Put the National Party fiasco to one side – the other unspoken leadership problem here is the Greens!
Right now the Greens are polling BELOW their 2017 meltdown – at what point will anyone inside the Party suggest the problem is a leadership one?
The Greens are stalling, apparently their ‘blame-all-white-crackers-for-terrorism’ strategy and reclaiming the word cunt surprisingly hasn’t borne any fruit.
The Green leadership have been so captured by the Wellington Twitteratti woke twitter activists that they can’t see how alienating their middle class identity politics have become. To stay politically relevant, the Greens need to put together a coms strategy that is focused on one thing and one thing only – climate change.
They should have had a plan to connect with as many 16 and 17 year olds involved in the kids school strike for climate and focus on them for the 2020 election when many will be able to vote for the first time.
EVERYTHING in their coms needs to be brought back to climate change because the Greens are in survival mode right now and don’t seem to understand it. In the last 3 elections they have gone backwards each election, if they are stalling at 6% 18 months out from the next election they are easily in danger of irrelevance at the ballot box in 2020 by slipping beneath 5%, especially if they keep up with the alienating woke middle class activism which seeks to exclude rather than include.
The Greens are like the Pride Parade Board, self righteous, divisive and wanting to redefine inclusion by excluding everyone who doesn’t believe i their latest woke mantra. It’s pure temple politics as opposed to broadchurch politics.
The Greens will sink under 5% and rather than identify their alienating woke identity politics as the reason they are out of Parliament will instead blame the heteronormative patriarchy as the problem.
Sigh.
Maybe a change of leadership really is necessary.
It’s possible to discuss racial issues without portraying “white people” or even coloured people’s as predators.
The woke don’t seem to understand how “privilege” is meant to be used. It’s not that all white people are always going to be in a better position that all coloured people’s. It’s that, all other factors controlled for, income included, a coloured person will have a disadvantage.
That’s it. There’s no guilt. There’s no predators.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard this sort of rhetoric appear where I’ve studied/worked/lived. I’m sure it exists; I’m not denying a minorities experienced, but the only times I’ve actually seen people pushing white guilt is on twitter and blogs that complain about it
I do like that it distinguishes the different cultures that can exist within “white” and “colours.” That’s something that gets left out a lot.
As a possibly now ex-Green voter, I donated to the party and had intended joining had Genter got the co-leadership.
It’s a great shame that they lost two other good grown-ups when Turei quit, and that climate change seems to be taking a back seat to identity politics, but that is almost certainly not James Shaw’s fault who is very good, as is Gareth Hughes whose public face and record much enhance the party and I am mystified as to why others who I prefer not to name, seem to eclipse him in the PR stakes.
I’m now wondering about Labour’s climate policies, or may not vote at all; I may be more conservative than I realised, but the Green’s antics at the Auckland Muslim vigil were so crass, selfish and self-serving, that if this is how they choose to prioritise politically,then they can go jump in the loch.
SW
Who else has a handle on the pivotal environmental stuff.
Not NACT, Winne or Labour as they are too busy pleasing their voters or sponsors.
I’d prefer to see the Green party depart from the co leadership position it holds, which IMO is not doing the party any justice, giving it an airy fairy image.
Over the years since Rod Donald died and Jeanette Fitzsimons retired, the Greens seem to have lost direction and going nowhere. That said, Russel Norman and Metiria Turei gelled well to keep the party from drifting too far. Since then though, it’s become something of a joke unfortunately, despite the efforts of James Shaw to keep things on an even keel.
However if the party is going to continue its with its co leader policy, to move the greens forward progressively, my choice of leaders would be Julie Ann Genter or perhaps Chloe Swarbrick and Gareth Hughes sharing the role. All three come across as strong focused MPs.
If the Green’s are alienating large parts of the community then the last thing we should be doing is walking away from them – that’s just more of the same!
If we want them to be more accepting of people with different views then we need to accept them warts and all and focus on quietly modelling inclusive behaviour.
It’s so weird to be talking about the Green’s as if they’re super intolerant people, but that seems to be where we’ve got to – a position of reverse intolerance.
In this new age of intolerance the most radical thing we can do is make friends with an intolerant person. In fact we need to desperately bridge the gap between different political camps before Trump’s extremism arrives here.
Try this for a great example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY
It is too late, the Greens have lost their clear message, which should primarily be fighting for environmental protection and true sustainability in resource use and development. Yes, social security and fairness issues shall also be part of what they stand for, and human rights, but under James Shaw and his new co-leader it has become a ‘brand’ that is too hard to nail down, it is a confused message, really, which they send to voters.
We have a Minister sign off on OIO matters that has to follow guidelines the Nat government brought in, we have them celebrate a miniscule achievement like getting rid of ‘one way plastic bags’, we have much talk and little real action, apart from the odd stinging question during question time – directed at Labour and NZ First ministers.
And to be honest, they also signed up to a government arrangement, where the main goal was to keep the Nats out of power and government, by going into a fragile deal with Labour and NZ First, who form the main body of the government alliance. It was and is an alliance of those who all dislike or hate the Nats and ACT, and that is the main bonding factor.
