That look when you realise you should have voted for Julie Anne Genter
I don’t know Sam Sachdeva over at Newsroom, but their appraisal of the Greens seems woefully optimistic.
The mammoth mistakes this year have been appalling.
Handing National their Parliamentary question.
The farcical decision by Minister Sage to allow China to continue to steal water.
The surprise that mining permits were being issued inside the Maui Dolphin marine sanctuary and National Parks.
And of course, the reclamation of the C word.
Even their so called ‘wins’ are meaningless. The ban on plastic bags is as empty as their Carbon Neutral 2050 proposal.
The Greens are in danger of sliding into political irrelevance and risk being seen less like an environmental party and more like a middle class vehicle for identity politics.
The Greens desperately need to engage with a new electorate and urgently if they are to remove any fear of sliding beneath 5% which I don’t think you can rule out. The Greens have gone backwards in the last 3 elections, it is not inconceivable that they mistake support on Woke Twitter as a wider support in the electorate.
It would seem to me that the easiest electorate to engage with and convert to the Green cause are the huge amount of ethical small and medium business in NZ. There is an entrepreneur class that is built upon ethical green sourcing and execution of business. We already tilt the playing field of the market when it comes to Māori Authorities by taxing them less, why not extend that to ethical and green business?
Why not create a standard whereby any company or business that can gain the accreditation for sustainable business practices also get a lower tax setting the way we do Māori Authorities?
For the Greens, pushing a Green Tax Rate for sustainable businesses would connect them with a new electorate while promoting environmental economics that could gain huge buy in. It also makes them look like they are creating smart solutions rather than starting dumb fights or worse, looking clueless.
With the annual Green Conference around the corner, the Greens have little to celebrate.
They need a smart new direction.
They look terribly lost right now.
+100 …very good post..and they have lost their way with identity politics
in fact I think they need a cleanout of MPs
lol The feminist anti fa, maybe they should tie those plastic bags round their own heads, they are more neo lib than the neo libs
Spot on, Bomber. The Greens desperately need some tangible runs on the board well before the end of this year.
They need focus & realism in what they do, eg. with the recent U S court decision against Roundup/Monsanto, why don’t the Greens promote a bill requiring all Local Authorities, within the next 2 years, to replace chemically based weed control, with non chemical alternatives, such as hot water
or at lest ban 1080 since English their major shareholder has fukked off from government to spend his bribe money on little kiddie porn
Good post, even thought they have bought it on themselves I feel sorry for the Greens. A bunch of individually nice people, who together seem to be haemorrhaging the Green party brand.
Apparently the Green Party originally had a very good plan for carbon credits decades ago for example but then were downgraded by the other parties into our new fake carbon credit system that does not work.
Surely as a nation we can make money from all our green spaces if carbon credits were introduced to allow a small income from carbon credits for example from having forests, bush, wetlands, grasslands etc?
They should focus more of stopping asset sales and bringing unfair practises and overcharging from banks to power companies under control.
They also need to urgently strengthen the RMA and council consenting for more socially responsible and fair resourcing, that protects natural resource in the long term and makes the risks fall back on the consenter to remedy or they can instantly revoke the consent.
Also consents that are for decades to take water or truck around chickens and fill in Auckland should be reduced to shorter terms like 5-7 years so that if they cause problems or things change like the climate, then the company/individual don’t get to get another consent!
People are very tired of poor and undemocratic councils and RMA consenting.
Greens need to forget business and think about the average person and consumers and what would benefit them, aka not having a chicken farm stink out their town or have to pay $70,000 for lawyers and consultants to have their say in environmental court when other courts just charge $50 and you don’t need pseudo experts who are not experts but just paid to say what ever with zero come back to them afterwards if they are incorrect??? What is wrong with this picture?
The only major green leaning initiatives in the past decade or more are due to the Green Party being in a government for less than a year. There will always be enough of the population who aren’t happy with the National/Labour status quo to give the Greens their vote. Other than the Greens what over viable left of centre party does New Zealand have?
I think the Greens are trying to rebrand/reposition themselves as the “kingmaker” party for the 2020 General Election. Very optimistic of them, obviously, but I think they feel they have a “core base” of >5% that will vote for them regardless of what they do or don’t do. This shit strategy might find us back to two parties (+ maybe ACT), with National back in Government.
Dont forget NZ1st, tho what they gonna do when Winston Churchill Peters retires is a mystery
There is only ONE cuerr ent issue that really matters.
It’s huge, gnarly and has widespread impacts and actions required for both GHG reduction and adaptation.
There’s only party that could provide that truly holistic approach to dealing with this.
Forays into other areas sends a message that the elephant in the room can be ignored or treated as though it’s just a cute pussy cat – tame and manageable.
No one else is going to do it – and if not we’re all screwed.
Look, sorry about that uninhabitable planet thing but, hey, we didn’t dip below 5%.
Green MPs job is not to get voted in again, it’s to expose the uncomfortable truths and disrupt the system. (The paradox: if you do that then your core will vote for you.)
Spot on!
Gravitas please and someone with brains and radicalism, ask Sue Bradford to come back and step in to help retrieve what is left of the Greens
You know you’re screwed when you’re asking Sue to come back to add some gravitas!
There’s a great analysis by Mathew Hooton in the Herald:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12108253
I think he nails it – the Greens will eventually eat each other
Hoots doing what Hoots does best, driving wedges if he detects or fabricates chinks.
He did stop short of literally calling them watermelons but the intent was there.
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