UPDATE: The Greens have managed to self sabotage themselves with the glee of a depressed goth Kamikaze pilot

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
51
3

I just don’t even know where to begin with this…

Green Party co-leader James Shaw has done a deal with National

Green Party co-leader James Shaw is handing over the party’s questions in the House to the Opposition.

It’s a deal that has been struck between the Greens and National because the Greens are tired of the “patsy” questions they can ask each other during Question Time.

The move would give the Opposition more questions on sitting days but the deal that’s been struck is that the Greens can keep their questions if they choose to on certain days.

The Greens’ strategy gives the Opposition a greater opportunity to hold the Government to account – something Shaw said had received “mixed feelings” amongst Labour and NZ First.

…oh, I think the term ‘mixed-feelings’ is very diplomatic. My understanding from sources inside NZ First and Labour have ranged from, ‘are you fucking stoned’, to ‘are you fucking mad’. Technically that is a range of mixed feelings, but the phrase doesn’t mange to communicate the bewilderment at the political naivety on display here by the Greens.

I am a Green supporter, have been all my life, and I am on the record many, many, many, many times at how totally useless I believe their strategists and tacticians are. This decision however is surely their stupidest and most self destructive to date.

Let’s start by trying to give the Greens the benefit of the doubt. Their argument is that ‘Patsy’ questions they ask the Government in Parliament are a waste of time and to be truly principled they should hand over their questions to the Opposition, which are National.

What can one say about that as a political stance that doesn’t immediately descend into swearing and demanding answers about James Shaw’s IQ?

On a very technical level at a Wellington-Central-vegan-cycle-friendly-consent-contract-signed-after- work-function that is chaperoned, you could mount an intellectual argument that Governments can’t and won’t hold themselves to account so giving the Opposition extra questions to do that is a technically principled position to take.

You could mount that argument.

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However you could immediately mount an even more compelling counter that says, ‘it’s up to the Party who is inside the Government to hold the Government to account as well’.

Sure Cabinet Collective Responsibility places demands upon anyone inside Cabinet but that doesn’t mean their questions should be ‘patsy’ questions, the Greens could put the Government under immense pressure with those questions in Parliament. That the Greens would just willingly hand those questions over to the National Party who have shown time and time and time again that they lie and purposely misinterpret policy to manipulate the truth is beyond stupid, it’s fucking self mutilating!

So how do all those lefties who rushed to keep Greens from sliding under 5% feel now Greens have handed Parliamentary questions to National for some minuscule point of principle?

Perhaps the NZ Green Party are cleverly taking all the attention from Labour’s sex scandal by pouring petrol on themselves & lighting it?

I just don’t know anymore.

I think the best you can hope for from the Greens any longer is a ‘close-your-eyes-and-pray-to-Gaia’ approach, it’s better having them in Parliament than out of politics altogether.

Winston’s Free Trade Russia gamble that was smacked down, Jacinda’s victim led don’t tell parents omnishambles and now the Greens handing over their Parliamentary Questions to National.

What a terrible week for the Government.

Those of us who fought to get National kicked out of office demand far better political management than this if we are to keep National out of power.

UPDATE: Green strategist Andrew Campbell has taken to Twitter to try and defend this utter madness, and it’s even worse than I had suspected…

I’m so excited to see that after decades in the political wilderness and after a cyclone season that has seen a 400% increase in cyclones that the Greens are getting on with the real issues, like patsy questions in Parliament! You can’t write satire this good.

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51 COMMENTS

    • …the Greens did want to legitimise Waka Jumping

      …the Green Party does a Waka jump out of their coalition with Labour into the arms of Nactional

  4. I don’t give a fuck how we get from here to carbon neutral. One may fall so others may rise. If the greens fall below the 5% threshold at least they’ll be able to say they changed the narrative and stuck true to there principles as the ship sunk.

    • …And no one will care and the planet won’t be saved by anything NZ does in this space. Carbon neutrality without an international agreement is exactly the equivalent of self-immolation, especially given NZ’s utterly insignificant contribution of global CO2 emissions – yes, there we are at No. 69, producing a whopping 0.1% of the global total:
      https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2
      Keep in mind that everyone shares the atmosphere – reducing only NZ’s emissions isn’t going to do anything for the planet (a literal piss in the ocean). Indeed, Bhutan is already carbon negative. So what does that get them, bragging rights maybe? Certainly not influence.

          • The same criticism was levelled at Elon Musk when he wanted to build electric cars and become carbon neutral. Normal people just don’t understand because people like Elon work 70+ hrs a week. Normal people just can’t get there heads around working 70hr weeks. But that’s what it takes to be an innovator and innovate our way out of problems.

