, the Green waka’s load must be lightened – by offloading the excessive weight of its conscience.

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE of the “opportunity” the Green Party now has to “make a difference”. Unsurprisingly, most of this much-making has come from the right of the political spectrum. The prospect of being robbed of his “kingmaker” role by a last-minute display of National Party + Greens political jiu-jitsu, is clearly intended to keep Winston Peters on his tactical toes.

Not all of this tactical advice, however, is coming from the Nats. The former Green MP, Nandor Tanczos, is also urging the Greens to escape the self-imposed confinement of their Left-of-Labour cul-de-sac. In a recent blogpost, he identifies the Greens’ fundamental problem as having bought into an “inadequate conceptual model” of twenty-first century politics. Specifically, “the idea that political philosophy can be represented in one dimension on a straight line between left and right.”

The New Zealanders that Tanczos holds up as the unfortunate victims of this one-dimensional conceptualisation of New Zealand politics are the “450,000 small businesses in Aotearoa employing five people or less.”

Self-employment, according to the former Green MP, “speaks to core Green ideals of supporting local economies, building self-reliance and personal autonomy, helping people lift themselves out of poverty and fostering stronger linkages between businesses and the social ecological communities in which they are located.” Tanczos claims to know “a great many small business owners who support the ideals of the Greens but who don’t connect with us a party because we are not speaking to them.”

This is smart thinking on Tanczos’s part. Right from the start, the Greens most obvious electoral deficiency has been a solid socio-economic base from which to strike out in pursuit of political power. Unlike the National Party, with its businessmen and farmers; and the Labour Party, with its wage-workers and Maori; the core of the Green Party vote has never consisted of a social class whose interests it protects, but always of a social movement whose ideals it expresses. Since movements tend to be as varied as they are volatile, it is no wonder that the level of Green Party support can fluctuate wildly between one election and the next.

Historically-speaking, the transition from a movement-based, to a social-class-based, political party is neither easy nor painless. To get some idea of just how difficult and painful these ideological and sociological shifts can be, one has only to study the evolution of the German Green Party – Die Grünen.

Within all Green parties, the most obvious division is invariably between those who come to the party from what might best be called the conscientised, publicly-funded salariat (academics, scientists, teachers, bureaucrats) and those who have made themselves into exemplars of alternative ways of living in a world dominated by consumption-driven capitalism (students, artists, hippies, anti-capitalist artisan-activists).

In Germany, the former group was dubbed the “Realos” (realists) and the latter group the “Fundis” (fundamentalists). The tension between the two factions became a constant feature of Die Grünen’s internal politics. The event which tipped this tension into open and bitter intra-party conflict was – of course – the German Greens’ acquisition of real political power.

In alliance with Germany’s Social Democratic Party (the equivalent of New Zealand’s Labour Party) the Greens soon found themselves confronted with a decision that went to the very heart of their political philosophy.

It was 1999, and NATO was bombing Serbia. The Greens’ leader, and Germany’s Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer (a Realo) argued that, for the first time since the Second World War, German fighter aircraft should be sent to attack a nation which had not violated Germany’s borders. The Fundis – many of them veterans of the huge German peace and anti-nuclear movements of the 1980s – were horrified. Fischer was proposing to violate the core Green principle of Non-Violence. A Special Conference of Die Grünen was convened in the city of Bielefeld, in north-west Germany, to decide the matter.

Getting An Earful: Joschka Fischer's "realo" foreign policy prevailed over its "fundi" opposition within Die Grünen, but only at the cost of bitter internal strife.

New Zealanders who lived through the 1981 Springbok Tour would have recognised all the signs of strife. The conference hall was ringed with barbed-wire and guarded by hundreds of armed police officers. Delegates were jostled, and as Fischer entered the hall he was struck by a bag of blood-red paint. The anger of the Fundi protesters outside the hall was equalled only by the fury of the Fundi delegates inside. All to no avail. By a margin of 415/335 the German Green Party’s idealistic fundamentalists were required to make way for its power-wielding realists.

Eighteen years later, Die Grünen, alongside the Free Democrats (the German equivalent of New Zealand’s Act Party) are engaged in coalition negotiations with the conservative Christian Democratic Government of Angela Merkel.

