I think the Greens need Marama Davidson as their new co-leader.
The disastrous election result where they lost half their support in the space of 2 months wasn’t a reflection on the policy platform the Greens ran with, it was horrifically incompetent tacticians which didn’t foresee what would happen to Metiria when she courageously announced her welfare fraud.
What SHOULD have happened is Metiria would have already paid the amount owed before admitting it. By leaving it an open issue, the mainstream media tore Metiria to pieces.
While that tactical mistake was damaging, the real impact was Jacinda and her popularity which had ore to do with the Greens losing support.
Nandor posted some thoughts on the political philosophy of where the Greens need to move towards in the future and I think his targeting of new generation small and medium ethical business is very smart.
The truth for the Greens is that their dreams of being a 15% Party are dependent on the strength or weakness at any given time of Labour. The Greens vote was actually far softer than anyone suspected and with Jacinda now in charge of Labour, it is unlikely to woo much of that back.
So where do the Greens grow? It can’t be at the exclusion of social welfare policy, but it could be an extension of Green values into business.
The Greens could gain support from NZ’s small and medium ethical business community by promoting ethical tax breaks for those businesses. The Greens are all about allowing the market to decide by using state regulation to send the market signals. What better signal could you send the market than by supporting and promoting ethical business?
If small and medium sized business complied with independently tested environmental, ethical and sustainability standards then they should be eligible for a tax break for making that investment.
Promoting Green values into business doesn’t weaken the stance they take on poverty, it simply broadens their voter appeal and that’s what the Greens need to desperately be doing between now and the next election because the vote they lost to Jacinda won’t just walk back to them.
Taking a far more proactive approach to woo ethical business is smart but if core activists feel that’s eroding its social justice obligations the Greens could just be replacing leaving supporters with new ethical and small business voters.
That’s why they need Marama as the new co-leader.
Her activist credentials are better than anyone else, she is amazing on policy and connecting emotionally with voters when she does media and the inroads into beneficiary votes that she begun needs time to work.
Seeing as the ministerial positions the Greens gained were all very white, they need Marama front and centre to be true to their diversity values.
Marama has the intelligence, leadership skills and vision to retain the social justice and environmental values while Shaw can woo small and ethical business.
We can’t have a progressive Government without the Greens, but they must start rebuilding if they area to remain a vital voice in 2020.
Those helping put together the negotiations of the government understood throughout that the Greens had to be given real political muscle if the new government was to function properly.
The Greens now have the chance to prove that.
Policy targeted towards beneficiaries and the poor alongside ethical and sustainability tax cuts for small and medium business is a way to gain voter attention and attract support at a time when Jacinda is hogging all the environmental headlines and attention.
No thanks,at times she shoots her mouth off and comes across as being petty and unnecessary nasty.
Would she be capable of representing all Kiwis or just the 15%.
Care to offer clear examples, Barry? Because I sure as hell can’t.
As for your ludicrous rhetorical question, ” Would she be capable of representing all Kiwis or just the 15%” – I’d say she has more chance of doing that through urgent climate action than the Nats. Climate change affects 100% of us. The Greens – including Marama – are determined to deal with that crisis.
I’d say that represents all of us, wouldn’t you?
Maybe you’ve mistaken her for someone else Barry?
He obviously has. Marama is one of the best politicians in the House, compassionate, sensible, honest and fair. In fact, watching get in the Spinoff debate (I think it was), she cane across as TOO kind to the likes of Paula Bennett – could have done with a bit of nastiness.
Yes I have ,Fox my apologies.
Yes yes yes
The other contender for the role, Julie Anne Genter, rules herself out for her ridiculous support for Simon Bridges’s divisive tunnel under the Waitemata. A fantastically spectacular waste of public money if there ever was one.
Bridges and Genter’s proposed road/rail tunnel (at an eye watering $4 to $6 billion), will only “have a life of hundreds of years” if you ignore climate change.
The proposed Victoria Park portal to this tunnel is likely to be over topped by sea level rise and storm surges related to climate change before the turn of the century.
Personally speaking I wouldn’t want a Green Party leader who ignores climate change in their projections. Especially when there are so many other much greener ways of solving Auckland’s traffic woes.
What we need is a leader prepared to forego huge engineering projects for more organic, (and cheaper) real world solutions to traffic congestion and pollution.
Well we want to stop being such a failed state around health and education, and immigration, and welfare. People want to know that there money is safe and won’t pull it out in case some one else grabs it, increasingly by payday lenders and all those types. And those are things that ought to be focused on in between elections.
Take the Northland electorate. The poorest electorate in the country. Where most of the rich people live in the hills or behind fenced off farms. Well that allows for a lot of grass roots movements and a lot of activism in the low lying areas. And nobody payed attention to it, because it was being promoted by The Mana Movement. The Northland League competition and the open the curtains campaign. It was on this backdrop that Winston Peters succeeded in claiming the Northland electorate in the last by-election. Well all that is out of the minds of northland voters now that National won the north back. But not enough to send Winston on a permanent fishing holiday.
But they are electing people who are there own. And we can take lessons from the north in what democracy is. We can also take lessons from Tamiti Coffey’s victory in Waiariki over the incumbent Te Ururoa Flavel, in what democracy is. Now no one thought Te Ururoa was gana lose. They may have held reservations in private and that was reflected in they way they ran there campaign. Very private. Personally I barely even noticed Te Ururoa. Saw heaps of Marama Fox. But Te Ururoas face was all over campaign memorabilia as well. At least it was on the ones you could see.
