Green Conference vs Blue Conference 2021: So many feelings
The Greens and National both held their annual conference this weekend and flicking between the two felt like watching TVNZ Breakfast and Fox News.
National are in a state of utter denial and managed to highlight to the world via the re-election of Goodfellow (and tantrum of Carter) that National’s big money interests have a vice like grip upon the political infrastructure of NZs second largest political party while the Green Conference had a lot of feelings.
So many feelings.
Goodfellow’s re-election as National Party President is a nod that the big money interests inside NZ are getting nervous Labour intend to change things and want their best point man inside National to steer the conversation towards the things they fear most.
Expect to hear a lot about the Fair Pay Agreement, big money NZ has a visceral hatred of universal unionism and they want Judith talking about that, not some culture war distraction like a referendum on Aotearoa.
This tightening of power inside National follows Judith’s own tightening of power inside Caucus with her tripping up Nick Smith and exile of Muller all to maintain a naked majority.
Expect Judith’s uncompromising vitriol to be turned against the Unions as the Fair Pay Agreement debate starts. Most of Judith’s 7 fixes are economic based and take a wild stab in the dark what her answers will be?
Smashing universal unionism!
Expect dancing Cossacks.
The Greens by comparison were all soothing feelings wrapped in a fern frond picked from an organic market garden.
Marama soothed, James soothed, we all soothed.
It was less a party conference and more a yoga session focused on deep breathing. Only middle class people enjoy being this present.
It was so soothing you would be forgiven into thinking that we don’t have 190 000 kids in poverty, 4000 in motels, 22512 on emergency housing wait lists, a spike in inequality not seen since feudal times, generations locked out of home ownership and a planet on fire.
Namaste 
Two parties with no answers and brittle vision both going no where fast.
Late stage Capitalism never looked so insipid.
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I despair for NZ as there are no parties presently in the parliment that stand out as having any real answers to our growing problems. Poverty inequality a way forward out of grips of this pandemic and climate change all seem to be lost in personnality politics . Is there a party worth backing ?
Trevor – We need creative people and original thinkers; we used to have them in New Zealand; they weren’t always valued, but they were here. Then television came, then more television, and play stations and social media crap.
There was a time those boys so very tragically killed at Washdyke, would have had a dance or a social to go to on a Saturday night – most of those Sth Canterbury towns had them, with local bands before the discos started. All gone. We’ve regressed socially, and we dumbed down big time. The Parliamentarians are the living proof of this – and meantime Timaru families are left with dead kids, and a pain which never goes away.
That is are very long bow you draw blaming social problems on those five boys deaths in Timaru. The nineteen year old needs to be held accountable as he was driving and him being older. This was a case of reckless driving causing death he was obviously speeding possibly intoxicated it will come out in the court case.
Michelle I am not blaming social problems on those very sad deaths at Washdyke. I don’t know what you mean by that.
Nor am I suggesting that the boys’ deaths are the result of social problems.
I am saying that the social fabric of New Zealand has changed. Some of the change has been inevitable, and not all of it has been beneficial. But in different times, those lads, may have had more options available to them, than driving around in cars. Sat night socials were one – a more obvious one, which apart from being fun – even for adolescents looking at each other from opposite sides of a church hall – helped to knit smaller communities. The local band played, the mums provided a plate and did suppers on trestles, the girls made their own frocks, and everyone got dragged in to clean up afterwards. Bonding.
I am most certainly saying that we need original thinkers and problem solvers – but we’ve not always wanted them or welcomed them. We’re a bit like Ireland turfing out most of it’s great writers – but at least they got to escape and flourish.
A heartbreaking tragedy has occurred, and I suggest that it’s not for you or I to start laying the blame.
All you need now is ACT goose stepping on stage with automatic weapons and you have the full set. These conferences are as ridiculous as any NZ version of “Give us a clue” could be, but at least the sellout contestants on that dismal televised charade would concede they were never politicians, journalists, comedians or New Zealanders of the Year to begin with.
Thanks for the incisive report, Makes me feel blue around the heart and green around the gills; if they don’t move fast enough, lichen will grow on them.
Yes National are appalling and shit. The people at the top responsible have been re-elected and they will continue with politics that have ruined our once great country. As long as Collins continues her 80’s style politics, Labour are a shoe in. Add in now Collins race baiting and a Labour/Greens and Maori party coalition is a given.
Nationals promises were all broken during their time and dirty politics continues to be part of their game plan. Fortunately most N.Zers with common sense see past the charade that is National.
Bert – They are awful, aren’t they. That Goodfellow person has always looked like a furtive weasel to me, but I guess that’s how Nats like their men.
Collins has gone quite funny too, but all the parties have a politically correct line-up of a token this and a token that, with the Nats specialising in Humpty-Dumpty lookalikes as leaders. The less said about female co-leaders with high maintenance hair the better, except that’s unrealistic to expect them to have the time to write a decent speech, even if they knew how to. I always fancied Eugenie Sage because she looks a rather nice authentic Green sort of lady, with a very green name, and normal – if that’s okay now.
Not much to see here, maybe a National Greens alliance come next election!!!
Stranger things have happened before!
It will be another ‘Covid’ re selection, milked to the nines.
Looking forward to all these “NZer’s” that somehow were given citizenship as babies but spent zero time in NZ come back to NZ to potentially victimise us.
Man, 43, who went to Australia as baby will be deported to New Zealand
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/man-43-who-went-to-australia-as-baby-will-be-deported-to-new-zealand/6O36W4KKID2CW55KMN6ZKWY3FU/
Not the only one making news for this….
Colour drained from real estate agent’s face as he realised he’d been defrauded of $120k in ‘sim hijacking’ scam
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/121302846/colour-drained-from-real-estate-agents-face-as-he-realised-hed-been-defrauded-of-120k-in-sim-hijacking-scam
Not to mention the terror mom and the kids getting as big a welcome from NZ government, as is the constant stream of Covid infected boats coming to NZ.
Is the goal for NZ to be our own little prison island with the amount of dysfunctional people with NZ citizenship? The billionaires can afford their own security – what about everyone else as the police spend their times policing the avalanche of pronoun hate criminals?
What is more virtuous than allowing the world’s criminals and dysfunctional, foreign baristas and chefs, as well as billionaires to live in NZ while the local kids are treated like cattle in emergency hotels?
2021 Virtue signalling on steroids – where a humans rights lawyer gets political points for virtue signalling by defending war criminals or just plain criminals. Campaigning for victims in society is so 20th century! It’s so much more virtuous defending the rights of criminals!
Keep sacrificing the future until there is none left -in order to prop up present living arrangements just a little bit longer: that what ALL politicians advocate. Therefore, they are ALL criminals and clowns.
National are in the lead as criminals.
And the Greeds are in the lead as clowns.
What a pessimistic lot you all are.