Comrades, Brothers & Sisters.
Is it outrageous that James Shaw bewilderingly lobbied for $11.7m to a private school?
Sweet Jesus yes!
Is it acceptable even if the private school is some environmental Harry Potter Academy for tomorrows elitist eco warrior leaders?
Sweet Jesus, that makes it worse!
Is it acceptable for public education to be starved of funding so private education can succeed?
Of course not!
But James did it.
Even I assumed that it was just a rubber stamping fuck up by James, but the way the Labour Party have gleefully informed everyone that the Greens actually lobbied for this…
…shows a Hail Mary pass out of desperation by a Leader who is trying to save something from the Titanic.
Sure the Greens might disappear beneath the waves, but at least James might seed an environmental Harry Potter Academy that could train the next great leader.
That’s quite the Hail Mary, I know.
But it is what it is.
Now, what do we do?
Comrades, the Greens MUST be returned to Parliament so that we can drag Labour into actual transformative change.
You know and I know Jacinda’s natural caution makes change tepid at best.
There’s only so many ‘Good First Step’ press releases from Wellington Unions that you can read before you are forced to admit you are just jogging on the spot.
Attempting a move against your Leader 6 weeks out from an election would be the kiss of death to the Greens, we can’t allow that to happen.
Firstly there are constitutional issues at trying to roll him, sure you could overcome that with some massive social media signed letter but that’s just adding to the destabilisation of the Party, not solving the constitutional issues of removing him.
Let me be blunter!
The alienation by proxy that woke Identity Politics activists have generated over the last 3 years can’t be washed away by a change of leader!
EVEN IF YOU CHANGED HIM, you are still battling against voters perceptions shaped by Green Woke Activists who have alienated those voters!
Dumping your co-leader won’t dissipate that alienation, it will entrench it!
Rather than attempting to replace James (which won’t work and will only destabilise the Party more), Activists should put their efforts into Chloe winning Auckland Central or Nelson while being smiley and cheerful and not screaming abuse in their social media feeds!
While I certainly doubt the Greens can get over 5%, there is a chance in Auckland Central and Nelson.
This is not the time for the narcissism of petty difference, there is an enormous climate crisis that demands radical reform alongside a social justice agenda that those failed by neoliberalism are screaming out for!
We must have a Green political voice at the table dammit!
Yes Labour will win a majority, but if the Greens are there, they could leverage some truly progressive policy in the first 100 days or threaten Labour 3 years of guerrilla opposition from the Left.
The one thing that scares Labour more than any single thing is a sustained attack from the Left.
This is the bear pit of politics, threaten a civil war with Labour to get some real change in the first 100 days!
You won’t get that with a civil war inside the Greens!
We don’t have the time for this roll James Shaw bullshit, the planet is fucking melting!
The other issues, the way the Party is held hostage by woke identity politics activists, the micro aggression policing nonsense, the lack of truly radical left wing economic green socialism, the corrosive nature of the social media debate by people who are recognisably Green – ALL THAT SHIT can be dealt with at some other stage, right now we are just trying to not drown for Christ’s sake!
Do as you will, I’ve said my piece.
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and Marama Davidson’s Two tick Tamaki Makaurau candidacy for the Green party is gaining traction as well.
Really how do you know that, frankly all this business of standing for a seat should be narrowed right down as it was in the past and only 1 person at each election stood for a seat. The Greens don’t have a ton of resources and this just spreads them too thin. Jeanette, who lets face it had an incredibly high profile in the Coromandel was the only one that ever made it.
Sue Bradford stood and a few others over the years.
Gucci riddance to those Armani environmentalists.
Only way they can ever redeem themselves is by their entire leadership team strapping themselves to a dinghy in the face of an illegal fishing trawler.
Fat chance of that ever happening, they’re all scared of the cold and the wet.
Green Party?…pah, my arse!
+1 Herman Shovel Ready – love it. “Fat chance of that ever happening, they’re all scared of the cold and the wet.”
Greens rental dreams have come true with Covid, as more renters are cosy in their ‘warm/dry’ 40m2 battery style apartment or motel room paying $1000 p/w to business, while they send their kids to the $40k private school down the road to hob nob with the international students whose parents now own the country that the kiwi’s rent off.
SaveNZ. If you are blaming the Greens for the housing crisis deliberately manufactured by the National Govt, then I suggest you’re stretching things here.
Further – ain’t nothing wrong with private schools. My children went to a mixture of both, both here and in the UK, because I wanted best for them, and sometimes, that was best, whether we could afford it or not.
