Iron In Her Soul.

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND is to be congratulated for inviting Chloe Swarbrick onto its Q+A current affairs show. The Green MP for Auckland Central is the odds-on favourite to become the next co-leader of the Green Party, making her a vital player in the trio of left-wing parties (the other two being Labour and Te Pāti Māori) that together constitute our alternative government. Allowing the public to get to know Swarbrick a little better was a sensible editorial decision.

There will be many Green members and supporters, however, who, having watched Q+A’s Jack Tame interrogate Swarbrick, may be wondering whether accepting TVNZ’s invitation to be interviewed was as shrewd as issuing it.

Tame is an exceptionally talented broadcaster whose boyish good-looks mask a daunting interrogative talent. If there are weaknesses in any given political persona, Tame may be relied upon to find them. Last Sunday (11/2/24) he found Swarbrick’s – and goaded her into revealing them, live, on free-to-air public television.

The weakness Tame homed in on was Swarbrick’s political inflexibility – a flaw which has only grown as her time in Parliament has lengthened.

When she first burst upon the political scene, as an independent candidate for the Auckland mayoralty in the 2016 local body elections, the clarity of her thought and expression was Swarbrick’s greatest asset. Here was a young woman who was capable of presenting her ideas forcefully, without prevarication, and then supporting them with a truly intimidating army of facts and figures.

Swarbrick’s campaign may have been run on a shoestring, and mostly on social media, but it made sufficient political impact to leave her the third-highest-polling candidate for Mayor. Clearly, this diminutive, articulate and courageous young woman was destined for great things. That Labour and the Greens set out immediately to recruit her, surprised nobody.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to observe that Swarbrick’s choice of the Greens may not have been the best one. While, on paper, the Greens’ determination to arm their politics with the weaponry of reason and science made it a perfect fit for the serious, almost scholarly, Swarbrick, there were risks. The currents of unreason that were flowing with ever-increasing force beneath the surface of Green Party politics were bound to end up battering her core intellectual and political principles.

Swarbrick’s candidacy for the Greens’ co-leadership was prompted by the departure of James Shaw. In spite of an impressive record of political wins – most obviously the Zero Carbon Act – Shaw has found it increasingly difficult to make his colleagues understand that their electoral success depends on voters seeing them as the only party dedicated to combatting global warming effectively. Shaw’s implied warning: that a Green Party which cares less about climate change than it does about fighting the culture wars will end up bleeding away its support (a proposition confirmed by the latest Curia poll) went unheeded.

The politician who emerged from Tame’s interview with Swarbrick cannot replace the qualities the Greens are losing with Shaw. Her six years in Parliament appear to have diminished her faith in democracy as the most effective political system. Swarbrick has observed politicians of all colours tapping into the raw emotional power of ignorance and prejudice, and it appears to have hardened her and made her brittle. There no longer seems to be as much “give” in the Swarbrick of 2024, as there was in the Swarbrick who entered Parliament in 2017. Iron has entered her soul.

Swarbrick’s declining faith in representative democracy is reflected in her conviction that “the people” possess a power that overmatches the tawdry compromises of professional politicians. In her pitch to Green members Swarbrick hints that this power may be sufficient to bring the whole rotten, planet-destroying system crashing down. That, with the masses at their back, the Greens can build a new and better Aotearoa.

How many times has revolutionary zealotry offered this millenarian mirage to an angry and despairing world? How many times has it all gone horribly wrong? And how sad is it that a politician as talented as Chloe Swarbrick now finds herself wandering this arid trail?

Many have praised/condemned Jack Tame for identifying Swarbrick’s unflinching defence of the Palestinian cause as the most effective means of exposing her zealotry. But, to those who once saluted Swarbrick’s political promise, Tame’s uncompromising interview proved profoundly depressing.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 February 2024.

Delirious Hatred: The Dystopic Tendencies of Twenty-First Century Progressivism.

Fighting Mad: That which Twenty-First Century progressives most feared, Twenty-First Century progressivism has become. No one old enough to have experienced the emancipatory power of true progressivism: in the factory or on the streets; in the university quad or in the “old school” newsroom; could possibly vote for the parties it has taken over.

I THINK I’VE WORKED IT OUT – why writing about today’s version of “progressive” politics leaves me feeling so depressed. In the end, the reason I cannot bring myself to vote for either Labour or the Greens is very simple: it’s because they are joyless; because the logical end-point of the ideology they espouse is one of universal dissatisfaction and unending conflict. In other words, their direction-of-travel is dystopic. That’s why so many voters are pulling away from parties they’ve supported all their adult lives. They don’t like where Labour and the Greens are going, and they’ll be damned if they’ll go there with them.

Chippy can talk about “bread and butter” all he likes, but everybody knows that he and Grant Robertson have already committed themselves to less butter and thinner bread for at least the next three years. We also know that if, by some miracle, Labour-Green wins the election, then none of the initiatives which both parties signed-up to over the past six years: radical ethnic nationalism, censorship, transgenderism; are going to be abandoned. What looms ahead of New Zealand if Labour-Green wins is grinding economic austerity and relentless cultural warfare. Thinner bread and bloody roses.

The cynicism of the Greens is particularly galling. As the election looms ever closer, the party’s dominant ultra-progressive faction has been careful to remove the most off-putting of their policies from the party’s shop-front window. Barely tolerated by Green activists for most of the past three years, James Shaw has been thrust forward to sell the party’s popular and genuinely progressive policies to the electorate. Unfortunately, everybody who understands just how radical the Greens have become, also knows that the moment the votes are counted Shaw will be pushed aside and the party’s ultra-progressive priorities reclaimed from the backstage area and reinstated.

It is precisely this sort of conscious deception, this deliberate “fooling” of the voters, that has transformed progressive politics from what used to be a joyful affirmation of idealism into a joyless exercise in dishonesty.

According to this sort of progressive politician, the liberation of the oppressed cannot be achieved if their would-be liberators are open and honest about their intentions. Just look at the trouble that Marama Davidson’s frank identification of “White Cis Males” as the ultimate cause of societal violence got the Greens into. In a world where White Cis Males still hold sway, such frankness is self-defeating. The trick, they say, is to keep all these progressive truths safe in one’s heart, while telling those not ready to hear them a pack of lies.

Far better to send out James Shaw – a White Cis Male – to sell the party’s Wealth Tax, its Universal Basic Income, and all the other inspirational policies on offer from the Greens in 2023. That way the voters will be much less likely to remember that the Green Party also favours sending those found guilty of uttering or publishing “Hate Speech” to prison for three years.

Not that Labour is guiltless in this regard. One has only to recall the secretive process by which the He Puapua Report was prepared and presented. Once again, it was assumed that Pakeha New Zealanders couldn’t “handle the truth”. Why else was the Labour Government so insistent that the report in no way represented a blueprint for New Zealand’s transformation into a bicultural state, when a steady stream of official policy decisions confirmed that’s exactly what it was?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that as far as today’s progressives are concerned the “truth” has changed. The unifying vision of human emancipation and equality which, for centuries, possessed the power to mobilise the downtrodden and oppressed is no longer considered to be either achievable or desirable.

Progressive politics has moved beyond the idea of uplifting and overcoming; of building a society in which there are no masters, no servants; no rich, no poor. Envisaged now is what can only be described as a perpetual theatre of cruelty, in which those to whom evil has been done, are encouraged to do evil in return. Far from serving as the emancipating “vanguard” of the Proletariat, as Karl Marx hoped, the intelligentsia of the Twenty-First Century are claiming for themselves the role of Grand Inquisitor. They have made themselves the pitiless torturers of all those whose “privilege” cannot be overcome or abandoned, only confessed to and punished.