As Nandor Tanczos so succinctly puts it: “players only respect other players”. To negotiate the treacherous rapids of political power successfully, the Green waka’s load must be lightened – by offloading the excessive weight of its conscience.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 October 2017.

A Green Offer National Couldn't Refuse

"Fredo, You Broke My Heart!" Michael Corleone would not tolerate disloyalty - not even from his own brother. Will Labour forgive the Greens for doing a deal with National's 'Godfather', John Key, over the 'Red Peak' flag? Or will Labour's decades old strategy of "no enemies to the left" set in motion a 'hit' against their supposed Green brothers?

 

THERE ARE PEOPLE in the Labour Party who take an almost forensic interest in the Greens. They can discourse at length on the “fundi/realo split”; “Deep Green” versus “Red Green”; and whether the electorally perilous potential of “Blue Green” will ever be realised.

 

Labour’s ongoing surveillance of the Greens should not, however, be compared to the twitcher’s hobby of watching birds. Labour’s interest in the intricacies of green politics is much more akin to the FBI’s interest in the intricacies of the Mafia. Agents may be able to rattle off the names of the heads of the Five Families; which gangsters are on the way up; and where the gangsters who used to be on the way up are buried; but this does not mean that the FBI loves or admires the Mafia. Far from it! The FBI is interested in the Mafia only because it intends to destroy it.

 

A Labour Party that drew its electoral support, overwhelmingly, from the poorest and most marginalised members of society would have little to fear from green parties of any kind. If they thought about them at all, it would only be as an eccentric off-shoot of middle-class politics, whose electoral participation was as likely to damage the Right as the Left.

 

The fate of the Values Party (arguably the world’s first “green” party) demonstrates the point nicely. Though it made a big splash in the news media, the newly-formed Values Party attracted only 1.9 percent of the popular vote in the General Election of 1972. This was, of course, the election in which the Norman Kirk-led Labour Party romped home with 48.4 percent of the votes cast.

 

Values did better in the next election, but only because Labour’s popularity, over the course of the intervening three years, had plummeted. In 1975, Values’ share of the popular vote swelled to 5.1 percent. Labour’s share, by contrast, fell nearly 10 percentage points, to a dismal 39.5 percent.

 

Between 1975 and 1984, however, Values’ support collapsed. In 1978 it polled 2.4 percent. In 1982, 0.19 percent. And in 1984 0.20 percent.

 

In spite of the fact that New Zealand’s two-party system had largely broken down by 1984, Labour was still able to capture 42.9 percent of the popular vote – on a record turn-out of 93.7 percent of registered voters.

 

The General Election of 1984 would, however, be the last in which Labour entered the race as an unequivocally social-democratic party, and was swept to power with the support of the poorest and most marginalised voters. In future elections an increasing percentage of Labour’s support would come from middle-class electors. This demographic shift in Labour’s electoral base would, increasingly, bring it into head-to-head competition with the Greens.

 

Labour’s electoral base is, however, broader than the Greens’. Though middle-class voters now comprise an important chunk of Labour’s constituency, its residual support among Pakeha, Maori, Pasifica and immigrant industrial and service-sector workers is still high. These traditional loyalties usually ensure that Labour’s vote is two-to-three times that of the Greens – enough support to make it a major party, but not yet enough for it to form a government without first securing a voter-antagonising guarantee of Green Party support.

 

Labour’s problem may be summed up in two words: proportional representation. New Zealand’s MMP electoral system allows minor parties to thrive, thus removing the pressure on opposition supporters to transfer their allegiance to the party best placed to defeat the Government. By denying Labour the 5 to 10 percentage points it needs to become a credible competitor to the National Party, proportional representation and the Greens are encouraging the Right to contemplate permanent political ascendancy.

 

In these circumstances, it is hard to blame the Greens for engaging in a little contemplation of their own. If, by its very existence, and by positioning itself as Labour’s “natural” coalition partner, it is keeping the Left out of power permanently, then wouldn’t the Green Party’s chances of achieving at least some of its critical environmental objectives be improved by repositioning itself as the potential coalition partner of either Labour or National?  Certainly, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is exactly what the Green Party membership was contemplating when they elected the young, business-friendly, social entrepreneur, James Shaw, as their co-leader on 31 July 2015.

 

The same Mr Shaw’s adroit handling of the Red Peak flag issue in the House last week will not have lessened Labour’s forensic interest in the Greens’ ultimate intentions. His parliamentary “deal” with National, relatively insignificant though it may have been, was seen by Labour as an alarming portent of things to come.