Heaven help this country if we ever have only govt provided schools. People who acknowledge that the public service is staffed by a bunch of lolly wrappers,
also assume that they have the ability, motivation, or desire, to aim at achieving the ultimate best for all of our youngsters, are, I suggest, trapped in an ideological prison.
How quickly we have forgotten the total ghastliness of Paula Bennett, and the knee-chopping-off John Key/Bill English govt, and how we must never let them into government again. We need the Greens, Shaw does well managing them.
@ Applewood, I blame the Natz for the housing crisis but COL including the Greens have fallen into doing exactly what the Natz did, to create the housing crisis in the first place, aka import in hundreds of thousands per year which adds up to millions pretty quickly, of low waged or questionable entrepreneurs like liquor and cafe owners and hammerheads and their non income earning relatives into NZ and give them citizenship and permanent residency via temporary residency routs.
https://croakingcassandra.com/2018/03/31/work-visa-numbers-soar/
https://croakingcassandra.com/2017/06/29/who-has-been-getting-residence-visas/
https://croakingcassandra.com/2019/05/13/championing-high-immigration/
https://croakingcassandra.com/category/nz-first/
Now in the Covid crisis, (a world disaster was always going to happen with climate change and unsustainable population growth), hundreds of thousands of people who have easily gained NZ citizenship and residency in the past decade (many of them on just a 1 or 2 year stay in NZ as being a dependent of someone else) can return and sign onto welfare and use all the social welfare here like free health care.
We are getting 80 yo’s with Covid returning to NZ on Air India.
This is added to the 1 million of brain drain NZer’s who were born here and left in search of real jobs and incomes and forced to pay back their student loans and compete with the world for NZ housing.
NZ would have fared better and added to our productivity to have not had student loans, expected business to pay more in wages not the state, trained people, and had better jobs to keep the Kiwi’s here in the first place…..
It does not help NZ if we lose a highly skilled and experienced nurse for example and then gain an aged care nurse aid, and their 3 relatives for example which is NZ’s immigration policy…
Easy to see why NZ now has more poverty than we used to from importing in people who are one step from poverty to compete with the locals who are one step from poverty….while bidding farewell to those who are experienced workers who will not work for NZ low wages and are paying the most taxes if they stayed….
Today’s headlines is “Covid 19 coronavirus: New Zealand returnees taking migration levels to historic high”
But who is returning? Is our low wage economy enough to support the growing amount of people living in NZ on low wages and no incomes, while government policy seems to think the answer is to tax the workers paying the most taxes with the most skills going forward?
It ain’t just about the money, when you lose and don’t value real skills from a country, you can’t get things right when things go wrong, such as border controls, quarantine, IT attacks, etc
+100 saveNZ….well said!
Herman, do you know where you should shove your shovel? (Your comment is as meritorious as mine is here.)
Where?
I agree. More in-depth change needs to wait until after the election. It is not long now – Early voting begins in just over a month and some 60% of voters went early last time around.
Reminder, “If you’re in New Zealand, you’ll be able to vote from Saturday 3 October to 7pm on election day, Saturday 17 October. You can vote from overseas from Wednesday 30 September.” Get Ready to VOTE 2020
Special overseas voting will not save the Greens this time. GG and MD have taken the party into far left *wokery politics (*not a word, but explains what I mean).
MD trying to reclaim the word c*unt and GG omitting she was also defending war criminals and not just prosecuting them (and yes I know everyone is entitled to a legal defence….but omitting to say it and only extolling the prosecution part showed her true colours)
Good riddance Green Party, come back campaigning for 2023 election on actual environmental issues!
I’m right
Let’s get some wee facts straight.
The Green party has never ever been just about environmental issues. It has always had a kaupapa that covered social justice issues, human rights etc.
Yes Marama was stupid, dumb arse stuff.
Golrez was a human rights lawyer, I honestly don’t know what you are on about she had every right to defend some shit bag, and frankly whether it was public knowledge or not is irrelevant.
I have voted green for the last 18 years, not sure what I am going to do.
For Shaw (who promised on the campaign trail to become the co-leader to double the party membership yeah right)! To say people need to forgive him for this mistake…. there have been a number of significant mistakes from the beginning!
Shaw has form in doing the opposite to actual policy (let alone Green values). He has been getting away with it for 3 years. HE MUST BE ROLLED.
HE MUST BE ROLLED.