The historical precedent which springs to mind most readily is the extreme form of Maoism promulgated by the murderous Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s. Starting where Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” left off, the “Red Khmers” constructed an ideological system grounded in deception and death. Having been marched out of the cities and into the countryside, “bourgeois” Cambodians were encouraged to confess their “crimes against the people”. By no other means, the commissars told them, could they be welcomed into the rural utopia which the Red Khmers were bringing into existence. The moment they stepped forward, of course, they were denounced and suffocated.

Over the top? Barking mad? Grossly defamatory of activists who only want people to be free and equal? How I wish it were true! But one only has to visit the febrile world of social media to grasp the perverse enjoyment contemporary progressives derive from “flaming”, “de-platforming”, and “cancelling” – oh, what an ominous word that is – those who refuse to step forward and confess.

A woman like “Posie Parker”, perhaps?

Those who were in Albert Park on 25 March 2023, and those who watched the many video recordings made at the scene, could not help but note the delirious hatred of the mob, and the brutal behaviour it spawned. Such is the praxis of the post-modern progressive: telling the news media that theirs was a gathering of peace and love – while punching a 70-year-old woman in the face. And then, shamefully, having their lies accepted by the supposedly “independent” intellectuals appointed to expose and condemn media falsehoods.

Have a care when fighting monsters,” warned the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, “lest ye become a monster yourself.” Adding: “Stare not too long into the abyss – lest the abyss stare back into you.” Well, the horrific abyss of the bloody Twentieth Century has indisputably left its impression upon the children of the Twenty-First. Terrified that the monsters it spawned are returning to plague them, contemporary progressives have pre-emptively adopted the tactics of the fascists they profess to abhor.

That which Twenty-First Century progressives most feared, Twenty-First Century progressivism has become. No one old enough to have experienced the emancipatory power of true progressivism: in the factory or on the streets; in the university quad or in the “old school” newsroom; could possibly vote for the parties it has taken over.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 15 September 2023.

A Test For The Greens.

Top Ten? Over the next few weeks the Green Party membership has the opportunity to study the provisional list presented to them by the party’s ruling bodies. If the provisional list seems wildly out-of-sympathy with the membership’s mood, then members have the power to re-organise it from top to bottom. Exactly where Elizabeth Kerekere ends up being ranked will be a test of the Greens’ political credibility and ethical strength.

THE EXPOSURE OF ELIZABETH KEREKERE is at once trivial and important. That members of the same political party can harbour intense dislike for one another should surprise no one. As the Nineteenth Century British statesman, Benjamin Disraeli, famously quipped: “No, Mr Speaker, before me sit my opponents. My enemies are seated behind me.” That the full measure of a member’s dislike may occasionally surface in view of the public is equally unsurprising – no matter how amusing its expression. What is indisputably important, however, is when the inadvertent revelation on internal party animosities reveal ambitions and machinations serious enough to affect the future political course of the entire nation.

Elizabeth Kerekere is not only an ambitious politician, but also, within the confines of the contemporary Green Party (of which more later) an effective one. To rise from an unwinnable nineteenth ranking on the Green Party List in 2017, to ninth position (and a parliamentary seat) in 2020, to a provisional ranking of fourth in 2023, indicates a willingness to exploit the dynamic internal divisions currently racking the Green Party. Kerekere’s leadership role in securing the passage of the legislation outlawing so-called “gay conversion therapy”, coupled with her ground-breaking academic research into takatāpui (a Māori person who is gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender) strongly suggests an ideological orientation towards the Greens’ ultra-radical faction.

Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, explicitly identifies Kerekere as: “someone who has been rumoured to have been positioning a far more extreme woke clique within the Greens”. The accidental release of Kerekere’s chat-group criticism of fellow Green MP Chloe Swarbrick – “omg what a cry-baby” – is characterised by Bradbury as “messaging co-conspirators who are involved in manoeuvring a new co-leadership team of Kerekere and Ricardo [Menendez-March]”.

Menendez-March was born in Mexico to a Mexican father and a New Zealand mother. Returning to New Zealand with his mother, Menendez-March first entered the political arena as a serious player when he became the convenor of Auckland Action Against Poverty. An articulate and resourceful advocate, he was unsparing in his criticism of Jacinda Ardern’s failure to deliver on her promise to dramatically reduce child poverty and homelessness in New Zealand. Ranked tenth on the Green Party List, Menendez-March entered Parliament one place behind Kerekere in 2020.

With neither Kerekere nor Menendez-March susceptible to the increasingly disqualifying “Cis” prefix (she being lesbian and he gay) and with both MPs being considerably more comfortable espousing radical cultural ideas than most of their Green Party caucus colleagues, it was hardly surprising that they should find themselves cheered-on by the two Green Party “networks” at the core of the ultra-radical faction – the Rainbow Greens and the fervently anti-capitalist, Green Left.

Adding a further wrinkle to this factional manoeuvring on the part of the “ultras” is the overlap between party activists on the one hand and parliamentary staffers on the other. Well-resourced and supremely well-located at the very centre of political power, these staffer-activists appear to have been extraordinarily successful at lifting their preferred parliamentary candidates into winning positions on the Party List. Undoubtedly there are some within the Greens who blame these radical apparatchiks for the fiasco surrounding James Shaw’s re-election as Green Party co-leader in 2022. Inevitably, less radical Greens will also blame them for Kerekere’s dramatic rise from 9 to 4 in the List rankings.

Those familiar with left-wing political history will object that all “big change” parties have their ultra factions. No matter how fierce they might appear, however, the radicals’ numbers are so small that, should they be foolish enough to force key policy issues, a huge moderate majority stands ready to slap them down. The question is: has the Green Party still got a moderate majority? Or, have the Greens – always a very cliquey outfit – undergone the same degree of membership burn-off that has undermined so many “progressive” organisations? There is a degree of emotional violence in highly-motivated radical activists that only the most robust spirits are either willing or able to face down.

The Green Party of Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, within which the principal ideological divide fell between the radical environmentalists and the eco-socialists (with some avant-garde “Treatyism” and second-wave feminism off to the side) has long since ceased to exist. The Green Party of 2023 is a volatile mixture of “decolonising” Māori nationalism, revolutionary anti-capitalism, and uncompromising Rainbow zealotry. The idea that these are nothing more than frothing eddies of youthful activism, and that deep down the slower currents of ecological wisdom and political responsibility continue to flow serenely on, may soon be exposed as the purest wishful thinking.

The way to tell will be to examine the final Green Party List. Over the next few weeks the Green Party membership has the opportunity to study the provisional list presented to them by the party’s ruling bodies. If the provisional list seems wildly out-of-sympathy with the membership’s mood, then members have the power to re-organise it from top to bottom.

If those deep currents of ecological wisdom and political responsibility really do exist, and are not merely figments of progressive New Zealand’s imagination, then the all-too-obvious activist-staffer-Green MP shenanigans revealed in the leaked chat-group exchanges will be severely punished. Elizabeth Kerekere will be lucky to find herself left where she is at ninth position on the Party List. A Green Party determined to signal to the electorate that it has no place for such “mean” and all-consuming ambition would slot her in at twenty-ninth!

If, however, Kerekere remains where she is, or even leapfrogs over Chloe Swarbrick into third position, then we will know that there is no steadying majority of moderate Greens to keep the party within the confines of electability. It will be clear that the extraordinary civility and gentle strength that won the admiration of even the Greens’ electoral rivals under Fitzsimons and Donald really has gone. The effect upon the tens-of-thousands of Green Party voters who recoiled in disgust when the chat-group exchanges were leaked will be profound. Their faith in the Green Party as a responsible political organisation run by principled grown-ups (already strained by the nonsense associated with Shaw’s re-election and Marama Davidson’s “It’s Cis, white males” comment) will be shattered – and their votes will be lost.

