There is an immense problem in only using the lens of identity when selecting leadership in a Political Party.
Is meritocracy eclipsed by other interests and if so, are the interests true kaupapa?
As a Green voter my entire adult life, the current Party barely represents the vision I want from it.
Middle class woke identity politics has spread inside the Greens like covid at an anti-vax house warming party.
The new constitution adopted by the party in 2022, expanded the guidelines for selecting candidates whilst allocating voting rights to previously informal interest group networks. One effect of this has been to de-prioritise talent, effectiveness and electoral appeal in the list-ranking process in favour of a kind of horse trading over how to fit in the right quota of geography, ethnicity, ability, youth & gender into the various positions on the list.
It is this new network that a far more puritanical woke clique have seized upon and manipulated to ensure their identity candidates have most influence.
As difficult as this is to write, the far more puritanical woke clique consider Marama as not woke enough!
Let that sink in.
They want Dr Kerekere and Riccardo as the new leadership team where as I think that is a disaster of an idea and would make the Greens a 3% Party.
I’ve been clear as to who members should consider and the ranking of them…
1: Chlöe Swarbrick: She remains one of the most unique Political Leaders of her generation. Her oversight, insight and understanding of the process, system and solution based approach would unleash more genuine change in just one term than all the Green Party achievements since creation. She is a unique talent.
2: Julie Anne Genter: Our Transport system is fucked, our public transport infrastructure is fucked and the Trucking Industry do what they want. The only person smart enough to fix those problems and stick it to the Trucking Industry is Julie Anne Genter.
3: Golriz Ghahraman: She’s one of the smartest MPs in the Green Caucus, you need very smart people when making decisions. She has capacity to oversee many different issues happening all at once, she’s too much of a star player within the decision making process.
4: Fa’anānā Efeso Collins: He gives the Greens access to Auckland which they have never had. Fes is one of the best political leaders within Gen X, he is ready to be the co-Leader, doesn’t need training wheels and can bring a South Auckland vote the Green Party has never managed to win over.
5: Steve Abel: Steve is one of the most important environmental voices in the debate. His activism is unquestionable, his values beyond reproach. What is most important with Steve is his intelligence on the climate change science. As a NZ Greenpeace spokesperson, he knows the tricks Industry use to hide their environmental damage. He would be essential
…but today I want to highlight an anomaly caused by the Identity Politics lens and ask if this is acceptable.
On the Green Party list right now is a candidate who has actively fought environmental law yet has been given a higher ranking than actual environmental campaigners like Steve Able and Lan Pham!!!
This candidate, as the CEO of a Māori Trust Board, went to the Environment Court to stop Te Uri O Hikihiki, a hapu of Ngatiwai, using the RMA to protect life in the sea in their own area (just south of the Bay of Islands) and allow recovery.
The Trust Board took this position to defend the value of the Board’s fishing quota, which is controlled through their company.
Fortunately the hapu and community groups won the court case. Read about it here.
This ground-breaking work using the RMA to protect marine diversity is exactly what’s needed not just on this coastline but nationally. Given that the ocean is in crisis from overfishing and now climate change, a key question for Greens members ahead of the list ranking vote is, ‘Can candidates who have fought against marine protections protect those marine environments?’
How did the Green Party select and elevate to the top of the list a candidate who went to court to defend a corporate fishing interest over a hapu and community initiative to secure marine biodiversity protection?
Is it because the candidate ticks the right identity boxes?
What has happened within the Green Party to enable such a candidate to be in an electable position on the list while high-profile campaigners like lan Pham and Steve Abel are not?
Is the Green Party now being used to greenwash the activities of its own candidates?
If we can pause the career of a National Party candidate for liking a gross joke and offensive poem, how can the Greens select a candidate who actively fought against environmental protections for the fishing industry over and above actual Greenpeace campaigners?
Why has no one in the mainstream media picked up on this?
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Well why hasn’t anyone in the mainstream media picked up on Kerekere’s long long established interest being in Maori sex and gender practices? How on earth is that applicable to every day New Zealanders? Is it nature friendly or does it help to put roofs above cold heads or food into hungry bellies ? I don’t think so.
Kerekere’s being a middle aged Maori Lesbian expert in time-expired sex issues pertaining to one ethnicity seems to be a rather shaky sort of basis for any leadership of an environmental party. She’s not even particularly polite to young white guys at Seiect Committee, IMHO.
“Kerekere’s long long established interest being in Maori sex and gender practice” . . yup that is exactly what we need to help direct the future of New Zealand – an expert (real or otherwise) on what Maori did with their pink bits hundreds of years ago.
Are there like courses at some university or polyversity to study these sorts of things?
There are probably courses that are unlike that, but I guess ‘it is what it is’, and you’d probably like, have to go into debt to like, take advantage of one.