So they have to make compromises all the time, stay silent on delicate subjects and topics, and allow pro mining and pro industry NZ First (listen to Shane Jones and what he said on Q+A last Monday) to put pressure on Labour (a still somewhat pro neoliberal party of the ‘centre’), to keep things happen, which the Greens traditionally fought against.
If the Greens want to survive, they have to step up and announce well before the next election, that they would NOT support another such three party arrangement, and that they want to push for their traditional policies, against NZ FIRST and Nats and ACT.
That way they could regain some profile again, and recapture votes, but as it seems unlikely they will go that way, Martyn is correct in assuming, that they may next time fail to reach five percent of the vote.
What may now be needed, since the Greens lost their brand and reputation, is a new more radical environmental movement, starting off grass roots, embracing the youth and also others, to fight robustly for radical reforms in the economy, in environmental approaches and policies, and in creating a truly sustainable society that moves away decidedly and fast from fossil fuel use.
Their main challenge will be the complacency of the silent majority, who love their fossil fuel powered cars and other vehicles so much, they will rather resist change, no matter what. It will necessitate pressure on governments to recreate a kind of public media platform, where not only entertainment, infotainment and light hearted rubbish is allowed to be spread, but educating, informing reports and discussions, so the people can get informed and educated. Without this, there will be too little chance of real change of minds out there.
The status quo is a disaster, looking at the media we have, it is a hopeless more of the same approach, misinforming, dumbing down and brainwashing people into more commercial, uncritical consumerist thinking and behaviour. It is simply something we need to get rid of first and fast.
The Greens are the Kurds of New Zealand politics – everyone one from every political point of view attacks them, and their only friends are the mountains
The Kurds have a friend in Israel
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-kurds-israel/israel-endorses-independent-kurdish-state-idUSKCN1BO0QZ
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171004-why-does-israel-support-the-establishment-of-a-kurdish-state/
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/israel-supporting-kurdish-secession-iraq-171006105039473.html
Planetary meltdown poses an existential threat over the next decade or so, but other dire consequences of mass-scale global industrialism keep emerging, the latest being ubiquitous microplastics entering human bodies.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/microplastics-pollution-falls-from-air-even-mountains/?fbclid=IwAR27x2rv7YvhhxgcoFCfNBd9d6DSrnuBiiILYD87UQ5XVsCcabN98xv9gDY
We can be sure that the Greens, with their slight tweaking of BAU approach, will be incapable of brining such matters to the public forum, let alone formulating policy to deal effectively with any of it.
Excellent comment!
Two people have mentioned one articulate, well mannered chap that should be part of the leadership , – and that is Gareth Hughes. I wont forget his sterling speech against John Key and his govt which was hard hitting, addressed all the social issues and heavily criticized Keys neo liberal greed approach.
Put in a leadership role I can see him developing a firm no nonsense ‘tell it like it is’ demeanor without sacrificing his innate polite manner. Seems both Davidson and Ghahraman have really sidelined the party.
Shaw , – ever polite is good, but a Hughes and a Swarbrick ( another very polite person it seems ) would make some great additions to his leadership. The party has , as others have said, gone downhill after Jeanette Fitzsimmon’s , Rod Donald , Russel Norman and Metia Turei have gone.
And less of all the identity politics stuff, – people have now had enough of all that ‘issues for issues’ sake sort of thing. All it does is alienate and divide and never produces anything of substance. And makes them seem like a bunch of first year Uni students in a debating lounge, – not elected officials to the highest office in the land, our parliament.
And they wont be bringing about the ideal world and Utopia by dividing people and pissing them all off at each other either.
Environment, Economics and Social policy, – and how those two former relate to the latter is what we need.
Not the slavish following of the latest idiot Hollywood actor sensationalist fad. No one ever gave a rats butt what idiots like Oprah Winfrey thought in this country anyway.
And “… in this cold threshold land
The mountains crouch like tigers…Or they wait
As women wait. No refuge,
No refuge is there from the flame that reaches”
Thanks James B, but EP how about a moratorium on the mountains – the mountains are in many of our souls, and the Greens – are not.
If Greenpeace could marshal up a Green Party, they could well garner support from middle of the road people worried about environment issues but unable to identify a party with the focus, commitment, and connectivity which the Marama & Golriz Show doesn’t appear to have.
I won’t vote Green again, not just because of what happened at what should have been a sacred and solemn time in Auckland, but because they don’t care – they have zilch insight into how offensive they were, and without such basic social skills they’ll wither away anyway.
The sooner the Greens throw themselves down the memory hole the better.
Who the fuck cares?
Let the silly sods commit political suicide if that’s what they want.
CB I doubt if Metiria Turei would have outed herself without first touching base with other senior GP people. As with any “in” group, they may not have considered that what seemed a good idea to insiders, might impact rather differently to those on the outside – which it did.
That’s what I thought at the time – but I now think that I might have been wrong,and that the GP is a vehicle for the advancement of heaven knows what and personal whims, in which case it needs a major overhaul.There are some really good people in there among the buttercups and daisies.
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