Michal, I understand how you feel that way, but now is NOT the time. We have to wait until after October, then see where everyone stands.
Coming from a supporter of apartheid, I’m sure that your wet dream will be of no interest to anyone but yourself. The Greens will be back. Get used to it. After all hate is not really an answer.
You got it, Spike.
Ex Green MPs have spoken out about Shaw’s major major blunder that may cost them the election:
Sue Bradford, Catherine Delahunty, Mojo Mathers and Denise Roche.
How did Shaw force Hipkins hand tho? Was he all “give this yuppie school 11.7 mill or we’ll pull the plug on the govt” doubtful. Lab/nzf should be getting the hatred too. This reeks of a bus throwing.
Shaw led the greens through it’s biggest electoral crisis in 2017 and kept them alive when it was unlikely that they’d survive and if they thank him by rolling him …the party is dead. I don’t think labour will get a majority govt and if they roll the leader cos of one thing, it hardly sends a message of stable, reliable coalition partner, it sends to the electorate the message that without waka jumping legislation the greens will collapse in a full coalition like the alliance. The greens won’t be in cabinet if labour needs them if he goes and the waka bill will stand. If he stays and labour needs the greens I can see James, Eugene ,Julie and Marama getting some form of cabinet/ministerial roles.
The greens may be the closest to a left wing party we have but let’s be real, James and I really don’t hate him or love him, james represents what the green party is: privledged rich generally white do gooder millionaires from places like Waiheke whose heart is in the right place but just don’t get it.
James looks , sounds and talks like the Greens, their multimillionaire donors etc class based solutions aren’t going to come from the green though they have some dece policy.
Get rid of James and all that millionaire money they get from their donors will dry up cos they will see the greens as a lost cause. The greens are already spending hundreds of k’s on advertising and it’s barely making a dent better to keep him on and push from inside cabinet because the greens do have some good ideas.
If the class based leftists in lab/nzf/greens etc wanna come together to form a new party of the economic class left great, let’s do it but it’s not gonna happen this election and the greens are our best shot so don’t roll the damn leader and make the party look a shambles , get him and Julie and Marama into cabinet
Corey Humm +1 – James Shaw is not the worst fuck up in the Green Party… but at this point I just don’t think I can vote for them but not because of this latest fuck up. Sometimes I think I can vote Green after thinking about TPPA and Labour’s betrayal, but then I think… what’s gonna happen if the Green and Labour’s current social plans come to fruition, cos it ain’t gonna go how they think it will.
How to make money in an economy is through educating it’s people and then paying them appropriately so that they can make the country better. Not seeing better jobs and conditions coming through in any left discourse.
Having more sick days is kinda not the point for the precariat worker, when you can be made redundant in NZ with no compensation and your job advertised the next day in the gig economy, as long as you follow a process.
Then there is the not so little environmental issues currently not on the radar of the Greens. We have Covid most likely caused by poor international food regulation and over indulged global travel, the yellow skies from from the OZ bush fires, the earthquakes, floods, droughts and now a volcano that has plague NZ. Gaia ain’t happy with Humanity!
But don’t worry, the Greens and Labour advocate, getting a shovel and pour more overpriced concrete apartments with under paid global labour to solve things via the left!!!!!
Hooray for the right who now controls the lefts solutions! Sarc.
James Shaw is a complete and utter tool – one of the joys of this whole election has been this self destruction. Couldn’t of happened to a nicer guy.
Agreed Frank the ‘Mr Bean ” of NZ politics.
He’s actually a personable, intelligent articulate man. You really should meet someone and get to know them before passing judgement from the comfort of your keyboard.
How do you know I haven’t???? I was a founding member of the Greens, Petal! I voted VALUES PARTY in 1975. I have saved and protected significant native forest areas as well as planted thousands of trees and provided safe havens for NZ native fish, birds and endangered flora all my adult life. Being intelligent is not a prerequisite for being Green but it helps. Walking the walk rather than talking the talk is where it’s at !! Shaw being a nice guy is not what we need right now. He has been a fucking disappointment and simply isn’t good enough to lead the Greens because he hasn’t got what it takes but then that’s true for all NZ’s pollies right now. Inadequate, incompetent and uninformed the lot of them! I have every right to judge someone whose paid in with our taxes and is not good fulfilling his responsibilities. I am a taxpayer and a voter just like you. This is politics Daryl , do grow up!
Rod Donald was the one with integrity. Not sure about the current lot.