She seems to have done a PhD in this, at Victoria University. At post- graduate level, students choose their own research subject, eand they organise their own work, overseen by a supervisor, who they touch base with. There might be the odd paper pertaining to her topic. Prior to this, her undergrad qualification seems to be from an institute of technology, in something like Maori visual art and crafts, and there would have been regular lectures and tutorials and practical course work required for this.
Now, at some, maybe all New Zealand universities, independent research work has to be shown to be ToW compliant and approved of by a bloody vice chancellor who may know nothing about the subject.
#page 82 where Kerekere admits in her Phd that there is no evidence for her claims about transgender in pre colonial Maori.
As Mana Wahine Korere point out there is no evidence in waiata, myths or legends of trans people. It’s always been tane and wahine
Anker In her maiden speech I think Kerekere lamented white colonialist New Zealanders curtailing the gender diversity of her Maori ancestors. What diversity or practices may have existed is of no interest to me, but fomenting racial grievances, is not something that politicians or anybody else should be doing. Davidson did it at the Auckland Muslim vigil in wake of the terrible Christchurch massacres; she and her female friends’ vile diatribes about Pakeha, were when I quit the party I had supported before these women even jumped on board. Neither should be in a leadership position.
As The parties spokesperson on health we have not heard a damn word .
Which as a party member and how dysfunctional our health and meds are disgusts me.
Regarding RMA controls on fishing. Hugh Sayers et al should be commended for making these possible through Motiti. And environmental groups should be commended for picking up the baton from there. But caution is also needed with these tools – these things are new and shiny but are no panacea.
RMA controls are indeed positive in that they wrest some control away from Fisheries New Zealand, whose protective record is almost non-existent in favour of very short term extractive thinking. RMA controls also provide an avenue to the entire community.
However, just like FA tools open to the community, RMA controls are only something one asks for. One does not just get them. But unlike FA tools, RMA controls have their drawbacks too, relative to Fisheries Act tools. Among many other things, one needs to go through onerous EnvC processes, one’s call for controls always be easily challenged on both factual and legal grounds, the outcome will have the character of a negotiated settlement (as in Northland), and in the end regional councils have neither the budgetary nor physical capacity (ie boats or maybe drones) to enforce them, placing the success of enforcement somewhat back in the hands of FNZ.
Te Uri understands that it needs to have multiple irons in the fire, to its immense credit. Recently they won the case Martin mentions, but not only that case. They also succeeded in having the northland cray quota decision ruled unlawful, using FA-based legal tools, working in partnership with the Environmental Law Initiative. (Disclosure: I was lucky to be involved with that.)
The relevance to the main subject of the post not tangential. It is to relate from another angle how frustrating it is to be watching the Greens going as they are. What is needed is a mixture of expertise – across many disciplines – to make environmental headway (the passion side goes without saying). Martin’s suggested candidates would seem to possess that, as a team. And it is not like that team would forget the plight of our less fortunate brothers and sisters and others either.
If I was an appropriately positioned political actor and the Greens kept going this way, I’d taunt Eugenie to turn out the lights on her way out come October, no one being home etc etc.
The Greens have an allergy to any kind of difficult internal discussion. especially during election years. And the discussion would be pointless anyway, because the faction that needs to listen has never shown that they can. They brook no dissent, treat questions as attacks, treat dissenters as enemies, and are quite happy to burn the party to the ground if things don’t go their way. This is why the reasonable people in the Greens are keeping their mouths shut: they don’t want repeat of the Linda Gale affair in Vic.
As an aside, there have been recent discussions within TOP about gender identity (and identity politics generally), and IMHO the discussion reached the dizzying heights of being OK. Just OK. Everybody said their piece, what is (and is not) TOP policy was clarified, and it was clearly established that gender critical opinions are permitted within the party. And the leadership responded appropriately. And nobody called anybody a Nazi and there seemed to be a sense of correct priorities and proportionality. In the current climate of no-debate and accusations of fascism flying in all directions, “just OK” is actually pretty good.
Also, another reason why the “gender identity” faction in the Greens will not listen or change: they really, genuinely see what happened in Albert Park as a wonderful and good thing, with the virtuous defenders of human rights striking a blow for goodness and light against the filthy evil nazi fascists. (IMHO what actually happened was: some cult members beat up some old-school feminists, many of whom used to be Green, while a tiny number of actual fascists sat on their deckchairs with popcorn laughing their arses off). And afterwards, one of their high priests became Young New Zealander of the Year and the person who assaulted Posie Parker was given a sympathetic write-up in Stuff.
They are drunk on what they see as “success”. They aren’t, won’t, can’t listen.
This synopsis hits the target, bullseye, to this elderly white CIS male. I’m in dispair that the ‘freak’ NZ er of year has access to popular media without counterpoint balanced articles.
