I once suggested to a senior National MP that everyone should have to pass a comprehension test before they voted.
He replied that might lose us too many of our supporters.
I was joking, and I hope he was too, but do most, or even many, Green voters understand what they’re voting for?
The party is more red than green, almost always promoting an extreme socialist economic and social agenda far more strongly than an environmental one.
When it does focus on the environment it’s through the damaging left lens of science only when it suits; putting the planet before people and doing less and taxing more.
Its MPs act like activists who won’t, or can’t, make the transition from activism outside parliament to working constructively inside it.
They are wedded to identity politics, grouping people by immutable characteristics, judging by, and prejudiced to and against, groups; and focusing on what divides us rather than our common humanity.
They preach kindness and collaboration but apply it only to those groups, and people within the groups, which fit their world view.
On top of all that, the way they have handled scandals, raise big questions about leadership capability.
Mike Hosking points out:
The party is more red than green, almost always promoting an extreme socialist economic and social agenda far more strongly than an environmental one.
When it does focus on the environment it’s through the damaging left lens of science only when it suits; putting the planet before people and doing less and taxing more.
Its MPs act like activists who won’t, or can’t, make the transition from activism outside parliament to working constructively inside it.
They are wedded to identity politics, grouping people by immutable characteristics, judging by, and prejudiced to and against, groups; and focusing on what divides us rather than our common humanity.
They preach kindness and collaboration but apply it only to those groups, and people within the groups, which fit their world view.
On top of all that, the way they have handled scandals, raise big questions about leadership capability.
Mike Hosking points out:
Here is the most important part of this – Chloe Swarbrick has aspirations.
She openly states she can take the party and overtake Labour as a majority player on the left.
But how can she even begin to do that when she can’t even run the place with the size it is?
How do you appeal to 28, 29, or 30% of New Zealanders when at 12 or 13% you look a shambles?
They’re a dysfunctional, indecisive, dithering shambles.
If all they aspire to be is a minor noise maker, yapping away on the sidelines of an MMP system that allows increasingly fringe operators a seat or two, then this would be just another amateurish mess.
But when you see yourself in the mainstream you’ve got to act like you belong there.
Small clue – this isn’t it. . .
Larger parties have shown only too well in past elections that if they can’t run themselves voters won’t trust them to run the country.
What will it take for Green voters to come to the same conclusion or will they continue to look past the disfunction and scandals and let the party continue to defy polling gravity?
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
I think many people don't know what to do with their propagandised environmental guilt and park it into a Green party vote every 3 years. Guilt assuaged!
MC
Some very pertinent comments here, but why stop at the Greens. Every adverse trait attributed to the Greens applies in equal measure to the Maori Party without the concession that they might occasionally preach kindness and collaboration. And of course TPM has intention of working constructively in Parliament. If they were intellectually rigorous they would boycott the place as Sinn Fein has consistently done in the United Kingdom. And that might just suit everyone.
The Greens gain support when Labour does poorly, and lose it when Labour does well. The reason is there are a bunch of mad hatters who refuse to cross the political divide and shift to the right. Presumably, they have been fooled into thinking the left cares for people and the right doesn't.
It is absurd that there is no test for voters. Like many othrs i only took a reasonable interst in politics after I retiredand had some caoacity to spare.. Often did not vote. It is absurd that the vote of the most intelligent and informed ranks no better than that of some effectively illiterate 85 IQ brainwashed.
*dysfunction
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