Like you do With National MPs or is that different? Might be a nice person but comes across as a tool as a minister. I say that when compared to the old school of green MPs – the Rod Donalds and Jeanette Fitzsimmons of the world who come across as entirely likeable and principled people that you can’t help but like despite disagreeing with 90% of what they say.
Hemi Shaw must have looked at the Saudi Sheep deal and thought ‘I can do better’. How the hell does your average citizen get access to this business startup capital, the equivalent of a Lotto Power Ball win? The public schools down here are furious
They could always get Weka as their equivalent of an H2, because sure as shit, just as I was on the turn (to Green) – along came this $11.7m muppetry. And that’s even after reading and agreeing with Chris Trotter’s most recent considerably, considerably well-considered opinion piece on “the Left’s Dilemma”
Or maybe not, we might instead get a thesis on the hegemonic qualities of the COVID19 virus, peer reviewed by every man and his very, very exceptional spaniel commenting on TS when they’re not taking themselves so seriously they can get a glimpse of themselves in a mirror
Thankfully I do not know many Green voters but it seems obvious to me that Labour feel they can win without them and this mess just made that more likely . It seems like history repeating itself as Greens self destruct just before an election.
Great open letter to Adern by the principal of the lowest decile school in new plymouth outlining the daily problems they face and how just 5% of that money would transform their school. The Green school has room for 120 pupilsand the 11
Mill will double that. But guess what they only have 40 pupils and their model is based on overseas student paying $40,000 a year in fees.
“their model is based on overseas student paying $40,000 a year in fees.”
Similar to the neoliberal Skypath in action where ‘Gen Zero’ (with much business support) advocates a PPP to build it and make the walkers and cyclists pay, as the trucks and cars drive free across the bridge.
If you look back in time you will find the car and truck drivers paid a toll for their share of the bridge capital from 1963 to 1980.
I agree Joseph, but if the goal is to decrease congestion and lower our emissions….. not sure the fake Green movements like Gen Zero are going to achieve that with their Neolibeal led solutions.
Don’t think this issue will gain much traction.
$11 mil of ours to a wanky private school to teach people what an unfettered free to air TV channel could do for not much.
I see.
It takes a long time to grow a tree, and it took a long time to grow James Shaw with his green ideas, business ideas, stickability, commitment to the Party etc. It is a pity if old Greens, who have not been able to do much all the years they have been working in and supporting the Party and its kaupapa, now come along from their past era and try and stop it adapting to a new era. It’s almost virtue signalling. We are well into 2020 and struggling to get on top of the known problems, foresee, plan and implement for future ones. NZ can’t afford to have rote learning of what being Green is, authoritarian, critical and didactic perfectionists who purse their lips at anything that strays from the rigid rules. Forward-looking Greens staring towards 2050 will be frightened they know that time is a-wasting.
Older members should shrug, resigned, say “We couldn’t motivate last governments enough though we tried. Now we have to look at all policies and ask how green we can make them and how fast we can move. How to help NZ not collapse with more hunger and distress than we have now. This will involve us moving flexibly where it meets most of our criteria and helps us move from the unsustainable behaviours we have followed till now.” Try that for a more reasoned discourse than the criticisms we are hearing.
Thank you for this ‘more reasoned discourse’, Greywarbler. It’s appreciated.
As for those saying, “There’s no difference between them” (applied to Labour/Greens vs Nats/Act), do those people really want a return to oil and gas exploration? …more drilling and fracking around our shores? Because that is what they will get if they return the NACTs, and every vote not cast for the ‘Left’ increases the chances of the remaining NACT regime regaining power.
Do they want our homes to be sold off again to foreign predators (euphemistically called “investors”)?
…And the consequent floods of homelessness in our streets? Working people back to living in cars?
Do they want the removal of those small protections which have been given to our waterways? (“They will be gone by lunchtime” says Ms Collins.)
Do they want more privately run prisons? Prisons for profit?
… and the spike in deaths in custody that occurred when Ms Collins was Minister for Police and Corrections?
Do they want a return to privatising (and profiting from) just about everything?
Do they want a return to our NZ army officers training in China under the CCP?
The Wharepaku Gween party is about to return to where they started, the boon docks. As Marama once said, “C¥#t!”
This is exactly what the have become.
The big picture is the left are fragmented and bickering amongst themselves instead of uniting against the right wing tyranny.
Reap what you sow and all that.
There is no more important time in the last 2000 years to start thinking with clarity.
uniting against the right wing tyranny.
