Green Party in damage control

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God the Greens will really hate the day they ever allowed their Leader to have had this photo taken

Over on bloody The Standard of all places, the Green Leadership Team are fumbling, scrambling and desperately trying to paper over their latest strategic fuck up by explaining that they didn’t vote for the budget by voting for the budget.

It’s all semantics of course, while the Greens didn’t technically  vote for the ‘budget’ they voted for the legislation under urgency that needed to be passed immediately for the Budget…

Budget time often brings other legislation too, which gets debated under urgency. This year, there were two such Bills:

  • The first was a Bill giving effect to the settlement of the high-profile gender pay equity case for people in the caring profession, brought by Kristine Bartlett.
  • The second was a Bill changing Working for Families and income tax thresholds.

We voted in favour of both of these.

…my understanding of what happened after speaking to senior players on both sides of the Greens and Labour is that the Greens fucked up. They didn’t appreciate the strategic gift they handed bill English who is now able to say things like this…

…the Greens didn’t appreciate how the media would pick it up and they didn’t appreciate how it would look.

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Bill English is laughing all the way to the ballot box.

All in all, it’s another strategic cock up by the Greens who only ever seem to be able to strategically cock things up. After the election, when Labour sideline them in favour of a NZ First minority Government, heads must roll in the back room of the Greens.

Political self mutilation like this makes Donald Trump look like a genius.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Bozo’s. You’d swear they were having a dollar each way, but I agree, probably just plain ol’ dumbness.

  2. Quite agree Martin – the damage has been done – Paddy Gower just crapped all over Labour on the AM Show today and told the country that the Greens had sold Labour out – they sure did. How naive and stupid can the Greens be – no matter how they try and wriggle out of their stupidity this is going to repeated over and over all the way through to the election.

    Gower’s repeating of this is going to give the country the perception that the Greens are going to be “friends” with National – whatever the Green’s agenda is it sure isn’t giving the impression they will work with Labour. I wouldn’t trust the Greens as far as I could toss them.

    And, then we have Winnie – what fun this year at the polling booth!!!

  3. “After the election, when Labour sideline them in favour of a NZ First minority Government, heads must roll in the back room of the Greens.”

    Certainly, it was a strategic mistake, but this sentence contains a prediction that was always destined to become true anyway. NZ First is going to be the kingmaker. The Greens may be better off if they don’t officially become part of a government hugely influenced by people like Ron Mark. Better to be outside such a government.

  4. Maybe they can explain that they were trying to mend fences with Winston.

    It wouldn’t hurt. They claim the fix has already begun. Let’s nail it down.

    The fact is, although I believe Peters is aware that nowadays he is a better fit with the Left, he needs to feel more confident that he is largely on the same page as the Greens. They share an analysis of the problems confronting the country, just their emphases are at variance.

    You would think after Peter’s experience of working with National it would be inconceivable that he would ultimately opt to maintain a fourth term laisser-faire admin in place, but it wouldn’t hurt to discuss how things might work within a coalition government.

    My view is that those assertions of Peters being easily led astray by the baubles of office weren’t particularly true in the past and are certainly not true today.

    His goal is to get as many of his ideas and initiatives enacted as possible. Since many of his ideas are shared by the Left, that ought to present little problem.

    Meanwhile the Right still talk as if Peters going with the Nats is a done deal.

    Am I missing something?

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