That will be extremely important. Because it may well see the Greens fall below the crucial 5 percent MMP threshold. On current polling, a Labour Party stripped of its Green allies will have insufficient parliamentary support (even with Te Pāti Māori) to form a government. Electoral victory will be claimed by National and Act.

And that will be no trivial matter.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 10 April 2023.

The Greens’ Unhappy Relationship With Power.

Rule-Breaker? It is easy to see why poor James Shaw found himself brutally deposed as the Greens’ co-leader. By seeking the responsibilities of leadership – and exercising them – he violated the first rule of Green Party governance. Then, by accepting the limitations of the Green Party’s electoral mandate (7.8 percent of the Party Vote) and practicing the art of the possible with Labour and National, he violated the second.

THE GREENS have a problem with power. The whole concept of leadership makes them uneasy. Who should have power? How should it be wielded? These are questions radical environmentalists have struggled with since the Values Party was formed 50 years ago. If nothing else, the peculiarly self-destructive actions of the Greens over the course of the past week have exposed how urgently the party needs to address and resolve the problems of political power.

Perhaps the first question that the Greens need to answer is: How much power do they want? This may sound like a silly question, but exactly how powerful the Greens see themselves becoming has never been all that clear. Unlike most parties, the Greens do not ask the electorate explicitly for a decisive parliamentary majority.

Now, you may say this reflects a commendable humility on the part of the Greens. By accepting that securing a parliamentary majority is beyond them, and that the best they can hope for is to partner a much larger party in a broad progressive coalition, they are, surely, acknowledging political reality? True, but they are also accepting that the amount of power they will ever be able to wield in their own right is limited.

Except, in the face of global warming and all the other environmental threats to the planet, isn’t the Greens’ acceptance of relative powerlessness a little self-defeating? Examining their manifesto, it is clear that unprecedented state power will be needed to achieve the goals the Greens have set themselves. Power that only a determined Green Prime Minister, Cabinet and Caucus, commanding a huge parliamentary majority, could hope to wield.

All of which confirms the Greens’ deeply contradictory relationship with power. Green Party members seem unusually diffident about exercising power in their own right, but are resentful of the power exercised by other party members over them. At the same time, the Greens aren’t the least bit fazed, collectively, by the idea of the entire population being required to submit to their party’s radical environmental remedies.

Blend these contradictions into a single Green political style and what do you get? A party deeply mistrustful of effective leadership. A party which gives more weight to the objections of minorities than it does to the affirmations of majorities. A party which compensates for its crippling internal contradictions by demanding unquestioning public compliance with Green Party policy. A party, moreover, which makes these demands fully aware that, on a good day, it represents barely a tenth of the electorate – and yet considers that enough.

With all this in mind, it is easy to see why poor James Shaw found himself brutally deposed as the Greens’ co-leader. By seeking the responsibilities of leadership – and exercising them – he violated the first rule of Green Party governance. Then, by accepting the limitations of the Green Party’s electoral mandate (7.8 percent of the Party Vote) and practicing the art of the possible with Labour and National, he violated the second.

Shaw’s first violation bespoke an unhealthy amount of un-Green ambition. His second dispelled the membership’s cherished illusion that maximum policy gains can be extracted, without compromise, on the basis of 10 out of 120 seats in the House of Representatives. His thumping victory notwithstanding (71 percent of the AGM’s voting delegates supported Shaw) the man obviously had to go!

It’s tempting to interpret Shaw’s landslide “victory” as evidence that the core of the Green Party membership retains a healthy measure of common-sense. Unfortunately, that same membership recently ratified a revised Green Party constitution that militates aggressively against common-sense. Only a party deeply ambivalent towards effective leadership, and deaf to the appeals of political realism, could endorse a process allowing 29 percent of voting delegates to declare an unopposed candidate with 71 percent support – not elected.

More to the point, the Greens’ constitution also attests to an ambivalent relationship with democracy itself. It takes a particularly virulent strain of individualism to construct a political ideology in which majorities are, at best, suspect, and, at worst, instruments of tyranny. Certainly, it places the Greens well outside the great movements for human liberation that have illuminated the past 250 years.

To save the world, you must be willing to lead it. If you would have us trust you to do that, then, for the planet’s sake, trust yourselves!

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 July 2022.

Tu Ingrate Vireta!* Stabbing The Green Caesar.

Struck Down: As James Shaw saved the pure Greens from themselves in 2017, they resented him. As he secured the Climate Change portfolio for his party, they suspected him. As he achieved cross-party support for crucial climate change legislation, they condemned him. And, as he was white, and male, and straight, and admired by a clear majority of Green Party members – as well, unforgivably, as the Prime Minister herself – they slew him with 29 daggers.

WHAT ARE THE GREENS telling us when they allow 29 people to overrule the wishes of 71 people? In essence, they are telling us that, in their political party, minorities count for more than majorities. Or, to put it more bluntly, the Greens are telling us they do not believe in democracy.

For those who look back fondly on the co-leadership of Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons, the Greens’ antipathy to democracy will be hard to accept. The Green Party they remember seemed very much a party of human rights and freedom, and its consensus-based decision-making process struck many as the epitome of political inclusiveness. Masking the fact that making decisions this way  actually disempowers people, stands among Rod’s and Jeanette’s most important contributions to the Green Party’s electoral viability.

How much harder it would have been for their party to crest the 5 percent threshold if Rod and Jeanette had openly repudiated traditional democratic decision-making processes. “We believe in allowing minorities to overrule majorities” is hardly an election-winning slogan!

The Greens’ anti-democratic instincts constitute one of the more important reasons why they have never allowed themselves to become a mass party with tens-of-thousands of members. And it’s odd, isn’t it, that they haven’t? When you think of the huge numbers of young people eager to do all they can to rescue the planet from disaster; or the scientists desperate to make themselves heard; or the workers keen to stop contributing to the despoilation of the natural environment; it’s astonishing that the Greens are not, far-and-away, New Zealand’s largest political party.

What is it, then, that leads the Greens to believe – like Lenin’s Bolsheviks – that “fewer, but better” is the way to go? The answer is brutally simple: a mass party, in which everyone has an equal say, and policy reflects the will of the majority; is a party whose ideological purity will very soon be compromised, and its political priorities side-tracked, by people with “unacceptable” ideas. Bluntly, Ecologism and Populism do not mix.

Those who join the Greens do not enter an open party, with simple, practical structures, but a strangely opaque organisation whose rules and rulers are hard to find and difficult to understand. It is a party of initiates who assess, rather than welcome, newcomers. How likely are these newbies to measure-up to the ideological and procedural strictures of the Greens? Will they be disruptive? Will they challenge the party’s precepts? Are they racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, and/or Islamophobes? Do they know what it means to be te Tiriti centric? Are they familiar with the jargon and buzz-words of the contemporary Left? What are their pronouns?

How many meetings will an ordinary person, keen to fight climate change, attend before people of indeterminate gender, with purple hair, talking menacingly of heteronormative white privilege, convince them that it might be wiser, and more enjoyable, to be a Green Party member who “works from home”. One? Two? Assuming, of course, they don’t decide they’d be better off getting involved in some other – any other – political party?

Fewer, but better?

Even the saintly Jeanette Fitzsimons had her Leninist side. I well recall an old time ecologist, one of those who fought to “Save Manapouri”, approaching me with a bitter tale of intolerance and exclusion. Unconvinced by Catherine Delahunty’s interpretation of the te Tiriti o Waitangi and its meaning, this Green Party member had argued for a more nuanced Treaty policy. Fatal mistake. When he put his name forward for the Party List he was informed bluntly by Jeanette that his views on the Treaty made him unfit to carry the Green banner into an election. His name was not even allowed to go forward to be ranked by the members – lest a lifetime of contributions to environmental politics prompted too many of them to overlook his “racism”.