Agree, SOB, there’s a desperate need for that now.
Well, the truth is. They’re not fragmented or divided. The left no longer exists.
There’s the Wokester Left, the middle class liberal left that hang with labour and the alienated lefties who’ve left the left.
After the Green Wash’n Capitalist Green party take up their Wharepaku duties post election.
Maybe, just maybe, the left can regroup? Maybe?
So how many more times do you want us to swallow back the vomit and vote for a Green Party that is middle class wankership? You used that same logic at the last election. “Gotta get the Nats out!” This time it’s “Gotta keep Crusher out!”
What do you mean “Comrades, the Greens MUST be returned to Parliament so that we can drag Labour into actual transformative change?” How fucking successful was that during the last three years? Never mind the NZ First handbrake; It was Green ministers (or assistant ministers or whatever the fuck title they had) who sold our water off to the Chinese as well as selling off our native bush to the ravening maw of “business”.
I don’t want to vote for parties that are shit. I want to vote for a party that actually represents something. Preferably championing the underclasses and taking down the neo-lib infrastructure. Someone who will redress the gross imbalance between rich and poor.
Labour will absolutely NOT be that party.
They proved that under the execrable nine year government of right wingers Helen Clarke and Michael Cullen. Seeing as the old bizzum is now counseling Jacinda it’s pretty obvious Labour doesn’t need a handbrake to remain stopped and meaningless. They ain’t going anywhere.
As for the Green Party.
These clowns can’t even save themselves let alone the whole fucking planet. Which is a shame because the planet is gearing up to deliver a mass extinction event in due course. They’ll go extinct arguing we should have all grown beards and made nicer scones.
So my reality is that there is no party or candidate for whom I can vote.
You’ve just given us options that go from terrible to even worse to just-shoot-me-please. What a fucking choice. Just like choosing between Trump and Biden.
The corporations and neo-libs win every time whoever wins the election. My vote has been rendered irrelevant.
I shall go and vote for death and canabis but I won’t take part in your neo-liberal pretence; the politicians can get fucked.
All of them.
@J S Bark, +1 Another great comment.
Oh no, not beards! My neighbourhood is saturated with older chappies in beards and sandals, wearing little back packs, and looking like they’ re heading to or from the hills. More earnest than at ease ; earnest is tiresome – makes me clutch nervously at my pearls.
The Green School sounds a great concept. The sort of school I’d like my grandchildren to go to. Why isn’t the government producing schools like this? But wait – they are – just a little bit anyway.
A party a party, my kingdom for a party. Or the delicate art of compromise for a good cause. I mean it’s not as if Davidson and co are still blaming Pakeha for breaking the country’s heart by allegedly enabling the horrors of the Christchurch tragedy; nor have they requested supporters to normalise calling each other mother- fuckers, nor have I suffered any repercussions for forgetting to verbalise about cunts. More focused on keeping my heating bills down, or deciding if I should heat at all, and when will this country stick it’s neck out for it’s beautiful children, or whether rigidly compartmentalising everything will suffocate us.
@JS Bark
I feel the same. Why bother voting when there is no-one to vote for who actually represents me, nothing changes, and for many of us, things usually just continue to get worse anyway.
I suppose the question to be asked, though, is this: Since you’re stuck in this country, under which government is life *slightly* more tolerable for you to be living? For a lot of us now who continue to vote, for many years it’s been simply to try to “keep the other lot out””. Because “the other lot” running the show means even more misery. So holding your nose and casting a vote by all means doesn’t mean an endorsmant for a particular party- it’s purely a means to an end. The more of us who stop voting means the higher the chance of “the other lot” getting back in and the consequences of that are even worse.
Something to think about, but I also completely understand your disenfranchisement.
Fantastic post JS Bark, made my day even better.
You can stick a cigarette paper between them, that s how much they differ.
I wont be taking part in the 3 yearly illusion and pantomime that is the Election.
Ok! Ok! I agree with you Martyn. But it really sticks in my craw and makes me real sick!! As right now I cannot stand the Green party and its smug wankerlove self satisfied fuckin running dog leaders. What a bunch of dicks and tools they keep showing themselves to be but fuck it, the Greens gotta be in parliament. They sure went way off direction when they lost Sue Bradford, and here we are.. this recent debacle shows them up in shining ironic light and on the doorstep of the election. And man, what an expose of entitlement and disregard for the most basic socialist beliefs. Shovel ready? Indeed….for a fuckin Green Party grave. How myopic and plain stupid can you be. How far up your entitled jacksy. How could they. Arrrrrrh… OMG, get them into Parliament then get rid of both leaders pronto and then find sometwo leaders with at least a modicum of common sense and feeling for what matters… for the people, for the environment. Are they too useless tho, too far gone for any retrieval?