 

If Labour operated like the Mafia it would know exactly what to do. Without seeking permission, Jimmy “The Business” Shaw, and his Green Gang, made approaches to a rival family.

 

Whack ‘em!

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 29 September 2015.

All That Glitters: James Shaw At The Ika Seafood Bar & Grill.

Is Not Gold: As a Green politician, Shaw is anything but staunch and conventional. His experience in the corporate world projects itself ahead of him like a force field. And, in a party chock full of small businessmen and women, it’s a force field they want him to use.

 

I WON’T SAY HE WAS BAD. That wouldn’t be fair at all. By any standards, James Shaw is an impressive politician. He’s just not as good as he seemed to be the day (30 May) he was elected the Greens’ Co-Leader. One of the reasons he looked so impressive that weekend was the quality of the keynote speech he delivered to the Greens AGM the day after his election. Writing for The Press, I characterised that address as containing: “some of the most impressive political rhetoric I have encountered in more than 30 years of writing about New Zealand politics.”

 

To say that I was disappointed to learn Shaw had not written the best lines of that speech would be an understatement. Foolishly, perhaps, I had allowed myself to believe that the Greens had voted themselves a leader of truly Churchillian virtuosity. Chatting to the man himself at the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill on Tuesday evening, however, it soon became clear that he belongs much more to the JFK than the Winston Churchill tradition. Kennedy had the remarkable Ted Sorensen as his speechwriter. Shaw is verbally equipped with the powerful prose of the scarcely less talented Danyl McLauchlan. It was McLauchlan who penned the following, truly memorable, lines of Shaw’s keynote speech:

 

“There is no name for this system. Nobody speaks for it. Nobody voted for it. It happens in the spaces between speeches and elections. It happens behind closed doors or over dinner with lobbyists. We have a political economy of friendly deals and whispers. Of overnight polling and focus groups.”

 

It is, of course, much to Shaw’s credit that he was able to recognise in the Wellington biologist, blogger and novelist a talent for political communication that was clearly guaranteed to enhance his career prospects. Shaw’s excellent maiden speech to Parliament had singled him out early as a person to watch. That McLauchlan had a major hand in drafting it, now strikes me as entirely unsurprising.

 

But if Shaw is savvy enough to have acquired one of the best political rhetoricians in the country, what about the rest of the political package? Does he come across as a leader who knows where the currents of twenty-first century culture are carrying political parties? And, is he ready to steer the Greens in that direction?

 

That he was elected by his fellow Greens on the first ballot, with 54 percent of the vote, strongly suggests that they think he does – and is. It has been clear (at least to me) that the Greens have, for some time, been growing increasingly irritated with their left-wing label. Since 2005, New Zealand’s overall political trajectory has been towards individualism, market-driven economic and social solutions, and an increasingly authoritarian state. Though many Greens have staunchly resisted these trends, a substantial number – probably a majority – have accommodated them. These rightward-floating Greens constitute Shaw’s political base: their expectations and his political future are inextricably linked.

 

What I found so curious about Shaw’s performance at Ika’s Tuesday “Salon” was his apparent reluctance to embrace these expectations. Now, it may simply have been a case of the wrong audience. The sort of people who turn up to Laila Harré’s restaurant are pretty much the left of the Left. That the Greens are about to embark on a journey to the Right is most emphatically NOT what they want to hear. If that is the explanation for his staunchly conventional presentation of the Rod Donald/Russel Norman version of Greenness, then I’m underwhelmed. As a Green politician, Shaw is anything but staunch and conventional. His experience in the corporate world projects itself ahead of him like a force field. And, in a party chock full of small businessmen and women, it’s a force field they want him to use. I would have been much more impressed if Shaw had used his hour upon the stage to challenge the assumptions of his largely “Old Left” audience.

 

Because the brutal political reality confronting the Greens is that the party’s residual collectivism is radically out of step with the young, tertiary-educated professionals who constitute the Greens’ electoral base. These voters do not want to be told that the market-driven system that employs them is fundamentally incompatible with planetary safety. They want to vote for Green Capitalism – not Red-Green Socialism. Even the trend towards increasingly authoritarian government and the National Security State may be turned to a Green purpose. After all, the sort of measures required to combat climate change will only be implemented with effect by a strong state that brooks no opposition.

