Comparing Tana to Genter and how the Greens are about to leap out of the woke frying pan into the identity politics fire

1. Perhaps the Greens could partner with NZ First for some work on improved candidate selection.

   [\snigger]

   • That’s such appropriate language HF – ‘snigger’. And not being smarmy, sarcastic either!

2. Just WOW! Is there a copy available? How long did it take to write? Would take me six months just to formulate that title!

3. You missed the full look at Benjamin Doyle’s masters thesis:

   “Here is a Master’s thesis crafted with, by, and for Rangatahi Takatāpui. It represents a labour of love for the community to which I belong, and seeks to generate understanding about the factors that enable LGBTQI+ Māori youth to embody and enact Tino Rangatiratanga. Principles of Kaupapa Māori Theory provide a paradigm through which this research is conducted, with particular attention paid to the Indigenous Research Agenda. Importantly, this rangahau seeks to offer an alternative to the conventions of hegemonic empirical academia by centering the voices and lived experiences of those who have historically been subjected to the dehumanising objectification of Western research practices.

   Ultimately, this research present nine key factors to be addressed and implemented in order to achieve this aspiration, including a call for conscientisation (both the self and the collective), resourcing and support, the removal of barriers to access, community intersectional reflexivity, space for collective Indigenous dreaming, and an ongoing commitment to Te Tiriti justice.”

   • P Carran. Thank you for the expansion. Makes the whole thesis more sensible because I too long for conscientisation.

   • The English term conscientization is a translation of the Portuguese term conscientização, which is also translated as “consciousness raising” and “critical consciousness”.

     • Geoffrey L. So I guess that govt depts can quit the “ unconscious bias” deprogramming then. That’ll save the long-suffering tax payers a Bob or two.

   • Basically, as long as Benjamin has a decent sized bone carving and an earring or two, and maybe, as a transgender activist, a moko, he should be ok, climate change and environmental issues apart.

   • The thesis sounds excellent. But the Greens are not just, or was not just, a party for trans and disaffected-sexually people. Stop trying to hog the whole Party for a splinter group of disaffected! Practically every awake person in NZ/AO is disaffected, not just those who have just woke(n) up. You are so self-centred and grabby to pinch our environmental party of values. The Greens was our last hope after realising that Labour had lost its way and was wandering towards the cliff blinded by the sign in big gold letters –
     ‘Unguarded Piles of Money Here’.

4. Quite right Martyn, going down the list takes the Greens out of the frying pan and into the fire. The party will have even more reason to be seen as a vehicle for the programs of a fringe minority. We may be close to the point where the Green Party has to be written off as a possible left-wing alternative and successor to the Labour Party. That should not surprise any of us. Yet the left still fails to see the systemic problem at work here. In the New Zealand system politicians are not accountable to the voting public. Being unaccountable, they become a law unto themselves, following their own personal interests, responding to corrupt political lobbies, or pursuing peculiar sectional interests. Until that changes the ordinary New Zealand voter, the vast mass of working New Zealanders, will be denied any serious representation in the system.
   Some people have been slow to draw the appropriate conclusions from the Darleen Tana fiasco. Should Darleen resign? If she doesn’t, should the Green Party invoke the waka jumping legislation? Was Darleen elected to parliament solely on the sponsorship of the Green Party? Who can say? Electors vote for a list. Darleen was on the list. Did her presence on that list attract votes, meaning she has as much right as Chloe Swarbrick to remain in parliament? No one knows. That is the point. No one knows anything. No one knows for certain if Darleen was in the wrong in the migrant labour scandal, no one knows for certain what support she has among Green voters, so no one knows if she has a moral right to stay in parliament. Who should make that decision? In a democracy, the people who elected her would. Trouble is that in the New Zealand system they have no way of doing that. In a democracy there would be continuous election with an open ballot – in a word, rangatiratanga – and Darleen would either be confirmed in her position or she would be gone. No drama, no pontificating, no endless screeds of vehement opinion on blogs, no agonising over compromising Green Party principles by invoking the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act. It would be boring by comparison with what we have now, but hey, democracy is like that.