To be accepted into the body of the Green Church, one must be willing and able to recite its catechism word perfect – and without demur.

This is the critical political weakness of the Greens – their unwillingness to repose the ultimate determinative power of their movement in the collective judgement of their party’s members. In the inner sanctum of the Green temple burn four torches: Ecological Wisdom, Social Responsibility, Appropriate Decision-Making, and Non-Violence. Their sacred flames are tended by priests and priestesses whose manner of induction remains mysterious, but whose powers extend even to striking down a co-leader, should his dedication to the party’s guiding lights be deemed insufficient.

As James Shaw saved these pure Greens from themselves in 2017, they resented him. As he secured the Climate Change portfolio for his party, they suspected him. As he achieved cross-party support for crucial climate change legislation, they condemned him. And, as he was white, and male, and straight, and admired by a clear majority of Green Party members – as well, unforgivably, as the Prime Minister herself – they slew him with 29 daggers.

And the 71 daggers, whose owners supported this Green Caesar, were powerless to defend him.

Because, whatever else the Greens may be – they are not democrats.

* You ungrateful Greens!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 28 July 2022.

The Greens’ Minority Rules.

Poll Axed: What happened to James Shaw on Saturday, 23 July 2022 exposed the Greens’ minoritarian political culture for all to see. Once voters grasp the enormity of 30 percent of Green delegates to the Green AGM being constitutionally empowered to overrule the wishes of the 70 percent of delegates backing Shaw – an overwhelming majority – the party faces electoral death.

PERHAPS THE GREATEST SERVICE Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald rendered the Greens was making New Zealanders believe they were democrats. Their engaging personalities and considerable political skills masked the fact that Green politics has never been (and likely never will be) democratic. The whole ethos of the Green movement, here and overseas, is minoritarian. By concealing that fact, Jeanette and Rod made the Greens electorally viable.

What happened to James Shaw on Saturday, 23 July 2022, however, has exposed the Greens’ minoritarian political culture for all to see. Once voters grasp the enormity of 30 percent of Green delegates to the Green AGM being constitutionally empowered to overrule the wishes of the 70 percent of delegates backing Shaw – an overwhelming majority – the party faces electoral death.

But, why minoritarianism? Partly, the Greens loathing of majorities is attributable to the social milieu out of which the green movement arose, but mostly it is based on their unshakeable conviction that their view of the world is the only correct view, and that, unfortunately, most of the human species are simply too stupid to recognise the fact. Greens are elitists – and proud of it.

If challenged on this point, the Greens will point out that they were the ones who first recognised the existential threat posed by climate change – and that was long before the mainstream parties were even willing to fully acknowledge its reality. They will remind us that it was the Greens who first recognised how seriously corporate mendacity had compromised the fruits of genetic engineering. Who, they will demand, were the first to elect co-leaders and make their party te Tiriti centric? The list goes on and on. As Rod Donald was fond of reminding New Zealanders: The Greens are not on the Left, the Greens are not on the Right. The Greens are out in front.”

All very well and good – until the seers and prophets responsible for this farsighted vanguardism are presented with the practical difficulties of running a political party aspiring to electoral viability. At that point it becomes necessary to find a way to prevent the purity of the party’s principles and policies from being forced to endure the lowest-common-denominator arbitration inherent in the crude majoritarianism of democratic decision-making.

The Greens’ solution to this problem was the adoption of “consensus-based” decision-making. Superficially, this sounded super-democratic. Rather than allow 51 percent of the party to dominate the remaining 49 percent, the Greens would do all within their power to ensure that their principles and policies enjoyed the broadest possible agreement.

Few voters, however, bothered to follow the logic of the Greens’ argument right through. If they had, it would very soon have become obvious that “consensus-based” decision-making allows the faction composed of the party leadership and its hangers-on to exercise a veto over the party’s ultimate direction. Unwilling to embarrass or challenge the people in charge, party delegates could be prevailed upon to delay, postpone, or simply compromise out of all recognition, proposals supported by a clear majority of the membership.

Should the veto-wielding minority prove intransigent, however, constitutional provision was made for the blocking of consensus to be over-ridden by a supermajority vote of 75 percent + 1. Turn that around, of course, and you have conferred veto powers on 25 percent + 1 of the members and their delegates.

This is hardly a recipe for genuine consensus, more a guarantee of simmering resentments and ceaseless factional manoeuvring. It is also, presumably, the reason why the constitutional provision which laid James Shaw’s hopes low on Saturday was approved. If a minority leadership clique could exercise its veto over the wishes of the rank-and-file majority, then it was only fair that a rank-and-file minority of just 25 percent + 1 could negate the unopposed candidacy of an incumbent co-leader with upwards of 70 percent membership support.

That a constitution permitting such antics was entirely unsuited to a political party seeking genuine political influence – up to and including Cabinet positions – does not appear to have occurred to either the people who drafted it, or the members who voted for it.

What it does point to, however, is a party unwilling to embrace the brute realities of parliamentary politics. There is absolutely no point in making its MPs available for Cabinet posts, if a quarter of a party’s members are resolutely opposed to its MPs engaging in the delicate business of building cross-party support, accepting the compromises inherent in coalition politics, negotiating in good faith with those interest groups most directly affected by proposed policy changes, and otherwise engaging in the “art of the possible” that is democratic politics.

It is simply astonishing that James Shaw, who has demonstrated considerable political skill in securing the support of four out of the five parliamentary parties for the Government’s climate change legislation, could be treated so appallingly by an intransigent minority of the Greens’ membership for doing precisely what 70 percent of the party asked him to do.

Nor is it just the abusive conduct directed against Shaw personally that is astonishing. Even worse is the message sent by the 30 percent of delegates who voted to re-open his nomination. Clearly, they are not in the least bit concerned what the rest of the country makes of their actions. The single most important lesson of party politics: that disunity is death; has failed to sink in.

With most of Shaw’s opponents supposedly located in the “Youth Wing” of the Greens, it must be assumed that the example of the Alliance is too far in the past to offer these children any guide as to what happens to a small political party which very publicly attacks its leader and then proceeds to tear itself apart.

And it simply will not do to explain away the self-destructive character of their decision by referencing the anger and despair of the generations destined to endure the worst effects of global warming. If the urgency of the climate crisis has already passed beyond the capacity of parliamentary politics-as-usual, then come out honestly and say so. Let the Greens’ Youth Wing put it to their party membership that there must be no more coalitions, no more compromises, no more democracy. Let them ask the electorate instead for the equivalent of wartime powers to fight the greatest threat to human survival since the last Ice Age.

They should be prepared, however, for considerably more of the Greens’ membership than 25 percent to reject such a policy. More importantly, they should be prepared for something pretty close to 75 percent of the New Zealand electorate to signal their willingness to stand up and fight for democracy.

If the only reason “the Greens are out in front” is because nobody else is willing to go anywhere near them, then Rod Donald’s bold assertion is no longer a boast – it’s an epitaph.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday 25 July 2022.

Eighty-One Thousand Votes.

Going Down: The question to be answered, then, is a simple one. If the controversial changes to the Green Party’s co-leadership rules proceed, how many formerly Green voters is the party likely to lose? If the answer is greater than 81,000, and Chloe Swarbrick fails to hold Auckland Central, then the Greens will cease to be a party represented in Parliament.