 

Shaw shied away from my suggestion that he may soon find himself being courted by a John Key as eager to woo Green voters as he had once been to draw former Labour voters into National’s ranks. But if all goes well at Paris at the end of this year, and National finds itself obliged to take climate change seriously, then a new relationship with the Greens is inevitable. It is then that the people who voted for him will expect something much more radical than staunchness and conventionality from their champion.

 

Were I James Shaw, I would be asking Danyl McLauchlan to begin working on the speech immediately.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 2 July 2015.

"Damn the Dam" - John Hanlon (1973)

 

 



WHILE WE’RE DEBATING the economic competence, or otherwise, of the four candidates vying to become the male co-leader of the Greens, here’s a blast from the past from John Hanlon.

 

Damn the Dam was released in 1973, and tunefully encapsulates just about all of the sentiments that propelled the Values Party into the forefront of progressive New Zealand’s imagination during the General Election campaign of 1972.

 

The Values Party can lay a pretty solid claim to being the world’s first “green” party. (Which is why I found it so odd that only Gareth Hughes was willing to cite one of its earliest members, Jeanette Fitzsimons, as his personal political hero!) But, as Hanlon’s song clearly illustrates, it carried within it, almost from the moment of its birth, the inherent contradiction between the needs of the natural and the human worlds.

 

As my wife puts it (rather brutally I’m afraid): “I’d rather have cheap power than the bloody fantail!”

 

Even within the ranks of the late (and, by some, lamented) NewLabour Party, the comrades rapidly sorted themselves into the “Red-Green” and “Smokestack” factions.

 

In the end, just about all political struggles boil down to a set of arguments based upon giving “power” – however narrowly or widely defined, to “the people” – however narrowly or widely defined. “Tiny animals, little birds as well” don’t get much of a look-in. Which is why Russel Norman was so emphatic in his insistence that the Greens must learn to speak the language of human priorities, aka “Economics”.

 

Still, it’s a lovely song.

 

 

Video courtesy of YouTube.

 

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Why The Greens Should Watch Adam Curtis

Soul Destroying: The classical ecological paradigm regards a state of equilibrium as Nature's "default setting".  Adam Curtis's latest series of documentaries argues that our faith in "the balance of nature" is in fact a manifestation of our own inability to meaningfully disturb the equilibrium of the political and economic machinery in which we are enmeshed. Finding ourselves unable to beat the machines, we appear to be trying to join them.

ADAM CURTIS makes television programmes that challenge our understanding of the world. To call this puckish fifty-five-year-old’s productions documentaries scarcely does them justice. Curtis ransacks his BBC employers’ visual archives for his trademark rapid-fire imagery, and makes free with both classical and popular music for his films’ evocative soundtracks. Elucidated and enhanced by these sensory onslaughts, Curtis’ ideas strike hard and sink deep in the minds of his viewers.

His latest offering, a three-part series entitled All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace should be compulsory viewing for every member of the Greens’ caucus and party.

They won’t enjoy it, but I’m confident it would do them a world of good.

Because the second part of Curtis’s trilogy, “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts”, interrogates and then radically deconstructs one of the central tenets of the green belief system, that: left to themselves, all ecosystems tend towards a state of equilibrium.

It’s the idea which underpins the entire environmental movement. Stripped of the notion that some mysterious natural force somehow keeps all things in balance, the prospect of the human species abandoning its destructive behaviour – and thereby earning itself a “sustainable” niche in Mother Nature’s steady state – becomes a chimera.

Curtis’s challenge to the original ecological paradigm forms just one part of a much broader critique of the way in which men and women of the twentieth and twenty-First centuries have attempted to empty human behaviour of its moral and political dynamism by applying to it the soulless logic of mechanical systems.

At first blush, this would appear to have little or nothing to do with green ideology. Surely the logic of the machine is precisely what greens are fighting against?

What Curtis demonstrates, however, is that the stereotype of the “luddite” green is almost entirely mistaken. By a series of daring conceptual leaps, Curtis links the right-wing libertarianism and extreme individualism of the tea-partiers’ guru, Ayn Rand, with the “turn on, tune in and drop out” libertarianism of the Californian hippies.

The link? Cybernetics.