   • Geoff. I think rhe answer is simple. We should abolish the Party list. We still have the Party vote to determine the proportion of MPs each Party has and the current number of electorates. But the rule should be You don’t get into Parliament unless you stand for Parliament. The List MPs would be replaced by those people who did not win an electoral seat but had the highest number of votes among the losing candidates in their Party. That way Ben gets in because more people actually voted for him than some other Green and not because a selection committee wanted a queer whatever on their list.

     • An interesting proposal. Effectively it would mean that there was a provisional list before the election (all constituency candidates in no particular order) and a final ranked list compiled after the election and based on constituency results. Party members and party organisations would still have a big influence because candidate selection for the most “friendly” electorates would be hotly contested. Therefore the make-up of the provisional list would have an impact on the final list, but ordinary voters would have the “final say”. Note however that this proposal would not provide a solution to the Darleen Tana problem. If she had got into parliament on the list on the strength of her electorate performance, and then doubts were raised about her integrity, she would be even harder to shift because she would be rightly able to point to her popular support.
       For this and many other reasons I still favour the principle of continuous election, which would give real power to ordinary voters. They would be able to elect a representative and then to withdraw their mandate at any time if the candidate failed to deliver on their promises, was guilty of misconduct, or for any other reason. That would make representatives truly accountable, and all those millions of people throughout the western world who have given up on parliamentary politics in disgust might see a reason to participate once again.

   • The urgent necessity for continuous election and the open ballot throughout the western world is illustrated nowhere better than in the United States. With an open ballot there would be no possibility of electoral fraud, or of false allegations of electoral fraud. With continuous election we would be spared Joe Biden’s catastrophic election campaign.
     The fundamental problem is not Biden’s dementia. It is the fact that the political establishment refuses to acknowledge his condition, claiming that he is “sharp as a tack” and fit to be president for another four years. Congressional Speaker Kevin McCarthy testifies that Biden is “very professional, very smart, very tough” in private meetings. Biden’s inner circle echo that assessment. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon both express their confidence in Josesph Biden’s capacity to “rule the world” (as Biden himself puts it). Yet Biden is a man who confuses Iraq and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and, perhaps most astonishingly, his political adversary Donald Trump and his own vice-President Kamala Harris. Eight billion people know that Biden is suffering from dementia, yet they are powerless to act against the wishes of the US political establishment. With continuous election this situation would be quickly corrected, in fact with continuous election this situation would never have arisen. The American people, given the opportunity, would not allow their country and the world to be brought into jeopardy by the joint phenomena of natural cognitive decline and the chicanery of political cliques.

5. This is the end of satire as we know it

   • Maybe we’re inside some big massive Monty Python skit.

     • Oh, we definitely are inside a skit.

     • UriNalBushrat. It could be that we waken tomorrow to find that this is all a bad dream.

6. What a thought, all blinded by, payment only care. Capitalism, cancer its greed default what a uncaring grasp. Green, new Leader, make this the biggest ever Green Revolution.
   Cat, called Hitler, had that same rehtoric, yet some others, also.
   What to recon.

7. Of course, rather than sitting back and moaning about the Green’s candidate selection process which is the easy way out, if you are convinced we need an effective Green Party to address the biggest issue of the day, participate in democracy. Join the GP, encourage others to do likewise and work to change the selection process/criteria.
   Of course, this would require commitment, hard work, organisation and vision. None of these needed when expressing an opinion or posting criticism on line!

   • Yes, and we could join the National Party, Labour, ACT or New Zealand First and “work to change the selection process/criteria” but would that “commitment, hard work, organisation and vision” yield fruit? I doubt it. Instead I choose to be committed to and to work within my own community where the attitude is cooperative and something of value can be achieved.

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