IF THE GREENS proceed with the constitutional changes mooted by political commentator Matthew Hooton, then their electoral future is bleak. The public has learned to live with the Greens’ male and female co-leaders, especially after the rule was adopted by Te Pāti Māori. Doing away with the male co-leader position, however, and replacing it with a co-leadership position open to “any gender” – Hooton’s prediction – will likely strike a great many Green Party supporters as both self-indulgently radical and blatantly unfair.

If Hooton’s second prediction, that the Green constitution will be further amended to require at least one of the party’s co-leaders to be Māori, also proves accurate, then the loyalty of Green voters will be tested even more strenuously.

The reasons for this are fairly straightforward.

The Greens are engaged in electoral politics: being so, they are bound by the rules of the New Zealand electoral system. The most relevant of these for any party promoting radical policies is that they must attract more than 5 percent of the Party Votes cast (or win an electorate seat) to gain a seat or seats in the House of Representatives. Crossing that 5 percent threshold in 2020 meant attracting somewhere in the vicinity of 145,000 votes. With 226,757 votes (7.8 percent) the Greens easily made it into Parliament.

The question to be answered, then, is a simple one. If the mooted constitutional changes proceed, how many formerly Green voters is the party likely to lose? If the answer is greater than 81,000, and Chloe Swarbrick fails to hold Auckland Central, then the Greens will cease to be a party represented in Parliament.

Eighty-one thousand votes may sound like a lot, but consider the fate of the Alliance – a coalition of radical parties of which the Greens were once part. Between the 1999 and 2002 general elections, 133,971 of the Alliance’s party voters took their support elsewhere. Its share of the Party Vote fell from 7.7 percent to 1.3 percent, and it ceased to be a parliamentary party.

Such is the fate of political parties which, for one reason or another, forfeit the trust, confidence and respect of their supporters. The transition from hero to zero can be brutally quick.

All too often the risk of alienating a critical number of party supporters is seriously underestimated by party members. The latter are dangerously prone to believing that their electoral support base is, in all practical respects, indistinguishable from themselves.

Except, this is almost never the case – especially for those parties capable of cresting the 5 percent threshold. Support is won on the strength of a great many considerations – and sometimes for the party’s position on just a single issue. Voters are not required to be either rational or consistent, and an alarming number of them are neither. Party members are almost always more ideologically consistent than party supporters.

All of these factors are acutely relevant to the Green Party.

A large chunk of its support (perhaps most of it) is based upon the perceived urgency of state action to combat Climate Change. Other voters’ will back the Greens for the party’s original commitment to social justice (long since attenuated to “social responsibility”). Some will back the Greens on account of their pacifism and because the party is committed to an ethical foreign policy. Many more will vote Green simply because they are in favour of decriminalising cannabis.

The number attracted to the Greens because they have altered their constitution to reflect their opposition to binary, heteronormative gender relations is likely to be considerably smaller than any of the groups of voters mentioned above. Outside of a very small fraction of the highly-educated professional middle-class, and a similarly modest percentage of their offspring studying at university, such matters display something pretty close to zero political salience.

Certain to display much greater salience with progressive voters will be the obvious disdain evinced by a large number of Green Party members for the political performance of their male co-leader, James Shaw, along with their equally obvious determination to remove him from his position.

While a great many Green voters are dissatisfied with the current government’s performance on Climate Change, this does not necessarily mean that they are dissatisfied with Shaw’s handling of the Climate Change portfolio. Most will realise that the Greens exercise very little influence over the behaviour of the Jacinda Ardern-led Labour Government, and more than a few will applaud Shaw for having parlayed the very weak hand he was dealt to such good effect and with such political skill.

The idea that he is being eased out of his male co-leader’s role by means of a transparent piece of constitutional revision may not sit well with these voters. By them the manoeuvre may be judged both cowardly and dishonest. Many will feel unable to go on supporting a party that is prepared to countenance such shabby political tactics.

Other Green supporters will attempt to match up the proposed constitutional changes with the four core tenets of the global Green movement: Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, and Non-Violence. They will struggle to see very much in the way of wisdom, justice, or democracy in any of these proposals. But, they will not miss the venomous emotional violence inherent in the execution of a political manoeuvre that protects the jobs and careers of some politicians while ruthlessly sacrificing those of others. These supporters, too, may feel unable to go on voting for a party capable of deploying such toxic levels of passive aggression.

Finally, there is the crucial question of political perception. What do these mooted constitutional changes make the Green Party look like?

Do they make the Greens look like a political organisation welcoming to all New Zealanders?

Do they make the Greens look like a group of politicians capable of prioritising the environmental, economic and social outcomes that New Zealand and the planet so desperately need?

Do they make the Greens look the way they used to look, back in the days of Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Sue Bradford, Keith Locke, Sue Kedgley and Nandor Tanczos: like a group of people who both like and support one another in the promotion of causes no rational voter can fail to acknowledge?

Or, do they make the Greens look like a political party that would rather be politically correct than politically successful?

A party on course to lose a great deal more than 81,000 votes.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 12 April 2022.

Too Much Say, Not Enough Do.

When The Green Party Co-Leader Speaks, Does He Make Any Sound? James Shaw must know that neither New Zealanders, nor the rest of humanity, will ever take the urgent and transformative action that Science now deems necessary to stave-off climate catastrophe.

POOR JAMES SHAW: He’s the man this government sends out to tell us that the news is still bad. Worse still, he’s the man whose job it is to bring us, if not exactly good news, then at least some reassurance that it’s not getting worse. Notwithstanding the fact that he is New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister, however, poor James Shaw can’t even do that.

Do his colleagues from the Labour Party care? Not enough, apparently, to make the Climate Change Minister a full member of Cabinet. That decision, alone, strongly suggests that not only does Labour not care about the public credibility of the male co-leader of the Greens, but also that it doesn’t really care about Climate Change – full stop.

Why else would they be sending him off to Glasgow with next-to-nothing to show the world from New Zealand? Could it be because they know that whatever the major contributors to Climate Change may say, they’re not intending to actually  very much either? In spite of the Queen’s “irritation” at “too much say, not enough do” from world leaders. In spite of Greta Thunberg’s caustic refrain of “blah, blah, blah”. Our leaders know that the world’s leading nations cannot afford anything more expensive than “blah, blah, blah” without crippling their economies and/or (if they’re democracies) being thrown out of office – and neither can New Zealand’s.

So, off James will go with nothing in his attaché case but promises to do better – which neither he, nor the Labour Government, are in any position to keep.

Will anybody, apart from the environmental NGOs and a few Climate Change swots, pay much attention to New Zealand’s dereliction? Well, the mainstream news media will certainly huff and puff for a few days. They’ll run Greenpeace’s media releases. They’ll commission plenty of op-ed commentary from the usual suspects. Then they’ll go back to publishing advertisements for SUVs and double-cab utes, and agitating for the “smug hermit kingdom” to re-join the world – especially by air.

“Will nobody think of the planet?!” For those deeply involved in the science of Climate Change, elevated anxiety levels will more than match the rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature. Their concern, however, is not really for the planet, it is for their own benighted species, and its apparent inability to recognise the enormous dangers bearing down upon it.

As scientists, they know “The Planet” has absolutely no thoughts on the matter.

Among under-graduates, the tree falling in the forest conundrum has always been a favourite. Everyone of a philosophical bent has heard it: “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The answer, of course, is “Yes” and “No”.

A tall tree falling through the air and striking the ground with considerable force will indeed produce the physical effects that the human ear delivers to the human brain as “sound”. And not only the human ear and brain. A timber wolf, whose hearing is vastly more sensitive than any human’s, will similarly register the tree’s fall.

The point, however, is that (as far as we know) only the human brain is capable of formulating the original question. Moreover, only the human brain is remotely interested in the answer.