Cybernetics and systems theory gave rise to the notion that computers could not only free capitalism from the regulatory chains of the social-democratic herd, but that they would make possible a world in which human-beings and the natural world “did their own thing” in perfect harmony.

The curious title of Curtis’s series is taken from a poem by the celebrated 60’s poet, Richard Brautigan. He wrote of:

a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Curtis challenges the superficial radicalism of Brautigan’s hippie vision by drawing on the very real experiences of those who took the systems theory utopians like Buckminster Fuller at their word and established communes of networked, non-hierarchical, self-organising individuals held in equilibrium by the self-correcting influence of “feedback loops”.

What brought these communes to their bitter, often violent, ends was that their anti-political ethos, far from eliminating coercion and exploitation, actually ended up facilitating it. By forbidding majority decision-making and the formation of factions (evil manifestations of the despised practice of politics) all the communards had done was draft a bully’s charter.

Because all human (and natural) systems are dynamic and subject to constant challenge and response, the question of agency is inescapable. Moral and political decisions cannot be magically excised from our social and economic environment unless – and this is the whole point of Curtis’s series – we are willing to regard ourselves as nothing more than amoral bio-machines.

The conflict within the New Zealand Greens, which Sue Bradford has written about with considerable passion of late, carries alarming echoes of Curtis’s critique. The Greens’ prohibition against faction-forming, and their distaste for majority decision-making, sound remarkably similar to the rules of those dysfunctional Californian communes.

Add to this their newfound willingness to become just another “responsible” component in the political circuitry of capitalism, and Sue’s concerns are readily understood.

That’s why Russel Norman, Metiria Turei and their colleagues should invest three hours in watching Curtis’s remarkable trilogy.

It will remind them of what they once had – and are at mortal risk of losing.

The insight that it’s only our ability to make moral decisions that makes us human.

And that there’s absolutely nothing “natural” about it.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 17 June 2011.

Rod Donald 1957-2005

A Dignified Protest: Rod Donald draws attention to the plight of the Tibetan people on the steps of Parliament during the visit to New Zealand by Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Thursday, 26 May 2005.

The following obituary was written for, but never published in, the New Zealand Political Review. With the media spotlight focused on the behaviour of the current Green Co-leader, Dr Russel Norman, I have decided to share these thoughts concerning Rod Donald’s political legacy with the readers of Bowalley Road.

DEATH is not always our enemy. In politics, especially, sudden death can bestow a sanctifying aura upon the person who has been so suddenly and so inexplicably stolen away. The fallen leader is caught in freeze frame – often in youth or middle age – with so many things left undone. It is this sense of having the future wrenched from our grasp that makes the loss of significant political figures so poignant and so hard to bear. And yet, we must also acknowledge that while premature Death robs the politician of his potential victories, it also allows him to avoid his inevitable defeats.

Rod Donald died just as the New Zealand Green Party was poised to enter a period of considerable soul-searching. Having been left standing at the coalition altar by Labour for the third time in a row, the Greens had some very hard thinking to do about their future. As by far the most pragmatic, media savvy and politically astute politician in the Green caucus, Donald was readying himself to play a crucial role in determining the party’s future direction. His sudden death has robbed it of a shrewd and experienced pathfinder.

Much of that shrewdness was attributable to Donald’s unique ability to blend the idealism of environmental and left-wing politics with the sort of down-to-earth practicality that actually gets things done. In this respect he was quintessentially Kiwi: largely uneducated when it came to the finer points of theory, but without equal when it came to the hands-on business of turning theory into practice. He was, if the truth be known, that rarest of animals – a left-wing entrepreneur. Someone willing to risk his entire stock of political capital in order to make it grow.

And grow it he did. From his first foray into re-cycling as a fifteen-year-old student at St Andrews College in Christchurch, to his transformation of the Trade-Aid movement from a well-meaning but loss-making charity, to a thriving business network, Donald had a way of working around the objections of the talkers and enlisting the enthusiasm of the doers. His intervention in the campaign to secure a "Yes" vote for MMP in the 1993 referendum demonstrated the full range of Donald’s entrepreneurial flair. Without it, the enemies of MMP would almost certainly have triumphed. For that achievement alone, Donald's place in New Zealand’s political history is assured.