            • Since electric cars and carbon neutral are mutually exclusive concepts (building and operating electric cars exacerbates the atmospheric carbon dioxide predicament) it makes no difference how many hours Elon Musk works -every one of them exacerbates the CO2 predicament. In fact, the best thing Elon Musk could do would be to sit down and do nothing.

              If you think humans can ‘innovate’ their way out of a predicament that is caused by innovation you are nuts.

              Elon Mush is just another opportunistic industrialist, making money from scams, misinformation and propaganda.

              • Well technically we could generate the electricity for electric vehicles from carbon neutral sources, like dams, geothermal, wind, and… dare I say it, nuclear [ducks]. The mining and manufacture for the cars themselves and especially the lithium-ion batteries they run on is another matter though (lithium mining/brine extraction can be just as dirty and environmentally damaging as oil).
                Complete agreement that Musk is 100% a snake oil salesman though.

                • We, or is it just me so far. But we want carbon neutrality not population controls. We can not put 7 or 10 billion on this planet with out discomfort. And scaling down modern technology would only increase our carbon footprint as every one would switch from electrical devices to less efficient wood burners.

                  So you have to be able to scale from the individual up to the group and back to make a complex model robust enough to deal with multidimensional problems.

            • Meh. For four years I worked at least 100 hours per week (and all seven days) with maybe two weeks vacation over the entire period. If your work is also your hobby, it really isn’t that hard.

            • Sam working and I mean at working – not around the house, gardening, looking after kids, making meals etc – for 70 hours a week is totally ridiculous, it is unhealthy. I am a normal person!

              • While my partner is asleep having sweet dreams she outsources her problems to me at 1am in the morning with my hands ringing the cash register. Trust me girls, you want these types of men.

  5. Head of the house, Labour’s Chris Hipkins did the same a while ago and gave Act more supplementaries to allow the opposition to ask more questions . Democracy in action. Patsy questions have always lead the gallery to groans of time wasting. Public need questions to be asked of the Greens and other ministers …They are our “servants”

    • You misunderstand the National Party. They are not our friends. They are the ones who really want to punch you in the face.

      The gallery or the opposition are not going to give the Greens a fair shake at all. They will use this to wack the greens in the face every time.

      You don’t give your lunch money to the fucken bully. And you don’t hold your mates back from stepping in and fighting back because of non fucking violence.

  7. Let us call James Shaw the funeral procession master of the Greens. He is ensuring that they will become not only an endangered species, they will become extinct soon, going by his ‘leadership’ skills.

    He is the undertaker, the one digging the hole for the corpse the party will drop into next election.

    I could not believe the idiocy of what he announced on Q+A this morning.

    If you consider any questions ‘patsy’, then that tells you something about the lack of imagination and ideas of an MP in Parliament. ANY question is an OPPORTUNITY to either hold the government to account, or to raise serious enough issues the government can and will address.

    ANY such question should be treated accordingly, and it should be asked by a skilled and smart questioner, so to maximise the answer and result of the Question Time ritual we have.

    To simply hand such ‘patsy’ questions to the opposition, i.e. the Nats or even David Seymour, that is completely irrational, stupid to the extreme.

    I have already given up on the Greens to some degree, I am increasingly disillusioned and turned off, and may not even bother voting for them again, as long as Mr Shaw is left in charge, with his at times Mr Bean like actions. He even looks a bit like Mr Bean, has anybody checked whether he is not really Mr Bean, who has been planted here by some UK string pullers?

  8. “Those of us who fought to get National kicked out of office demand far better political management than this if we are to keep National out of power.”

    I have been raising this again and again over recent years, we NEED a NEW truly PROGRESSIVE, left of centre, social democratic, grass roots organising party, that also covers good and principled environmental policy.

    We do no longer have such a party in Parliament, they have all sold out, they have all betrayed us, even ‘Mana’ was a project that Hone largely only created to get more votes for his cause, being more or less an alternative ‘Maori Party’, only attaching some leftists to broaden the church and get a few more votes.

    His warming to Maori Party and other recent actions and comments have led to the demise of Mana, which was already weakened by relying too much on Dotcom et al. Mana is nearly dead, the Greens will be next, given the stupidity they increasingly display.

    When James Shaw was voted in as co-leader, with his bean counting back ground, I was rather worried. He has proved to turn out to be the disaster I feared in my worst dreams.

  9. Maybe Judith offered James Shaw a seat on Oravida’s board after he leaves parliament. I can’t think of any other reason why he’d be so breathtakingly fucking stupid.

  11. Yes, lets give more questions to the party that created a Health, Education and Housing crisis.

    Lets give more questions to the party whose policies shifted people out of homes and into cars.