#page 82 where Kerekere admits in her Phd that there is no evidence for her claims about transgender in pre colonial Maori.
As Mana Wahine Korere point out there is no evidence in waiata, myths or legends of trans people. It’s always been tane and wahine100% that guy. You ve nailed it
Bingo, delineating the politicised narrative from reality.
Time to consider a serious protest vote. A shame the McGillicuddy Serious Party doesn’t run anymore. Is the Cannabis Party is running this year?
Green voters will have to vote TOP this election. To send a message to the Green Party Ehco Chamber.
Or hijaced by cry babies?
Martyn, when is it going to hit you that the Greens are no longer a party to have any faith in. They are hopelessly captured by identity politics and that is what the spend their time on.
I went through a profound dis illusionment with Labour, who I have always voted for. The party left me. They are like a long term partner who is sneaky and devious and has different agendas from what you were lead to believe. The shock is profound when you stand back and see it for what it is ie. with Labour a party captured by toxic ideology, whose incompetance means everything they touch, almost without exception is a massive failure. The Greens IMO are worse. If these people don’t even know what a women is, how the hell can they make sane decisions about the economy and our country.
Time to leave the Greens Martyn. Call it off. Move on. Someone better will come along. And I will be your shoulder to cry on when you grieve for what has been lost
Totally agree Anker.
The events of the past 2 months have made me decide not to vote for the Greens. This story is just further confirmation of how this party has declined.
It looks like a TOP party vote for me.
Thanks for the info Bomber. Just another reason why the Greens won’t get my vote again until they sort thier shit out and focus on the real problems.
And just to reiterate Rednecks Act won’t be getting my vote either
A cult ate my party
Distressing to see
The cult leader’s name?
Dr Kerekere.
A cult ate my party
It started so well
We said to the gay folks
“You’re NOT going to hell”
“To hell with this nonsense”
“This vile travesty”
“We’re going to get rid”
“of all prayer therapy”
“What’s wrong with the gay kids?”
“Nothing at all.”
But then, ‘cross the ocean
Came a fateful, bad call.
A shiny new theory
of identity
imported wholesale
from the land of the Free.
A theory of women
and LGBT
it’s not about bodies
Or reality
Woman, you see
Is not flesh and bone
It’s just an idea!
A skill you can hone!
A costume! A play!
A set of high heels!
Not real female bodies
Just male thoughts and feels!
Of course, with this theory
Victims abounded
Women were shut up
Dissidents hounded
But the saddest thing, surely
for the kids LGB:
We stopped telling them
that they’re perfect and free
Instead we say “fix them!”
“Do surgery!”
“Pass me the hormones!”
“Stop puberty!”
Disagree? You’re a fascist.
Questions? You troll!
Critical thinking
Is not how we roll.
So while we all talk
of the male right to be
In any place where
they just ought not to be
our planet is burning
our oceans are acid
our kids losing hope
because we’re so placid.
A cult ate my party
Don’t want to be mean
But cults are not nice
It’s not Rainbow, not Green.
Yep, very impressive indeed.
“The right quota of geography, ethnicity, ability, youth & gender”
This matters because it fulfils the target of equity (equal outcomes or redressing the previous injustices as they see it). It is also makes the broadest appeal to voters because in woke world no one can feel represented or relate to a candidate who does not have the same superficial identity markers as them.
“As difficult as this is to write, the far more puritanical woke clique consider Marama as not woke enough!”
It is the same belief system that indoctrinates people like Whoopi Goldberg and Diane Abbot into thinking that white people (like Jews, Gypsys, Irish and Slavic peoples) do not and cannot experience racism, only prejudice. This may appear intellectually and ethically bankrupt or historically illiterate but it follows from the intersectional model and the punching down taboo. Likewise for sex, gender, sexuality, land rights for gay whales etc.
“Is it because the candidate ticks the right identity boxes? Is the Green Party now being used to greenwash the activities of its own candidates?” Woke ideology gives rise to a kind of anti-politics where advancing anyone who is not white/cis/male/straight/right-handed/neurotypical/etc feel highly progressive but does not challenge underlying neoliberal power. It also lacks any meaningful analysis of socio-economics that is not downstream of identity. Therefore it is easy to game the system is a favorite way for corporatists to greenwash, rainbowwash or tick box their way to virtue signalling past any self interested action.
“Why has no one in the mainstream media picked up on this?”
Because most journalists and editors serve the interests of power and seek to preserve their access to it, keeping their invite to the right Wellington Christmas parties. Most journalists do not exist to challenge power and look out for the interests of the ordinary person.
“Most journalists do not exist to challenge power and look out for the interests of the ordinary person”
They are ordinary people with writing being their most or often only saleable skill looking out to keep their job. Like everyone they know which side butters their bread. Their training is in story telling (conflict drama), slant and angles but very little in their role as The Fourth Estate.
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