MEDIA WATCH: Stuff asks, ‘Can Greens break 5%’

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Interesting column in stuff this weekend asking if the Green could slip under 5%…

Can Greens break 5%

 After the trauma of 2017, the Green Party know they’re in a battle to make it back into Government at the next election. Co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson tell Thomas Coughlan how they plan to overcome a political hoodoo.

…I’ve voted Green all my adult life but I fear the current focus on alienating Identity Politics and incremental empty gesture virtue signalling climate change policy have set them up to collapse in 2020.

The Greens have gone backwards in terms of Party vote every election since 2011, (11.06% in 2011, 10.7% in 2014 and then 6.3% in 2017), they over poll every election so today’s 6% can easily equate to 4.9% on election day.

The Greens are stalling electorally. I’d suggest their their woke ‘blame-all-white-people-for-terrorism’ coms strategy in the wake of the Christchurch atrocity was a blunder and attempting to reclaim the word cunt unsurprisingly hasn’t borne any mass movement.

Attempting to gerrymander MMP, handing their questions over to National and green lighting China stealing more of our bloody water hasn’t helped either.

When they have attempted to do something meaningful on climate change, the resulting policy has been nothing more than empty gestures and virtue signalling.

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The Greens state the fight against climate change is the same as the fight against fascism, but the current Government’s environmental strides are baby steps made by a sleeping infant. The nonsense plastic bag ban, the meaningless carbon neutral by 2050, the pitiful Electric Car policies and the latest nothings to force Farmers to pay for their pollution in the ETS are all greenwash that go no where

If we were to mix the analogy, the Greens would declare that we are going to war with the Nazi’s and here are the vegan sleeping bags they’ve knitted out of hemp for us to fight them with. I mean, great we’ve got some vegan sleeping bags knitted out of hemp, but I think the defeat of the Nazi death machine might require something a tad more lethal than vegan sleeping bags knitted with hemp.

Likewise, climate change won’t be defeated by some vague promise of doing something by the middle of this century.

The NZ Greens have all the offensive capacity of resting moss.

To stay politically relevant, the Greens need to put together a coms strategy that is focused on two things in 2020 – climate change and the cannabis referendum.

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. This needs to be paired with a strong cannabis referendum promotion and they need to stay on track with just those to guarantee they get back into Parliament.

Unfortunately I don’t think they have the strategic self reflection or discipline to stay on message.

The Green Party has been captured by the cult of woke identity politics and they can’t see how alienating that has become. The new mantra of the woke is inclusion through exclusion, (think the Pride Parade schism this year). The deplatforming culture, the cancellation culture, the outrage olympics micro aggression policing culture, sadly they are all functional elements of the Green Party activist base online in social media.

With the looming debate on hate speech drawing closer, the Green MPs and activists won’t be able to help themselves. Their ‘free speech = white supremacist Nazi’ mentality will manage to alienate and give Jacinda extra party vote instead of going to the Greens.

If this starts playing out and the narrative becomes ‘might the Greens fall under 5%’, it will become self fulfilling. The National Party’s sudden desire to paint the Greens out as extremists with their electric car Feebate criticism suggests National Party strategists will be coming to the same conclusion.

I’d put the chances of the Green getting back in next year at 40%

 

18 COMMENTS

  1. During the 2020 election campaign they will focus on mainly ‘green’ policy, top heavy on environment policy, including climate change and basically the policies that an environment party should be aligned with. Unfortunately the voters know through past history that when election is over they revert to SJWs and environment policies put on back burner and social policy takes precedence. Now this doesn’t mean they should not have an opinion/voice on social issues, but the ‘Green’ part of their name takes a back seat for 24-30 months and hope the voters didn’t notice.

    • The Greens should have never ever justified an action through the moral deficiency of others.

      One will find that one can never balance one position purely on the “evilness” of the another.

      Even the opposition to the Nazis on pure evil grounds can be shown to be hypocritical.

    • Well National promise on all sorts of social policy, investment on education and health and then completely ignore once elected, so one can’t be too hard on the Greens

    • And this is why SUV driving soccer mums vote for them. Election time brings advertising banners of green policies and environmental awareness, and once the votes are counted, the Greens go back to social engineering and woke politics

  2. By handing over the party to the kids, this is what you get. A kindergarten. Where theres no cohesiveness, no leadership, no strategy, no planning and no chance of surviving passed the next election.
    A long time Green/Mana voter is now a political refugee … That 8%-12% of Undecided voters keeps pop’n up in polls when they arrive.

