Not Taking Green Principles As Red.

Surely Not! Can it be possible that at least two of the Green Party's core principles - "Social Responsibility" and "Appropriate Decision-making" - could push it out of the Red and into the Blue? The Greens' long-standing opposition to so-called "waka-jumping" legislation aligns them more with National's belief in individualism than it does with Labour's historical commitment to caucus collective responsibility. It's a strange and contradictory position - especially for the party that fought so hard for proportional representation.

IS IT POSSIBLE to reconcile the Green Party’s long-standing opposition to “waka-jumping” legislation, with its constitutional commitment to “appropriate decision-making”? No other political party has a more consistent record of support for proportional representation. It is, therefore, perplexing to hear Greens argue for the right of individual MPs to undermine their own party’s decision-making power in the House. In an electoral system which allocates parliamentary seats according to a party’s share of the popular vote, how can compromising the proportionality principle ever be considered “appropriate”? Surely, under MMP, it must rank as the cardinal political sin?

That the Greens do not consider voting against the wishes of their own party to be a sin leads us back ineluctably to that wonderfully weaselish word “appropriate”. Why does the word even feature in the party’s four core constitutional principles? (Ecological Wisdom. Social Responsibility. Appropriate Decision-making. Nonviolence.) Surely, the party’s third core value should read Democratic decision-making?

The explanatory sentence accompanying the Green’s third core value only makes its meaning murkier. It reads: “For the implementation of ecological wisdom and social responsibility, decisions will be made directly at the appropriate level by those affected.”

Now, as I understand the rules of philosophical discourse, it is unacceptable to define a thing simply by referring to the thing itself. As in: a cat is an entity possessing cat-like qualities. Accordingly, it is extremely cheeky of the Greens to define “appropriate decision-making” as, in effect, decision-making which is made appropriately. Officially, this form of rhetorical evasion is known as “tautology”.

What, then, are the Greens seeking to evade by using the word “appropriate”?

Well, for a start, they’re evading the ideological obligations imposed upon the international Green movement by the Global Green Charter. The Global Green Charter lists the core Green values as: Ecological Wisdom. Social Justice. Participatory Democracy. Nonviolence. Sustainability. Respect for Diversity. These core values differ significantly from those listed in the New Zealand Green Party’s charter.

Participatory Democracy, for example, is a concept with a long and illustrious political pedigree extending all the way back to the “Port Huron Statement” issued in 1962 by the radical American youth organisation called Students for a Democratic Society. The substitution of the bland verbal formulation “appropriate decision-making” speaks volumes about the willingness of the New Zealand Greens to put their money where their mouths are. (Their craven substitution of “social responsibility” for “social justice” speaks a whole additional library of volumes!)

That the NZ Greens are unwilling to commit themselves to the principle of participatory democracy is highly significant in relation to at least some of their MPs openly equivocal stance on the Waka-Jumping Bill currently before the House. It signifies what can only be described as an ultra-individualistic approach to the vexed question of when, if ever, it is permissible to step away from decisions arrived-at collectively.

To hear some Greens tell it, the answer appears to be: “Whenever an individual Green MP feels like it.”

Some of these critics have justified their stance by citing the former Green MP, Sue Bradford’s, scathing denunciation of previous waka-jumping legislation. Unfortunately, this merely draws attention to Ms Bradford’s propensity to set a much higher value upon her personal political judgement than upon the collective judgements of her comrades. An old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist might condemn such behaviour as “petit-bourgeois individualism”; the Greens, bless them, are considerably less censorious.

This Green tolerance of dissent may, however, come back to bite them. The present, Labour-led government’s political survival is entirely dependent on the preparedness of the Green Party caucus to remain true to the undertakings given to Jacinda Ardern and her team of negotiators following last year’s general election. Among those undertakings was Green Party leader, James Shaw’s, commitment to facilitate the passage of the waka-jumping legislation demanded by NZ First. The slightest suggestion that Shaw may no longer be in a position to deliver on the deal will arouse serious misgivings not only in NZ First, but also in Labour. The mutual trust upon which the Labour-NZF-Green Government depends will be severely tested.

For the National Party, the Greens apparent willingness to put the rights of the individual ahead of the expectations of the group will be good news indeed. Simon Bridges can draw considerable comfort from the clear evidence that, in spite of the widely held view that they are more socialist than environmentalist, the New Zealand Greens are actually well to the right of their overseas counterparts.

Far from exhorting members to become “Social Justice Warriors”, the Green Party constitution calls upon them to demonstrate “social responsibility”. The New Left doctrine of “participatory democracy” is, likewise, deemed inappropriate. What’s more, in the finest National Party tradition, Green MPs are insisting that if their conscience requires it, then they must have the right to both abandon their party’s waka – and remain in Parliament.