Planet Earth, which is, of course, our creation – since a ball of rock whirling around its star lacks the self-awareness required to name itself – has undergone numerous and massive changes in its four billion year history. Science tells us that the planet was at one time covered with ice from pole to pole. At other times it had a surface temperature equal to that of the hottest of hothouses, with an atmosphere so full of oxygen that dragonflies were able to grow as big as seagulls, and lizards larger than a double-decker bus. And, when an asteroid the size of Manhattan struck its surface – leaving a crater as deep as Mt Everest is tall – killing-off the dominant dinosaur species (along with just about every other species of animal life) the ball of rock was shaken, but not stirred. It had withstood bigger blows. There had been other extinctions. Life always found its way back.

Which is where we, the clever apes, enter the story. Or, rather, where the clever apes come up with the peculiar idea – unique to themselves – that they, other creatures, and even the material world in which they find themselves, have a story to tell.

An evolutionary adaptation of enormous utility, it would seem, this ability to insert oneself into an ongoing narrative. The past experiences of one’s long-dead ancestors become preservable – and, therefore, recallable – to the evident benefit of those living in the present. Did the human-beings who lived through the last ice age, when ice-sheets more than a kilometre high extended past the Canadian border, comfort themselves with the inherited memory of a warmer world? Did they pray for climate change?

Did Ice-Age humans pray for climate change?

Telling stories about the future, however, suffers from the considerable disadvantage that, unlike stories concerning the past, no one can be entirely certain how – or even if – they will turn out. Human-beings are capable of being motivated by promises of better things to come. They are less prone, however, to invest too much emotional energy in stories foretelling doom and gloom. The phenomenon of confirmation bias leads us to suppose that human-beings believe more readily in stories that have a happy ending.

Unfortunately, climate scientists seem less and less inclined to predict such an ending to the Climate Change story. This is, of course, a problem, since evolution has only equipped human-beings to respond to imminent threats that are within their power to meet and defeat. The howling of wolves will draw the hunters to the perimeter of the firelight. Hitler’s depredations will set the arms factories humming. Far-off threats, decades distant, are much harder to get people excited about.

In the dark watches of the night, James Shaw must know that this baked-in human weakness is more than likely to overwhelm all his plans. That neither New Zealanders, nor the rest of humanity, will ever take the urgent and transformative action Science now deems necessary to stave-off climate catastrophe. Perhaps he comforts himself with thoughts of some last-minute technological fix. Or, perhaps, he simply imagines the last surviving human-being looking up into a night sky awash with stars, and weeping, because, in his absence, the whirling ball of rock will not know, or care, how beautiful human eyes had made it.

Or how silently the trees will fall – when he has gone.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 18 October 2021.

Don't Blame James.

Emissions Impossible! So, don’t be too hard on poor James Shaw. His pathetic little To-Do list is, indeed, totally inadequate to the crisis. But, you know what? He’ll be lucky to get half of the items ticked-off. There’s just too many entrenched interests – not the least of whom are consumers like you and me – standing in the way.

TO SAY that environmentalists are underwhelmed by James Shaw’s latest Climate Change announcements, would understate their feelings considerably. With every policy release, Shaw takes another downward step into the shadowland of political ignominy. Pretty soon we won’t be able to see or hear him at all.

In all fairness, to the Minister for Climate Change, he can’t do much else – except, maybe, resign. Even if this government were not so utterly distracted by the deepening Covid-19 crisis, it would have no inclination to take Climate Change seriously.

Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, Andrew Little, David Parker and Megan Woods are not heterodox thinkers. When it comes to running the country, they all adhere pretty faithfully to economic and political orthodoxy. Such skills as they do possess are mostly devoted to giving their very conventional views just enough spin to render them electorally palatable. It is dawning on them only slowly that this strategy has a limited lifespan. If you promise to do something, then – eventually – you have to do something.

They certainly do not appear to have fully grasped the reason for their extraordinary electoral success in 2020. In a nutshell, Labour was rewarded for actually doing something about Covid-19. Nobody was really sure if the Elimination Strategy would work. The idea of locking-down an entire country was certainly not an orthodox solution – as a great many business leaders and neoliberal ideologues nervously/furiously pointed out. The thing was, the Government didn’t really have time to think about whether or not their chosen course of action conformed to the rule-book. They had to do something – right now! So, they closed their eyes and pulled the lever. And, wonder-of-wonders, it worked.

But Climate Change isn’t like Covid-19. The need to take urgent action is unquestionably the same, but the consequences of this, or any, government not taking urgent action are unlikely to show up as corpses in a matter of days and weeks. Not following the science (the reason why Auckland is rapidly descending into the same Delta Disaster as New South Wales and Victoria) is definitely going to end badly, but not tomorrow, or next week, or even in a few months, or years. And something that is going to end badly in a few years, doesn’t really leave a very deep impression on a politician’s mind. A few years equals forever in electoral time.

Besides, the sort of changes a government would have to make, to produce the slightest difference to this country’s greenhouse gas emissions are so huge, would inflict so much economic damage, that the resulting political resistance simply could not be withstood.

Just recall the relentless fightback against the Government’s Elimination Strategy. “Plan B”, and the unceasing cacophony of voices demanding the creation of the Trans-Tasman Bubble. Not even the Strategy’s outstanding success: in saving lives; in recovering the economy; was enough to shut up the doubters and nay-sayers.

And they won, didn’t they? It’s important to keep that in mind. Jacinda couldn’t do it twice. Even with the number of cases in steady decline, the Big End of Town bounced our orthodox Prime Minister out of Level 4. Two people have already died of this Delta Outbreak – many more (most of them Māori and Pasifika) will follow.

With the power of the Big End of Town in mind, try to imagine the sheer ferocity of the opposition to measures requiring the owners of SUVs and double-cab utes to take their vehicles off the road. Contemplate the size of the “Groundswell” in response to the compulsory slaughter of a quarter of this country’s dairy herd. Or, the seizure of factories found to be greenhouse-gassing in defiance of cease-and-desist orders.

Is our Police Force – heck, is our Army! – large enough and reliable enough to force New Zealanders to kick the emissions habit? If Jacinda and her colleagues were persuaded that remaining at Level 4 could lead to serious civil unrest, then how hard do you think it would be for their officials to convince them that any meaningful – i.e. radical – action to meet our Climate Change commitments would spark a civil war?

Democracy is not really equipped to deal with a crisis on the global scale of Climate Change. But then, neither is the sort of authoritarian regime we see in China. Xi Jinping is one of the few world leaders taking Climate Change seriously, but just look where that has got him – and the globalised capitalist system.

Xi decreed that China must begin transitioning away from coal-fired power stations by shutting-down the dirtiest coal mines and most polluting power plants. Great! That’s the way to save the world! Umm, no, not really. As you read these words, millions of Chinese shiver in the dark and cold of electricity black-outs. Worse still, the great factories upon which the whole world now depends for its “just-in-time” manufacturing and distribution systems have also gone dark. Supply-chain snarl-ups are rapidly becoming a fact of twenty-first century life – and they’re only going to get worse. Those gaps in the supermarket shelves are not going away.

So, don’t be too hard on poor James Shaw. His pathetic little To-Do list is, indeed, totally inadequate to the crisis. But, you know what? He’ll be lucky to get half of the items ticked-off. There’s just too many entrenched interests – not the least of whom are consumers like you and me – standing in the way.

You don’t believe me? Well, consider this. For New Zealand to escape the clutches of the Delta Variant of Covid-19, all its citizens have to do is roll up their sleeves and accept a couple of jabs of Pfizer vaccine. Pretty simple, huh? And yet, upwards of 10 percent of the population, more than enough to keep Auckland in Lockdown for months, refuse to take two for the Team of Five Million.