  3. I won’t be voting for the Green’s this time around and hope that they are forced to spend some time out of parliarment – either to die a much needed death or to rebuild into something better.

    Ever since I heard it was James Shaw who came up with the budget responsibility rules and especially that he pulled a swifty to force the party to accept it I have viewed the Greens as a wasted political vehicle. If they’re going to play within Neoliberal guidelines there is nothing serious they can contribute to our country’s future.

    Someone needs to start a proper workers party or the kids need to start their own climate emergency party for us to have some useful representation. I’ll be sorry to see Chloe Swarbrick and Julie Anne Genter go but at some point the political status quo in the country will be completely swept aside and I’ll be looking for signs of that when it comes to my vote.

    • I somewhat agree with you that the Greens could do with a spell on the sideline, if only to sharpen them up and get them to focus on their core values and beliefs.

  4. The Greens were the only party in Parliament who represented beneficiaries and spoke out for us. Since becoming part of government they’ve sold out and completely betrayed us. That pathetic non-reaction to the total ignoring of the Expert Welfare Working report by Jame Shaw was giving us all the middle finger, making it quite clear that the Greens no longer stand for social justice. Power has truly gone to their heads. Or have they become too scared to speak out lest they be seen as ‘soft’ on beneficiaries (including disabled) and cop a media response a la what happened to Meteria?

    They clearly don’t understand that the majority of beneficiaries that haven’t been beaten down enough to still vote, vote Green. Now we have no one to vote for. I think most of us have been realistic about what they’ve had the ability to achieve/not achieve in their current position and how much clout they have over the coalition. But they have no excuse for going quiet and forgetting about the people they proport to represent. It’s really hard to care about saving the planet when you know that no one in power gives a damn whether YOU live or die.

    • This. The Green’s have been intellectually vacuous, and when it comes to sticking up for the poor, the disabled, and the environment they’ve been about as firm as soggy bread.
      They do not deserve to be in parliament, and I struggle to see them getting much over 4% at the next election. As usual, the poor have no one to advocate for them in the country’s national politics.

  5. Great article but don’t agree with the solution put forward at all!

    “To stay politically relevant, the Greens need to put together a coms strategy that is focused on two things in 2020 – climate change and the cannabis referendum.’

    Firstly coms won’t save the Greens. Being anti coms was part of the original Greens charm and the lack of spin doctors and advisors made them become a mainstream party 10 years ago! It’s been gradually downhill since then in particular the disastrous foray with MSM like the Metro cover, that made the Greens members be the only ones to believe their own press, aka that good looking but green washed millennial youth would save them!

    Instead it did the reverse and created the climate where the more respected Greens MP’s were too far down on the list to return to parliament while the self proclaimed ‘social media’ savvy butchering of Green coms that turned over to millennials and wokie identity politics spin doctors + business, combined created!

    I’m all for millennials being in the Greens, or even people you have never even heard of before that seem to have very little Green experience that now run the Greens, but maybe further down the list and earn their spot with a bit more Green experience, and by Green I’m not talking pro cannabis or more money for big business like water collection or identity politics.

    The Green Party was called the Green Party for a reason, not the Maori party or the Socialist party or even the alliance. Sad that those that believe in the above did not join the party that represented those views, but instead chose the more likely personal election success and personal power of the Green Party and to run it into the ground with some other parties fight.

    Election success for the current Greens is very hard to even work out because they seem to be the reverse of the Greens of 10 years ago that significant amounts of people were starting to vote for, who believed in Buy NZ (not give water assets to the Chinese), shop local (not support Labour with poor trade deals), a liveable wage for all (not 250,000 temporary work visas that is dropping NZ wages like stones) and more investment for health and education (both declining per person because of the immigration demand) as well as the main concern of saving the environment for future generations and not thinking that business solutions in 30 years (carbon 2050) would save the world.

    The current Greens are not bad people, but sadly I’m not sure they have done the Green Party or cause any favours, they have been manipulated by power interests and serve them more than the people who voted for them, to help save the world, or at least the NZ environment!

    Also many people are now effected by Meth and drugs and not in a good way. If the Greens think that the message of more liberalised drugs is an election winner after doing next to nothing else is going to save them, it might bring down not just them, but the Labour Party too whose partners fail to gain 5%.

    (NZ First seem to have bought themselves down, as being the so called anti immigration party that seems to have done the reverse of their elections promises, rubber stamping the TPPA, increasing immigration work visas, growing unemployment and wage drops and OIA sell offs).

    • When you see the ordinary people who tried to save the Kauri tree are now being fined $30,000 in fees from the environment court, you wonder, where are the Green Party in NZ, where is the Green policy to help the environment and put urgency into parliament to reverse the Natz 9 years of socially destructive green policy?