A version of this essay was published in The Press of Tuesday, 13 March 2018.

No Matter Whether You’re Red Or Blue – You Must Keep Paddling In Your Own Canoe.

Each To Their Own: More than any other party, NZ First has good reason for seeking legislative protection against “waka jumping”. It was, after all, NZ First that, in August 1998, was forced to watch eight members of its caucus jump out of their own party’s waka to become either solo kayakers or de facto paddlers in National’s.

SHOULD MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT be permitted to jump from their own party’s waka into the waka of another political party? The question is more than rhetorical because under the provisions of the Election (Integrity) Amendment Bill, currently before Parliament’s Justice Select Committee, political defection by parliamentarians will render them liable to expulsion from the House of Representatives.

Introduced last December by Justice Minister, Andrew Little, in fulfilment of the coalition agreement between Labour and NZ First, the Bill is being strenuously opposed by the National Party and Act. The Greens, having supported the legislation’s introduction, are now entertaining some pretty outspoken second thoughts.

Why the fuss? Who could seriously oppose the idea of penalising politicians who head off to war in the coat of one army only to turn it when the heat of battle grows too hot?

Many New Zealanders would endorse the argument of the bill’s NZ First promoters: If you don’t like what your party is doing, then quit. It is, quite simply, unethical to upset the balance of the House of Representatives by giving another political party, or parties, votes that they did not win.

More than any other party, NZ First has good reason for seeking legislative protection against “waka jumping”. It was, after all, NZ First that, in August 1998, was forced to watch eight members of its caucus jump out of their own party’s waka to become either solo kayakers or de facto paddlers in National’s.

That spectacular act of political mendacity was glossed-over at the time and has remained largely unexamined ever since. National’s supporters were too busy celebrating their escape from the clutches of their erstwhile colleague, Winston Peters. While Labour voters were prepared to write-off the whole episode as but the first instalment in the political retribution NZ First had well-and-truly merited by leaving Helen Clark standing at the altar.

The unacknowledged truth of the matter, however, was that the nature and general policy direction of a New Zealand government had been fundamentally changed without the fuss-and-bother of a general election. The last occasion upon which such a change-of-government-by-political-defection had been accomplished was the destruction of Thomas Mackenzie’s Liberal Government by the Reform Party leader, William Massey, in 1912.

But, if it suited both National and Labour to turn a blind eye to this blatant assault upon New Zealand’s constitutional norms, it was never forgotten by Winston Peters and NZ First. Nor, indeed, by the late Jim Anderton, who had, similarly, been required to sit back and watch as the renegade Alliance MP, Alamein Kopu, took tea with Jenny Shipley and cast her vote with the National Party.

National and Act’s “principled” opposition to the Election (Integrity) Amendment Bill should, therefore, be taken with a grain of salt.

The Opposition’s objection to the legislation, if the speeches of its MPs can be taken seriously, is because Members of the House of Representatives are there to carry out the wishes of their constituents – not the orders of backroom party chieftains.

If that was ever true, then it was only in the era before the establishment of coherent and tightly disciplined political parties. Since the advent of party politics (which in New Zealand dates from around 1890) candidates have taken their parliamentary seats not on the strength of their character and ability, but courtesy of the political colours they stand under, and the support those colours attract.

This crucial role played by political parties has been further entrenched and strengthened by the introduction of Mixed Member Proportional Representation.

That being the case, becoming a political turncoat is not simply an act of personal moral inadequacy, but of constitutional vandalism. New Zealanders elect parties to govern them – not individuals. Members of Parliament who repudiate their party spit in the face of the whole ethos of representative government.

“Oh, but what about the individual member’s conscience!”, cry the waka-jumping legislation’s opponents. “Is that to be sacrificed to faceless party bureaucrats?”

The only answer to that is: “Of course not!” But, that does not mean that members of parliament are free to do as they please. If an MP no longer finds it possible, in good conscience, to support his or her party, then the only ethical course of action is to resign.

That is precisely what Winston Peters did in 1993 (and what Jim Anderton should have done in 1989). By resigning, Peters gave the electors of Tauranga the opportunity to reject or endorse his refusal to toe National’s party line. Would that his colleagues, four years later, had demonstrated a similar respect for the basic tenets of representative democracy.

There really is no need for the Greens to further equivocate on this matter. The only politicians opposing the Election (Integrity) Amendment Bill are those who have no qualms about rorting our representative democracy.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 13 February 2018.