    I’m sure after 4 months in the wilderness National have learned the error of their ways and will be a constructive opposition.

    Or maybe James is playing the long game and hoping that National will reciprocate the agreement when the Greens are back in opposition.

    I hate to use the overplayed Chamberlain analogy but I will. I picture James Shaw cycling down Lambton Quay with a post it note that Birdges gave him yelling ” Peace for our time, we’ve rebuilt democracy!”

    Voted Greens in 4 elections, doubt I can vote for them again.

    • You just wait, they will tell us it is not brain dead naivety, that it is not helping National, they have not just undermined the government or given Simon Bridges and Judith a real chance of carrying on the damage of the last 9 years, no siree. Oh no, these turkeys are going to tell us it’s principled.

      And you can bet the house on it, that is the kack that is going to emerge in The Standard fairly shortly.

      Truth is these morons want a National government in place and sooner than later.

      Anyway, anymore silly goofy photo op’s with war criminals?

      • “Truth is these morons want a National government in place and sooner than later.”
        Sorry, but you just made your comment worthless by writing loose rubbish.
        I will wait and see what happens.

  12. What?

    Certain Green Party voters seem to think this is about “breaking a paradigm”.

    If they feel the need to break things couldn’t they just go smash a vase or pop a balloon or something?

    • Really? “Breaking a paradigm?”

      I mean every paradigm shift that I’m aware of is proceeded by some sort of technological change. So before the printing press it cost about $2000 to copy the bible and after it could be distributed for $15 a copy. And then lowered costs again when radio was invented distributing the word of joy to even more people. And stepped up again when television was invented. This is why politicians should bend over backwards to make sure a picture is produced of them and the Anglican Church, New Zealand’s number 1 religion, it’s probably 20%-30% or a parties vote, the largest demographic in any party.

      I don’t see how giving The National Party a weekly allotment of parliamentary questions is in anyway shifting this paradigm other than setting up for a relationship with The National Party.

      I mean is this what they mean by paradigm? or am I way off? It’s like some Green supporters are doing there best to kill there own government they are apart of.

      Anyway. It’s one less fool available to bail out the next fool.

  13. says a lot about Green competency if they cant ask better questions than Nactional

    ….and to think of how the Greens vilified Winston Peters and NZF before the Election as potentially being partners with Nactional

    ….I always saw the Greens as more likely than NZF to coalesce with Nactional

    truly they are FLAKEY

  14. Open mutiny on the good ship. Way to bring down a government which has barely had a chance to fix shit.

    Thanks Greens. Selfish, selfish Greens.

  15. I wonder if the Green’s worm-tongue strategists are not National party plants – wolves in sheepskin amongst the idiot flock.
    Surely, the example of the Maori party is bleeding obvious – no good can ever come from supping at the devil’s table, from fraternising with the enemy: the National party of all people … enemies of the environment, enemies of society, blight on the promise of humanity.
    One of the seven social sins is Politics without principle – the Maori party learned this the hard way.
    What the Greens have done here, is not just politically unprincipled, it is traitorous to the good-will in some too few New Zealanders, for all that is green …

  16. Bottom line of elliminating most plastic packaging… No

    Electrifying public transport, policies on tax breaks for environmental transport… No

    Divert fudging from motorways to alternatives… No

    No, the Greens give their power to a bunch of self serving dishonest creeps who are laughing at what fuckwits they’re.

    Is James Shaw so stupid? I mean this guy has been closely around some of the most self destructive decision making I think I have ever seen of a political party. Or is this ex corporate man doing exactly what serves corporate interests the best, wiping out the Green Party?

    Is it time Labour finished the job off, implement Green policy and be rid of them.

  17. James Shaw
    18 Mar at 7:37 PM

    What the Fuck???? James Shaw, you’re handing National a huge advantage which we the public of New Zealand did NOT vote them. This will let those duplicitous bastards give Labour twice as much shit . Has the Green Party been taken over by the bloody middle-class Porsche Cayenne drivers with Greenpeace bumper stickers who queue double-parked outside high decile rated schools to make sure their little darlings don’t have to walk, cycle, or catch a bus, heaven forbid.; The Greens seem to have become a home for those Nats who are uncomfortable with the Tories “profits before principles” environmental policies, as demonstrated by Simon Bridges legislative history. If that’s your agenda, you’ll see a lot of us walk away in 2020. God help ordinary Kiwis —- this country now has a House offering voters any choice of government they want, as long as it’s Neo Liberal . I though Labour becoming “3RD WAY” Blairite Tories wearing red ties was bad enough, but I’d had more faith in you guys.

  18. Utter stupidity by the Greens. Why on earth would you help out the fucking Natz? Mind boggling incompetence James Shaw!