Lone Comet,+1 best comment of the day!!
In particular love, Shovel ready? Indeed….for a fuckin Green Party grave.
Nice try to talk sense Martyn, but Purity and No Compromise is far, far more attractive to that wing of the Greens.
Purity gives those Greens the right to scorn the less-pure compromisers at the ever-smaller meetings.
With the lack of environmental focus with the current Greens and the 1% wealth tax (that cover’s half the home owners living in Auckland who earn a pittance and thus can’t pay a wealth tax from their meagre wages, (cash poor, asset rich) and the prospect for renters of people dumping rental properties on mass (don’t worry plenty of people in Singapore who will buy them https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12358379) … I’d say it’s not just NZ First who fucked up and won’t be returning to parliament.
saveNZ. Thanks for raising that hopeless wealth tax demanded by Davidson who doesn’t appeared to have screwed herself into the ground as so many of us have done, buying our own properties, living weekends on stone soup, growing enough veges to cover the Canterbury Plains.
I am contemplating resurrecting a previously church-run scheme getting volunteers to eg change lightbulbs for pensioners too old to hop up on the furniture and do it themselves, and too poor to pay “ a man” to come out and do it for them. Embarrassed by weed-uglified paths and driveways and awake all night with arthritic hands if they do it themselves or wondering will they be able to get up again if they go down to ground level, and too poor to pay “a man” to come out and do it, and sitting on benches in malls counting the coins in their purses before entering the supermarket.
That particular proposal was scaringly simplistic – but other parties, even scarier.
Snow White I like your ideas of helping people in need from Churches. If things get tougher for the NZ poor, soup kitchens in Churches…(and Maraes and Mosques and anywhere else eg local halls is a good idea, like the Sallies do) It would add community support and food for those in need.
I have heard the idea mooted also of a Land Bank ( not the usual speculators meaning of the term)…whereby farmers could offer/allow an acre of their land to be fenced off and loaned/freed up to their local communities for use as communal vege gardens
We need more community ideas and organisation for tough times ahead.
( some lessons can gotten from the Christchurch earthquakes which brought in a lot of community caring and sharing for those in need and brought out the best in people)
If Mana was still around, they would have a chance of picking up increasingly turned off Green voters, who can’t stomach another 3 long woke years of overprivileged kiddies at the table legalising the thought police while they toke a joint.
+100 saveNZ
As far as a political party is concerned, the Green Party is clueless or appears so.
It makes far more sense that stupidity as overt as these chumps have collectively displayed and the leaders who have led it, was designed to destroy them.
bye bye gweens you bunch of hypocrites we all see what you are now thanks Hemi
Is that we all see or we see all or is that hyperbole?
All this from a government that canned Charter Schools as soon as they got into power. Schools that were successfully uplifting brown kids out of their poverty trap.
Really???????????Name them. Define success. Are only brown kids failing then ?
Thanks for this thoughtful commentary Martyn. I agree, Shaw staying in place is the best strategy.
Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
For ignoring Green Party policy James Shaw will pay a price.
It has been very noticeable that whenever the media needed a statement from the Green Party, it was James Shaw they handed the mic to. This favouritism has made a mockery of the Green Party dual leadership.
But if the media can build you up, they can also break you down.
From now on, any journalist who seeks out James Shaw as the last word on Green Party policy, will look a fool.
Nature abhors a vacuum, as James Shaw is forced to step back, Marama Davidson will come more to the fore as the voice of the Green Party.
Praise be the day.
Amongst all this bad press of late the policy mix is excellent as are members like Chloe and Genter and new talent coming on to the list.
Leaders heading political parties are only temporary and it is the party , its membership and those of us that have worked out that the environment must be at the centre of everything we do and an economy that makes people before profit a priority will continue to support the movement.
The policies some of which will be adopted only if we have a Green party to form our first centre left government after October 17th
No matter how you look at it, the decision to subsidize a private school that has hardly started to operate, with such a substantial amount, cannot be justified.
Neither technically, nor economically, nor politically.
The way and manner how this decision evolved is not acceptable by normative standards for ‘transformational change’.
The timing of this decision is absolutely nuts, especially for a party that fights for surviving the upcoming election.