      Even social policy under the Labour/Green watch, the specialist libraries in Auckland university were closed with the loss of 20 jobs, a library and course that one of the Green MP’s did their art history degree at, but failed to show any interest in saving it, while the university chancellor was paid over 700,000 per annum under a Labour government where job losses in the sustainable arts like libraries are ok while the more environmentally unsustainable and polluting concrete and plastic jobs are preferable!

      We now have formally well paid jobs in telecoms now paying below minimum wages for over 90% of Chorus contractors – somethings wrong with the Green and Labour and NZ First priorities and understanding of what is going on, and the end game in NZ!

    • Well I think that’s a decent assessment. At least Simon Bridges will be looking up in hope that he isn’t the least loved political leader in New Zealand. Yknow I think it’s a real contest. National will be looking over its shoulder because of the come from behind defeat they suffered. So there’s still everything to play for.

      • National will end up sharing their vote with the newly formed Christian party( or whatever there called) So yes they should look over their shoulder because they’ve done absolutely nothing to regain the government benches.

  6. The Green Party as Climate Criminals?

    Government extends tax break for oil rigs, despite promise not to subsidise fossil fuel industry
    Henry Cooke
    11:33, Jul 23 2019

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/114435232/government-extends-tax-break-for-oil-rigs-despite-promise-not-to-subsidise-fossil-fuel-industry?fbclid=IwAR03r0hEblhVOKjgFDIiFNzg8y46p8V72z1_uTkOmTu9hHqnsGlAwYUK71I

    It is bad enough that the government broke their promise not to subsidise the oil companies, what is even worse is that the Green Party in parliament voted for it too.

    Greens voting to continue tax breaks for oil drillers?

    Who’d even have imagined that such a thing was possible?

    I wonder if the Green Party membership was polled on this. I seriously doubt it.

    If this is not a vote killer I would be hard pressed to think of a worse one.

    Like all practiced politicians they have all the excuses in the world.

    The bag carrier for this policy turnaround, this time, is Gareth Hughes

    Green Party energy spokesman Gareth Hughes said the Government was hard at work getting rid of other subsidies for polluters.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/114435232/government-extends-tax-break-for-oil-rigs-despite-promise-not-to-subsidise-fossil-fuel-industry?fbclid=IwAR03r0hEblhVOKjgFDIiFNzg8y46p8V72z1_uTkOmTu9hHqnsGlAwYUK71I

    If the Government is really “getting rid of other subsidies for polluters” why didn’t Hughes identify them?

    Business As Usual

    “MBIE are in practice climate change science deniers – the science says we can’t burn all existing fossil fuel reserves but MBIE is aiming to find more and burn it,” he said, pointing to a paragraph in the impact statement on the policy where the officials noted that “a substantial discovery has the potential to significantly benefit the economy and the Government’s fiscal position by way of direct economic benefits, royalties, increased tax revenue, and other indirect benefits”.

    “If we follow MBIE’s policy advice we will not hit the Paris agreement target and will have catastrophic climate change,” Norman said.

    “The exemption has resulted in rigs spending longer in NZ waters looking for oil,” Norman said.

    “This is completely at odds with climate policy. We can’t afford to burn even half of existing reserves if we are to avoid climate catastrophe so anyone looking for more is only making it worse.”

    His successor James Shaw also said he was against the exemption and told Stuff he was working to end all subsidies – but his party voted for the bill that enacted the exemption.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/114435232/government-extends-tax-break-for-oil-rigs-despite-promise-not-to-subsidise-fossil-fuel-industry?fbclid=IwAR03r0hEblhVOKjgFDIiFNzg8y46p8V72z1_uTkOmTu9hHqnsGlAwYUK71I

    This is incredible

  7. I understand the tremendous and sometimes overwhelming pressure that is brought to bear on MPs to bow the knee to the corporates.

    But the Greens support for continuing subsidies for off shore oil drillers goes beyond that to abject surrender.

    Polls show that around 80% of New Zealanders oppose deep sea oil drilling.

    Gareth Hughes excuses don’t cut it.

    There comes a time in human affairs when you need to rally your supporters around you and make a stand, or be forever compromised.

    This may have been one of those moments.

  8. The Green Party have been captured by the Woke cult.

    They have also apparently been captured by some manipulative international financiers, according to questions to James Shaw in yesterdays Reddit AMA!

    ttps://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/cgnhcg/im_the_green_party_coleader_james_shaw_ama/James Shaw’s

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