So, ask yourself, if people can’t see clearly enough to grasp freedom via vaccination, is it reasonable to suppose that they will willingly wave good-bye to their fossil-fuelled lifestyles?

In the immortal words of Walt Kelly’s cartoon hero, Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 14 October 2021.

A Leap Of Faith - In Labour's Direction Of Travel.

Impressive Political Maturity: If conservative New Zealanders require further convincing about the steps required to fulfil this country’s commitment to fighting climate change, then convince them. That won’t happen if all the Greens do is shout at them, and/or damn them as enemies of the planet. It might happen, however, if someone is willing to make the case for change in the way most likely to make change happen. The ‘someone’ best placed to do that in the newly-elected Parliament is James Shaw. 

“A LEAP OF FAITH”, that’s what Greens co-leader Marama Davidson is said to have scribbled on her note-pad. She’s quite right. Entering into negotiations with a Labour Party that doesn’t need you is, indeed, a leap of faith. Davidson and her co-leader, James Shaw, are betting everything on Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues being serious about “rebuilding better” in the wake of Covid. They are hoping that by aligning their party with Labour’s efforts, the progressive alliance required to secure a third term for the centre-left will be ready, three years from now, to advance the Green agenda much further and faster.

It’s called “taking the long view”, and Davidson and Shaw should be applauded for demonstrating such an impressive degree of political maturity. How much easier it would have been to recommend taking up residence on the cross-benches to the Green Party membership. Not only would moving into Opposition absolve the Greens of all responsibility for making this government work, but it would also allow them to declaim without restraint from what they believed to be the moral high ground.

But, it would not be the moral high ground. That title belongs to the place where people with very different ideas and priorities nevertheless agree to make a positive and co-ordinated effort to advance their common objectives. These people are committed to making as much progress as possible in a political environment consistently hostile to making any progress at all. The moral high ground is not the place where increasingly incendiary slogans are shouted, it’s the place where progressives have the best prospect of winning over fundamentally conservative voters to the planet’s cause. Not all conservatives, of course, but enough of them to make a third electoral victory for the centre-left in 2023 a viable project.

At the very heart of this project lies the insight vouchsafed to me by my late uncle, the Revd. Peter Marshall. In the finest liberal Presbyterian tradition, he argued that: “Humankind is neither wholly corrupt, nor wholly unredeemable.” Most people are susceptible to reasoned arguments persuasively presented. Even those who start out holding fast to an unequivocal proposition can be worn down by constant – and principled – presentations.

I’ve seen this happen many times over the years. Throughout the 1970s, a solid majority of New Zealanders subscribed to the notion that sport and politics didn’t mix. At the beginning of 1981 most Kiwis wanted the Springbok Tour to proceed. By 1984, however, public opinion had shifted decisively against any further contact with Apartheid-era South Africa. A similar shift in public opinion occurred in relation to LGBTQ rights. In 1986 over 800,000 people signed a petition asking Parliament to reject the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. Five years later most New Zealanders struggled to recall what all the fuss had been about.

It’s long, slow, patient work, this wearing-away of entrenched opposition, but history is unequivocal in judging it to be the most effective means of bedding-in change. It’s what Jacinda Ardern means when she argues that the only change worth having is “change that sticks”.

If conservative New Zealanders require further convincing about the steps required to fulfil this country’s commitment to fighting climate change, then convince them. That won’t happen if all the Greens do is shout at them, and/or damn them as enemies of the planet. It might happen, however, if someone is willing to make the case for change in the way most likely to make change happen. The ‘someone’ best placed to do that in the newly-elected Parliament is James Shaw. Presumably, that’s why Jacinda Ardern is offering to make him her Minister for Climate Change.

Those members of the Green Party who would rather their parliamentary representatives adopted a purely oppositional stance – from the cross-benches – should consider how that will look to the broader electorate. In the minds of many voters it will lump them in alongside the National Party, which, in an attempt to lure back its lost rural and provincial voters, will very likely take up a position hostile to all meaningful attempts to respond to climate change.

Nothing could assist National more effectively in this reactionary endeavour than a strident and ultra-radical Green Party. Nothing helps the Right’s effort to portray the Greens as a party of dangerous extremists like behaving like a party of dangerous extremists! Moreover, for those rural and provincial voters disposed to support “Jacinda”, the unrelenting negativity of National and the Greens will lead them to conclude that they are merely obverse sides of the same extremist coin. The only winners in this scenario would be Jacinda and Labour: the voices of moderation and reason.

Another reason for the Green Party membership to support a collegial “co-operation agreement” with Labour is the likelihood of climate change itself making the most compelling arguments for radical and comprehensive reform. If the rising number and increasing seriousness of extreme weather events are allowed to set the scene for “Middle New Zealand”, then the Greens, in partnership with Labour, can present themselves as the party of solutions – not the pedlars of problems. Sometimes, reality should simply be allowed to speak for itself.

In spite of it being a horrible example of corporate-speak, the expression “direction of travel” may turn out to be the key to Labour-Green relations over the next three years. James Shaw and Marama Davidson – in sharp contrast to Winston Peters and Shane Jones – campaigned in 2020 as Labour’s staunch and reliable ally. They were rewarded with an increased share of the Party Vote. It would be a colossal mistake to execute a 180-degree turn away from that strategy. By marching alongside Labour, the Greens will be marching in step with the majority. And just because that majority rewarded Labour with the ability to govern alone in 2020, doesn’t mean that it will feel obliged to do the same in 2023.  

If the Greens spend the next three years proving themselves trustworthy, then the chances of them being entrusted with more power by the electorate in 2023 must, surely, be greater than if they spend all that time attacking Jacinda’s government and shouting themselves hoarse?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 29 October 2020.

James Shaw Apologises To Rod Donald And Jeanette Fitzsimons - A Parody.

(To the tune of Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert – Admiral Halsey”)

 

I’m so sorry, Rod and Jeanette,

I’m so sorry if I caused you any pain.

I’m so sorry, Rod and Jeanette,

But the party that you left me

Is in trouble once again.

 

I’m so sorry, but we’ve hardly done

A thing all term.

I’m so sorry, Rod and Jeanette.

But, Jacinda’s so unhelpful

And Winston always makes me squirm!

 

Sob, sob.

 

So you’re sorry, James? You wanker!

Cos you haven’t done a bloody thing all term?

So you should be, James. You tosser!

There’s a planet on the boil,

And you’re less green than Ardern!

 

Handouts to the wealthy!  (wealthy?)

Handouts to the rich!

Handouts for the crystals  (crystals?)

Buried in a ditch.

 

Taranaki Green School notified me,

They had to have more cash – cos salvation isn’t free.

So I got a grant from Grant, in spite of Treasury, and Chippie (Chris Hipkins)

Who had the gall to call it a strange priority!

 

Handouts to the wealthy!  (wealthy?)

Handouts to the rich!

Handouts for the crystals  (crystals?)

Buried in a ditch.

 

Bugger-off, you ageing hippies – on yer bike!  (on yer bike)

Being green’s a business now,

So you lefties – take a hike!

Bugger-off, you ageing hippies – on yer bike!  (on yer bike)

Being green’s a business now,

So you lefties – take a hike!

 

Handouts to the wealthy!  (wealthy?)

Handouts to the rich!

Handouts for the crystals  (crystals?)

Buried in a ditch!

This parody was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 4 September 2020.

A Sorry Excuse For A Green Party.