In 1994, having secured the means of making a career in politics possible for representatives of the radical left, Donald lost little time in multiplying his enlarged political capital yet again by joining the Greens. With assistance from Jeanette Fitzsimons and her extensive networks of friends and allies within the environmental movement and the old Values Party, the hero of MMP rapidly rose to become the Greens co-leader.

The pairing of Donald and Fitzsimons was one of the most remarkable in New Zealand political history. Only rarely is a party blessed with such extraordinary complementarity. Where Fitzsimons was cerebral and serene, Donald was enthusiastic and practical. And where Fitzsimons knew exactly how to appeal to the Greens’ constituency, Donald was untiring in his courtship of the news media.

He understood the key role which the media plays in modern democracies, and cultivated political journalists with the same care and attention that other Greens devoted to cultivating organic fruit and vegetables. He also recognised the tremendous importance of image. His trademark white shirt and brightly-coloured braces made him instantly recognisable to the voting public. It is difficult to imagine a less frightening, more infectiously amiable promoter of the Green "brand".

This familiarity with the values of the contemporary New Zealand – and global – marketplace, while a source of suspicion and sometimes friction within the Greens’ own ranks, was also critical to the party’s long-term future. Donald was no Marxist, nor a socialist. In the 19th century they would have called him a Radical (with a capital "R"). One who believes that the rights of property should not be allowed to run roughshod over the rights of human beings. Being a 20th Century environmentalist, Donald would, of course, have extended that definition to include the natural world. He celebrated responsible capitalism – especially in its entrepreneurial, small-business manifestation. His reaching out to the business community in the days after the 2005 election was as genuine as it was courageous. Those who rejected his overtures may yet come to rue his passing.

Because the Greens stand at a political cross-roads – and Donald knew it. They can go on being Labour's loyal supporters (and receive their by now familiar reward) or they can reposition themselves as a force outside and above the classical Left-Right divide. I believe that Donald’s thinking was steadily shifting in favour of the latter option. It would not have been an easy course to steer. The 2005 New Zealand Green Party is among the most left-wing in the world, and re-orienting it after the fashion of the German Greens will not be accomplished without a great deal of bitterness and conflict.

Donald was not the sort of man to relish such a fight. He was a gentle and fun-loving person, as his partner of 20 years, Nicola Shirlaw, and his three daughters Holly, Emma, and Zoe will attest. And yet, I believe that Donald, as he had done so often in his career, would have been willing to give it a go; staking all his political capital on a fundamental reorientation of Green politics in New Zealand.

For better or for worse, Death has spared him the odium and abuse that such exercises inevitably entail. He will be remembered now, and always, as a tireless fighter for environmental sanity and social justice: a decent man struck down in the prime of his life and at the peak of his powers; a true Green politician who never once compromised his principles.

My abiding memory of this remarkable man – my friend – Rod Donald, will be of him standing alone at the foot of the parliamentary steps, his face a mixture of sadness and defiance, holding up the forbidden Tibetan flag. It was a noble protest - and all the more effective for being conducted not by some raggle-taggle band of New Age anarchists, but by a senior Member of Parliament and party leader, dressed proudly and patriotically in his best, New Zealand-made, suit.　

Stroking The Cat

Dressed for Success: NewGen Green co-leaders Metiria Turei and Russel Norman are keen to present a "credible" (i.e. non-threatening) face to the "mainstream" New Zealand electorate. But, is it possible to appease the prejudices of one group of voters without offending the principles of another?

RUSSEL NORMAN’S right about one thing – the way you dress is important.

I remember very clearly my first encounter with the Dunedin Labour Party back in the early-80s. Young people were conspicuous at local party gatherings: not only by virtue of their rarity, but also because of their sartorial indifference.

Jeans, T-shirts and long-hair might have been de riguer on the university campus, but to the middle-aged and elderly working-class members of the Labour Party they constituted a cultural affront. Politics for these folk was a serious business – with a dress-code to match.

It wasn’t quite a case of wearing your Sunday-best – but it was close. Youngsters who stood up to speak looking like they’d just spent six months on a hippie commune were not kindly received.

So, my wardrobe changed. My long hair was clipped. The jeans and T-shirts were replaced with pressed pants, clean shirts and a sports jacket.

The response was dramatic. The older members knew that my change of attire was both an acknowledgement of and a concession to the rules they lived by. I had demonstrated my respect – and they reciprocated by giving me a more than fair hearing.