Someone has to take full responsibility for it, and for the potential consequences.
Personnel responses on senior level will show accountability to the electorate.
After 17 October anyone still making excuses will not be treated kindly.
After October 17 all the navel gazing won’t get the Greens back into Parliament if they’re gone burger.
Sort of ironic isn’t it that the Greens’ funding of a private school could see the Greens gone and enable Act, with its much improved numbers, getting all schools to go private by dint of them becoming charter schools.
It’s my own fault for not being right there for them. Now we will just have to yell at Jacinda and tell her to keep as many environmental protections as she can.
l.o.l. 😀
Peter, it is disingenuous to think the school issue is what caused the Greens decline, they started declining last election and then have done some clangers such as giving the private Chinese sector more free water, giving the Natz their votes, environmental policy missing in action while pushing a very far left, self serving social policy by the woke Greens led by Marama who thinks we need to reclaim the cunts, trying to blame NZ for the CHCH attack when practically everybody in the country went out of their way to mourn blah, blah
SaveNZ – Davidson’s reclaiming of cunts, was student canteen level talk, immature – and what a waste of time.
Blaming Pakeha NZ for the ChCh massacre, when, as you rightly say, everyone in the country went out of their way to mourn them, is why I think her too much of a screwball to be in Parliament.
We didn’t just go out of our way to mourn the massacred people, we did mourn them and we grieved, and then this woman appears saying, “ This is all your fault.” She just couldn’t miss the chance to stir up brown against white; that was dramatically out of sync with the message of the PM, and the gut response of most of us. That night, I lost the party which I supported long before Davidson and co hitched their wagons to it.
James Shaw is ok; I understand the reasoning behind his support of the interesting looking Green school. People who know more than me – and they form a multitude – hold him in high regard; I don’t understand the giving away of water, but have given away the Greens, because of that one final night when some of their women revealed their hostility towards people they are meant to be representing in Parliament. Of course I can’t vote for bigots.
…not to mention the James Shaw and Greens solidarity and support of John Keys wanker vanity project, the NZ flag change from the Southern Cross to RED PEAK !… to signify no doubt a NZ makeover to jonkeys tax haven, fantasy heaven, banana republic
( what a failed wanker Green project that was in solidarity with John key!)
Red Buzzard – Did the Greens really support John Key’s flag change obsession ? Really ? Then they truly are a bunch of headless chooks.
How dare they.
So many of us, of all hues, have whanau who worked hard building NZ into a proud and productive little country at the bottom of the world, then along came Key, first generation NZ’er, who had the effrontery to want to change our flag. Key isn’t worth wasting time on, but the Greens, given the moral advantage of theoretically being environmentalists, are looking more and more like opportunists with an eye for the main chance, to follow their own pet capriciousness.
I don’t like lumping Sage and Genter in with the popcorn heads, and am sorry to see Gareth Hughes going, but hopping on Key’s hobby horse looks like the fickleness of the dilettante. They need to grow up.
I need a strong coffee now.
Flag debate: Greens reap rewards of Red Peak move
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/72352455/flag-debate-greens-reap-rewards-of-red-peak-move
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/284208/red-peak-politicians-fling-flag-barbs
…”James Shaw got away with a red peak themed tie.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11514059
Labour ‘ a little grumpy’ with Green Party over Red Peak flag
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/labour-a-little-grumpy-with-green-party-over-red-peak-flag-
Red B Thanks. In retrospect, maybe this was all a costly cat-on-the-table diversion by John Plank Key, and we all fell for it.
A very expensive diversion, if it was one:
Over $20 million spent on changing NZ flag… vanity project by John Key, which the Greens aided and abetted and added their own cost of the Red Peak flag ($263,000 for referendum )which they favoured…and New Zealanders did not want a flag change at all !( as NZF said all along)
…so waste of money which could have gone into State Housing!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-flag-debate/74003348/flag-referendum-where-does-the-26-million-go
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11657032
Cabinet decision….and the responsible Minister Shane Jones…..this was a braindead ‘Government’ decision….one that Shaw mistakenly thought was a win.
They are all responsible for not foreseeing how this would play out, especially in an election period….and they are all fortunate that Shaw has provided them with a convenient whipping boy
“Caught”, with a publicly announced policy… what a spin, they should have stuck to their guns, never apologise.
I would have suggested something like this response for Shaw:
“While the Green Party of course favour a properly resourced public education system over private, profit driven schools receiving public funds for our children, these are unusual times, private providers are already well accepted in the tertiary sphere, and we decided to make an exception in this case.