Cuckoo In The Nest? Unlike Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Russel Norman and Metiria Turei, Shaw has never shown any recognisable affinity for the kind of Green Party they represented. Nothing I have ever heard from Shaw has ever reassured me that he subscribes to either the hardcore anti-capitalist critique of the ecological socialists, or the radical anti-materialist ideas of the Greens’ visionary forerunners in the Values Party. On the contrary, Shaw has always struck me as the sort of Green politician you would be sent if you asked a high-powered corporate public-relations agency to supply one.

JAMES SHAW is sorry. Yes he is! Genuinely, abjectly, politically and electorally sorry – as he damn well should be! His decision to grant 12 million public dollars to a privately-owned Taranaki “school” (which appears to specialise in promoting every cliched remnant of the 1970s hippy culture) was way beyond stupid. If the Greens sink below the crucial 5 percent MMP threshold on 17 October, then a fair old chunk of the responsibility will belong to Shaw.

 All over the country, people are asking each other: “How could he have been so dumb?” Leaving aside the school’s promotion of New Age mumbo-jumbo which, of itself, raises serious questions about the adequacy of Ministry of Education oversight, there was the small, but hopefully still important, matter of Green Party policy. How could Shaw not have known that what he was doing contradicted his party’s long-standing opposition to the public funding of private education? Did he really think that Green Party members and supporters wouldn’t notice?

 Maybe he did. Unlike Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Russel Norman and Metiria Turei, Shaw has never shown any recognisable affinity for the kind of Green Party they represented. Nothing I have ever heard from Shaw has ever reassured me that he subscribes to either the hardcore anti-capitalist critique of the ecological socialists, or the radical anti-materialist ideas of the Greens’ visionary forerunners in the Values Party. On the contrary, Shaw has always struck me as the sort of Green politician you would be sent if you asked a high-powered corporate public-relations agency to supply one.

 Unkind? Probably. But the transformation which has led the Greens to this unfortunate fork in the road has been driven by the corporate world’s urgent need to, first, disarm, and then, absorb, its most serious threat. The above reference to public relations is, therefore, not intended as an insult. It speaks directly to the way in which the world’s largest corporations have expended billions on convincing the world’s peoples that, while capitalism may have got the planet into its present predicament, it is also – paradoxically – the only viable means of getting it out.

 Shaw’s career, prior to entering Parliament, was built upon this dubious proposition. He became an indefatigable promoter of “Green Capitalism”: a guide, if you will, leading consumers to the promised land of “sustainable” capitalist production. He offered living proof to the rising generation of ambitious Green Party activists that they could look sharp, rub shoulders with the rich and famous, and still be non-gender-specific siblings in the struggle to save Parent Earth. Just like Bono.

So, why not throw a wad of taxpayer cash at a couple of millionaires committed to training-up an army of green warriors and sending them forth to take their rightful places around the boardroom tables of a climate-change-stricken planet? Fully conversant in the idioms of wokefulness; tested adepts of ceremonial magic; shrewd manipulators of social-media and spreadsheets: what’s not to like?

 How like the masters of capitalism to simply toss all the contradictory elements of the green worldview into their cultural blender and flick the on-switch. Gaia-worship and Marxism; Reason and Unreason; Science and Mysticism; mix ‘em all up. Throw the empirical proof of climate-change and the radical paranoia of the anti-vaxxers into the same swirling potion and invite all the wide-eyed seekers after a better world to drink deep. When your only purpose is to render effective resistance impossible, feeding people contradictions makes perfect sense.

 Just so long as the Greens cease to be the party of well-informed idealists that bought this country 20 years of freedom from genetic engineering. The party that forced all the other parties in Parliament to at least pay lip-service to the reality of climate-change. The party that offered voters the inspiring examples of Rod Donald’s great heart and Jeanette Fitzsimons’ brilliant mind; the principled activism of Sue Bradford; the wisdom and courage of Keith Locke; the resinous mysticism of Nandor Tanczos. The party that, for however brief a moment, vouchsafed their fellow New Zealanders a glimpse of what the world could look like if we loved it and each other with equal fervour.

 The only school fit to teach young New Zealanders the geography of this new heaven, this new earth, is a genuine Green Party. The sort James Shaw wouldn’t want to be found dead in.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 4 September 2020.

Striking To Save The Planet

For A Planet They Can Live On: “They’re trying to get the attention of the adults who have let them down over the course of the last 30 years. They have every right to fight for their future.” - James Shaw, Green Co-Leader and Climate Change Minister.

TODAY WEEK (15 March) secondary students across New Zealand will bunk school to protest their elders’ feeble response to climate change. They will not be alone. Teenagers all over the world, most of them too young to vote, will join this Global Climate Strike

It’s a gesture, of course, and easily dismissed as such. But, gestures matter.

Martin Luther nailed his protest note to the doors of the local cathedral – and gave birth to Protestantism. Hone Heke chopped down the flagstaff at Russell – and started a war. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus – and changed America.

In the oft-quoted words of the Taoist philosopher, Lao Tzu: “Every journey begins with a single step.”

More important, perhaps, that the student’s political gesture will be their elders’ political response.

Climate Change Minister and Green Party Co-leader, James Shaw, is unequivocal in his support.

“They’re trying to get the attention of the adults who have let them down over the course of the last 30 years”, the Minister told Q+A’s Corrin Dann. “[T]hey have every right to fight for their future.”

Shaw’s support is certainly not echoed by the Principal of Darfield High School and head of the Secondary Principals Council, James Morris. His response to the proposed protest strikingly symbolises of the adult world’s failure to “get” either the urgency or the scale of anthropogenic global warming.

Confronted with the likelihood of ongoing Climate Strikes, he told TVNZ’s Whena Owen that he and his fellow Canterbury principals were developing a “consistent set of guidelines” with which to “manage” repeated student protest.

It is difficult to imagine an “official” response more numbing in its negativity. The principals’ reaction to the anguished cry of a generation struggling to come to terms with the terrifying realities of Climate Change, is to come up with a plan for “managing” an orderly return to business-as-usual in the nation’s classrooms.

Was it too much to expect anything more from our educational leaders? Weighed down as they are with legal and administrative obligations, was any other response possible?

Such questions lay bare the sheer size of the problem the striking students are attempting to address. The people in charge, their mums and their dads, simply do not understand that they and their children are already enmeshed in the climate change crisis.

There is no “business-as-usual” to return to: no “normal transmission” to be resumed.

“Normal”, from the point of view of the human species, was the Holocene. The whole of recorded human history has occurred in the geological age which, like Goldilocks preferred plate of porridge, was neither too hot, nor too cold, but just right. We are already in the entirely abnormal Anthropocene. For the first time in the planet’s history, its fate is being decided by the behaviour of a single organism – us.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, precisely because it is tasked with achieving the broadest possible scientific consensus on the issue, is one of the more conservative contributors to the climate change debate. Its latest report, delivered just last year, nevertheless gives us just 12 years to dramatically reduce our global carbon emissions, or face global warming of a magnitude far beyond the possibility of human control.

New Zealand’s secondary principals have long conceived of themselves as the status quo’s first line of defence. This has made them bastions of conservatism – and proud to be so. But, to champion the status quo in the face of apocalyptic climate change, they’ll be casting themselves in the role of their pupils’ destroyers.

If New Zealand’s principals are looking for guidelines, then look no further.

Close your schools next Friday. March alongside your students. Speak up not just for their future, but for any kind of future worth having. Tell your pupils’ parents that they should listen to their children – because they are right. The only thing that can save them, and every other complex organism on the face of the planet, is change.

Change without prevarication. Change without reservation. Change without “ifs”, or “buts”, or “maybes”. Change in spite of the resistance thrown up by the purblind fools who led them to this awful turning point. Change as if your lives depended on it. Change because your students’ lives most assuredly do depend upon it.

Change until they are safe.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 8 March 2019.