But that was the Labour Party in the early-1980s.

At the time of the Springbok Tour it was still the case that an influx of young people to just about any New Zealand institution – but especially the institutions of the Left – meant radicalisation.

Young people challenged the verities of New Zealand’s buttoned-down society: raising difficult and often painful questions about the role and rights of women, the treatment of Maori, and the criminalisation of homosexuality. They demanded a radical shift in New Zealand’s foreign and aid policies; they were inspired by the defiant solidarity of the militant trade unions; and they were deeply worried about the degradation of the natural environment.

Their elders, many of them deeply religious, were shocked. And even those who were sympathetic to the youngsters’ idealism could draw on a wealth of personal/political experience that argued strongly against mistaking Labour Youth’s most radical and militant ideas for the best policy options.

So, what about the Greens of 2010?

Is it still the case that "young person" equals "radical"? Do the headlines from last weekend’s Green Party Conference, such as "Red is dead as guard changes", signal the arrival of a generation with more – or less – revolutionary ambition than their parents and grandparents?

And to whom, exactly, is Russel’s suit and tie intended to show respect? The radically dishevelled "alternative" culture out of which the Values and Green parties sprang? The culture of Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons and Sue Bradford? Or is Russel’s wearing of a suit and tie both a cynical gesture of acknowledgement – or even a potentially fatal concession – to the planet-destroying corporate culture that Green parties everywhere were established to challenge and destroy?

Listening to Russel on Radio New Zealand, and reading the Green MPs’ speeches to the Conference, it struck me that this younger generation who’ve taken over the Green Party haven’t made it more radical – they’ve made it more conservative.

The inspired amateurism and anarchic flair that made the entry of the Greens into the NZ Parliament resemble (to use the author of the seminal Making of A Counter-Culture, Theodore Rosack’s, wonderful phrase) "an invasion of centaurs" has gone.

Russel and his co-leader, Metiria Turei, along with their coterie of Gen-X and Gen-Y advisors, are no longer dreadlocked outsiders prophesying in the name of Gaia and demanding a fundamental shift in the suicidal economic paradigm of limitless consumption. Rather than cut out the neoliberal cancer that is eating the planet, the objective of this new, well-groomed generation of Greens is to zap it into remission with the "sustainable", "environmentally-friendly" capitalism of the "Green New Deal".

Their goal is to win at least 10 percent of the Party Vote in 2011 – and, who knows, they may well succeed. A snappy suit, a slick advertising agency and a swag of non-threatening policies might be all that’s needed to secure the support of a generation whose formative political influences were Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.

It’s a generation which has learned – on pain of penury – that it is wisest in this life to stroke the cat from its head to its tail.

The truly radical question, of course, is: Which cat?

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 11 June 2010.

Taking The Greens Seriously

Worth Waiting For: The people of South Africa, oppressed for decades by a system which conferred exclusive political, economic and social authority upon a militant ethnic minority, queued in the sun for hours to exercise "one person, one vote". The New Zealand Greens dismiss this fundamental democratic process as "the limited concept of conservative Pakeha that one man, one vote is the only manifestation of democracy possible in Aotearoa".

THE MOST DANGEROUS thing a journalist can do when dealing with radical politicians and parties is fail to take them seriously. The news media is supposed to function as the public’s ears and eyes. If journalists fail to scrutinise a party’s policies for no better reason than they regard them as a joke, then ideas and policies of the most extraordinary and pernicious kind can easily pass unnoticed into a nation’s bloodstream.

The radicalism of Green parties, for example, extends a lot further than criticising consumerism, opposing military aggression and trying to stave off global ecocide. The movement can trace its ideological genealogy all the way back to William Morris and Prince Kropotkin; to the promoters of garden cities, vegetarianism, and post-World War I pacifism; or, in the case of the original German Greens, to the folk-singing nature ramblers, nudist colonies and adolescent sex hostels of the Weimar Republic.

It was precisely this "wackiness" that encouraged chief reporters and news editors to transform the Greens into figures of fun. To be fair, the Greens made it easy for them. Television footage of a troupe of Morris Dancers performing at an early Green Party conference in New Zealand was replayed over and over again.