And it’s not showing up every 3 years and say vote for me. That’s not what democracy is. It’s all to do with building up a democratic culture where you can run your own campaign. And you don’t have to choose between too men who run great amounts of wealth or political influence who go to the same elite universities or secrete societies that are financed by pretty much the same corporate influence that allow every politician to run. But hay. People who want to build democratic cultures can beat these people.
Sure , – why not?
Makes perfect sense.
As for Marama Davidson , – cant think of a better Deputy , tbh, – she’s no shrinking violet afraid to get stuck in there , she’d be a good choice.
Davidson needs to be called out by her leadership for speaking at this rally. As does Ghahraman, of course. The pair of them seem to have a tenuous grasp of what freedom of speech actually means. This was a disgraceful display of bullying and intolerance. Not worthy of a pair of Green MPs:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/98328741/national-front-members-chased-away-from-parliament
If the concept of free speech is to mean anything at all, it ought to cover everybody: even if they say things that you don’t like. In fact, that’s the whole point.
And when was the last time that the National Front violently broke up a rally here in NZ? Not at all, as far as I can recall.
“…they need Marama front and centre to be true to their diversity values.”
I’d need quite a bit of convincing about the validity of this statement.
In the first instance, I’m not at all sure that people banging on about “diversity” really understand what it is. In virtue of what should they suppose that our society isn’t already diverse?
Secondly, people promote the concept as if it is normative. Who says it should be? In general, societies which value cohesiveness work better.
Thirdly, it seems to me that many of the proponents of diversity here in NZ conflate the term with a proportion of the population being brown, black or Asian. I’ve heard one in particular baldly state that the populations of European countries such as those in Scandinavia aren’t diverse, because they all look white. That’s rubbish, to put it bluntly.
Though of course I defend her right to say such things; nevertheless, it doesn’t mean she’s correct. And I’m within my rights to challenge her wrong-headed views.
Unfortunately D’Esterre we have a home grown antifa here in N.Z. I have witnessed “peace activists” attack another peace activist in an Auckland peace protest,whose anti-war sign they did not approve of.They pushed and shoved him and covered over his sign.I have heard of a scuffle/ argie bargie by the same group some weeks previous in an anti-war protest for the same reason.We have so called “progressives” who are so convinced of the rightness of their particular brand of left that they feel justified in physically and violently closing down anyone who thinks different.Freedom of speech is only for them!!
What did the sign say?
It said “freedom of Speech” .
And what was the context?
There’s more to this than a simple sign with “Freedom of Speech” on it, Pete.
It didn’t really Frank.I couldn’t resist that.The sign had messages critical of U.S. warmongering, and then the phrase they seemed to be objecting to:”Assad must stay”. Presumeably “Assad must go” is the correct answer to our antifa.
Yes, the members of the National Front have a right to freely assemble and express their views. So do those turning out to protest their views, including Marama and Golriz. I can’t ignore the irony of defending “freedom of speech” immediately after a sentence where you claimed someone should be “called out” for exercising that same freedom.
I don’t support the neo-Stalinist “Antifa” ideology, especially the sense of entitlement to use violent force to discipline others who don’t agree with them. IMHO This ideology was one of the main things that led the communist revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries down such a dark, dead-end path. But it’s equally obvious to me that we can’t condone or even ignore organized, political racism; doing that led the German people down an equally dark, dead-end path in the early 20th century.
I’d like to see the National Front publicly rejected Neo-Nazism, fascism, and white supremacy, and refocused their efforts on progressive forms of nationalism. Like defending Aotearoa from corporations, not immigrants, resisting low wage treaties (“free trade agreements”), or supporting the tino rangatiratanga of whānau, hapū, and iwi when it comes under threat from the agents of global capitalism. Then counter-protests against their annual rallies at parliament would not be needed.
A counter protest at the same time and venue as another group that is legitimately having a rally is against free speech.Its like some interviews on TV I have seen where the “Interviewer” shouts down ,interrupts,and completely disrupts any attempts by the interviewee to get over their point of view.We saw some of this during our election.If you want to see this brought to extraordinary lengths, try watching Fox news.I was under the impression,perhaps mistakedly ,that we on the progressive left should be behaving in such a way so to engender confidence in the NZ population that we are not going to terminate free speech on gaining power.That we are not going to roll out our Gulags and “re-education camps” in our magnificent Dictatorship of the Proletariat !
No Deal, keep her away from the leadership and flotillas!
Anyone see that tweet where she is photographed saying she was the wildcard that would bring down this government?
Every Green Party member gets to vote on the new female co-leader. I expect it will be between Marama Davidson and Julie Anne Genter. I think both would make great co-leaders but I think Marama will will the vote for the simple reason that members will see the value of having a Maori woman as co-leader for expressing the party’s diversity and to help reach Maori voters.
The Green party is severely lacking in diversity and if Marama Davidson is not the next co-leader it will once again show itself up as the white middle class party that it is.
I know lots of people on this site love Chloe Swarbrick but how the hell does she leapfrog Teanau Tuiono or Leilani Tamu on the green party list.
I realise that politics is about marketing and they obviously thought she may attract the youth vote but as a Maori I see it as another kick in the guts for our Pasifika whanau from a party that looks mighty whitey.
Green voters love to go on and on about how progressive they are but when you look at the make up of there MPs they are far from it.
Even NZ First has more Maori Mps than they do.
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