We saw that this would bring tangible benefits to the Taranaki community which is heavily reliant on the fossil fuels industry as a region.
As we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, alternative employment and strategies will be needed and we felt, under the circumstances and given the need for economic stimulus, that the green school was a worthy contender for a regional stimulus grant.
This grant did not come from the education budget, and we fully agree that better resourcing of infrastructure for public schools is a worthy and necessary direction for the government. This is not an either or situation.
The greens fully support rebuilding public school infrastructure and undoing the damage done by 9 years of the previous national government grievously under funding the sector.”
NEVER apologise.
As for the puritanical left, nice own goal dicks, I suggest they learn when to accept horses for courses, when to make exceptions, and know when to curb criticism.
Get through the election, then hold your own to account.
Yes I am green voter and have been consistently.
At this rate, puritanical, inflexible ideologues may be seeing to it that the greens don’t even make it into the next government. Brilliant.
What is “woke identity politics”? (Genuine question)
Being woke has been corrupted by the weak to mean feeble it’s just a woke glass ceiling that lowers the bar so low anyone can just stroll over it.
The strong peoples use of education to develop an awareness of the dangers to yourself, to your family, and perhaps even the community you live in. And if you are truly gifted in your studies then you may have influence over the nation you live in or perhaps even regional power. And if you are truly gifted then perhaps even the UN top job could be yours and just walk over everything with billions and billions and billions of dollars at your disposal.
There is a lot of talk that the Taranaki investment money should be spent on education for NZs which certainly needs a boost, and I believe a new approach along with that. But this is a new thing for NZ, it is part of what has become a big earner for NZ and that is education as a business, this time a green-future study, and will give us more involvement in the world wide activities, give us more networks to be involved in, increase our expertise and help us keep in the forefront. Taranaki has been heavily funded from the oil searches and fuel reserves there. It now has something to help it turn from these previously profitable industries.
All the carry-on is from people who still have one of their legs in the 20th century while their body is in the 21st. It’s not a sustainable position. They can fall into the soup if they are determined on that outcome, just don’t stop us trying to save ourselves and our bit of the planet, and help the rest as well.
If just a few more Labour voters in Auckland Central give their electorate vote to Chloe, she will claim the seat easily. I’m now reasonably sure that she will do that. “Go Chloe!”
James Shaw is the corporate torpedo who sunk the Greens tenuous grip on the environmental space in Aotearoa NZ politics. He’s better suited to being in the National Party and has dragged the Greens way to the right with minimal resistance from the members.
Remaining members of the Greens have to own their terminal mistake. They pretend they support the parties ideals and watch them being trashed daily.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/12/14/guest-blog-kevin-hester-termination-of-my-membership-in-the-green-party-of-aotearoa/
No matter how you look at it…
… the decision to subsidize a private school that has just started to operate, and with such a substantial amount, can hardly be justified.
Neither technically, nor economically, nor politically.
The mistake can be corrected by
a) changing the terms of the Government’s financial commitment and reducing the actual amount in question, and
b) resignation from the leadership function by the officer-in-charge for leading the green party into this mess.
If no action is taken (soon) the voters will probably charge the green party at election day.
The misinformation and fantastic stories about the Green Party and the self righteous ranting of much of the commentary is more amusing than saddening.
A couple of facts. There is no mechanism to remove James Shaw outside of an AGM. Talk of ‘rolling him’ is so much hot air.
James was re-elected unopposed at a recent AGM. There is no credible ‘left’ male co-leader alternative.
2nd. There is absolutely no chance of the Green Party candidate in Nelson winning the seat. A lot of effort was put in to the candidate vote in Nelson last election for little reward
The Green Party demographic is broad and many
members are on low or fixed incomes.
Update. James Shaw was grilled in a Friday Zoom call by 450 members and apologized for his error. The policy of phasing out state funding of private schools was reiterated. This is internal democracy at work in the GP.
Please let me re-phrase myself.
This issue is increasing the risk for the green party to fall below 5% in the next election.
As long as the present OIC remains in the position of male Party Co-Leader, he will allow others to galvanize negative responses around him and the subject.
This will not only discredit the green party but also alternative approaches to education, in principle.
Why to take such risk?
At present the Greens can probably do better with the female Co-Leader alone.
Under the given circumstances, Shaw’s sticking to the party-leader position perhaps indicates another ‘error of judgement’.
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