The message: these people should not be taken seriously; was all too clear. Not surprisingly, other politicians were quick to take advantage of the Greens’ alleged enthusiasm for hemp suits, composting toilets and organic wine. "The Greens love for this planet is quite remarkable", quipped one Labour wit, "considering how little time they spend on it."

But, among all the merriment, some pretty strange stuff was passing most journalists by. At their 1985 conference in Ludenscheid, for example, the North Rhine-Westphalia Green Party called for the decriminalisation of "nonviolent sexuality" between children and adults.

Believe it or not, the idea of consensual paedophilia had won broad acceptance in the radical sub-cultures of Western Europe in the 1960s and 70s. (Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who, as "Danny the Red", became the face of the 1968 student revolution in France, and is now a leading Green Party Member of the European Parliament, openly explored the subject in his 1975 autobiography Le Grand Bazar.) Consequently, the policy was endorsed and included in the party’s comprehensive election manifesto. It’s discovery by a sharp-eyed conservative journalist in the midst of the subsequent state election campaign proved electorally disastrous for the Green Party and its supporters.

In New Zealand, it wasn’t the Greens’ (largely conventional) attitudes towards sexual behaviour that generated moral panic, but their commitment to decriminalising marijuana. Interestingly, the outcry came not from the news media (most of whose senior journalists had at one time or another "inhaled") but from those front-line fighters for Conformity, Conventional Wisdom and the Kiwi Way – school principals. Ignoring his status as a Member of Parliament, conservative headmasters adamantly refused to allow the Greens’ Nandor Tanczos onto the nation’s secondary school campuses.

The United and NZ First parties backed the principals’ stance and, by refusing to serve alongside any party advocating the decriminalisation of marijuana, successfully manoeuvred the Labour Party into excluding the Greens from its second- and third-term Cabinets.

Much more significant than the New Zealand Green Party’s marijuana policy, however, is its almost unqualified support for the key demands of the Maori nationalist movement. Like the German Greens’ willingness to decriminalise consensual paedophilia, the New Zealand Green Party’s rock-solid determination to atone for the sins of the nation’s colonial fathers emerged from the deepest layers of the radical political sub-cultures of the 1980s and 90s.

A willingness on the part of Pakeha leftists to be guided by the Maori nationalist advocates of tino rangatiratanga had by the mid-1980s become the litmus test of authentic revolutionary praxis. As proof of their commitment to the cause of the tangata whenua individuals and institutions were required to elevate Te Tiriti o Waitangi to the status of holy writ. In these matters, the Greens proved to be no exception.

Commitment to the cause of tino rangatiratanga is, however, incompatible with a commitment to the fundamental principles of representative democracy. In pledging to uphold the rights of an indigenous minority, the Greens have rendered themselves incapable of upholding the right of an ethnically undifferentiated majority to pursue a course of action to which the indigenous minority is opposed.

Consider the following Parliamentary speech from the Green List MP, Catherine Delahunty. Responding to criticism of legislation establishing Crown/Tainui "co-management" over the Waikato River, Delahunty declared:

I was not going to take a call on the Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Bill, but sometimes the rhetoric around one is overwhelming. I am very excited that we are moving into a more sophisticated era under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and we are moving beyond the limited concept of conservative Pakeha that one man, one vote is the only manifestation of democracy possible in Aotearoa. I stand as a Pakeha, proud to live with Te Tiriti o Waitangi as our founding document, and absolutely committed to finding new ways through the colonisation effects of the past. Only people who do not understand what colonisation means would say that this is not a step forward, and that the co-management that is being proposed is not an incredibly positive model for Pakeha, for tangata Tiriti, for tauiwi katoa as well as for Maori.

Had an Act MP publicly suggested that his party was moving beyond the "limited concept" that "one man, one vote is the only manifestation of democracy possible in Aotearoa" it would have been headline news. Act – unlike the Greens – is taken seriously by journalists, and so are the statements of its representatives.

It is entirely possible, however, that eighteen months from now Act’s parliamentary representation will be reduced to a single seat, and that the Greens and the Maori Party will find themselves in the media spotlight.

As these two contenders bicker and haggle with the major parties over seats at the cabinet table and support for radical social, environmental and constitutional reforms, it is surely in the wider interest of the New Zealand electorate to know that, when it comes to sealing the deal, the core democratic tradition of one person, one vote is a constitutional taonga to which neither the Maori Party, nor the Greens, have declared a serious commitment.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 27 May 2010.