  19. Incredible
    Its as if Shaw believes in the fundamental decency of the Nats
    If you don’t like patsy questions, don’t ask them

  20. The Values Party was sabotaged and was subsequently morphed into the ‘Green Party’.

    There is nothing green about the ‘Green Party’: it’s all a façade.

    All ‘Green Party’ policies are predicated on the corrupt and Ponzi financial system continuing to operate [indefinitely], and are predicated on the continued burning of the fossil fuels that are going to terminate life-as-we-know-it.

    The Green Party stands for hypocrisy and deceit. And cowardice. Just like all the other political parties.

  21. Its been a bad week for Labour and Winston has been over ruled on Russia….The Greens have been out of the news for a while,

    What better way to foe the Greens to differentiate and make headlines at the same time…..the reasoning may be sound but the method chosen can only be described as braindead.

  22. Stupid is as stupid does. What else could be expected from a banker parachuted in to takeover the Greens. Basically Shaw (and his staff mates) have been a disaster for the Greens and he has to go. The Greens have lurched from one disaster to another under his leadership. It also indicates for me that he doesn’t support Marama as a candidate for leadership as giving away the questions would limit her ability to ask questions of the government one of her key points to vote for her as she is outside of Cabinet. This confirms for me that I will be voting for Marama. Like the banker John Key he is the Greens own smiling assassin. Shaw needs to go as soon as possible and I am sure he will find a comfortable bank position he will soon be parachuted into.

  23. Yeah but-no but…

    ” I just don’t know anymore. ”

    I do.

    Lets mount a big-picture thing here. Bear with;

    Who earns our foreign exchange and don’t dare say tourists?
    Who has primary export sector entirely hoodwinked?
    And what party might threaten, and has indeed threatened, our primary industry, after corporate cock suckers fucked it up under our noses. Boss of Fontera takes home $8 mil a year yet Ch Ch is about to chlorinate their wondrous water.
    james shaw and winston peters up a tree, etc.
    The Greens are, weirdly ( Or not so) our farmers greatest asset. National would mount paula bennett to keep that a secret.
    It’s the banks who push farming which leads to environmental catastrophe. Not farmers, well not actual farmers any way. Not in the best interests of quality and sustainable farming practises is it? No. It isn’t.
    I’d a been surprised if shaw hadn’t given question time to national.
    They’re running a tag team. God help national if farmers went “ Fuck national. They’re useless, greedy scum. The Greens make more sense. We just need to get rid of the foreign owned banks National sold us out to. “

    You may think I’m fucked in the head. That’s ok. Carry on.

    • most farmers with an environmental and social conscience would vote NZF or Labour or Green…this has been the case for a long time…farmers I know used to vote for Jim Anderton

      …so why Greens should pander to Nactional which is neither environmentalist ( in fact the biggest transgressor of the environment ) or with a social conscience …is beyond comprehension

      …fail to see your point

    • re “It’s the banks who push farming which leads to environmental catastrophe.”

      …so which is the Bankster Party par excellence?….why Nactional of course !

      (remember Jonkey? ; remember the sacking of the democratically elected ECAN and its replacement with high paid Nact stooges who fucked the environment and our rivers/waterways?)

      …so why would the Green Party give the corporate Bankster Nactional Party more air time?….

  24. On the other hand – perhaps Shaw is simply letting out enough rope for National to hang itself with stupid questions. (They’re good at stupid questions.)

    It could be time for patsy questions to morph into something else – a better form of press release, perhaps? Or an RNZ weekly exploration.

    Or a chunk of parliamentary time on Wednesdays before the general debate so the Opposition can both pull the wings off AND offer alternatives plus improvements. Can’t have one without the other – they’re there to improve things for we, the people, not them the pollies.

    The Greens are not ‘left’, as such. Wobbly centrists at best. All causes and temporary provocation. Stamp about in the mud and leave before the dead fish hit the surface. There’s no Mhairi Black in that line up, for sure.

    If we wrote to our representatives – would we get answers? Or are the ethical-moral keepers of the silly mid-off kinda shy about communicating? Anyone know?

    Let’s see how it pans out – and watch what next the Greens are proposing to rattle the sealed windows of the Beehive. Hope it’s usefully disturbing.

    • re …”perhaps Shaw is simply letting out enough rope for National to hang itself with stupid questions”

      …there are enough voters out there already taken in by Nactional and their stupid questions and publicity…why give them more publicity and a free pass?

      …does not Nactional already get given more time than their due by the mainstream media?…why should the Greens give them yet more time?

      ….however you skew this… it looks like the Greens are in bed with Nactional against Labour and NZF ( their supposed coalition partners)

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