Hard News: Metiria's Problem
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I'm more famliar with Kennedy Graham than David Clendon, and he's pretty clearly a blue-Green. On the other hand, Metiria Turei is self-evidently a red-Green. Making a "red" issue central to their campaign has proved riskier than perhaps she expected. She got a lot of publicity and largely set the agenda for a week, but I can understand why bluer-Greens would feel more and more pissed off about the direction things were going.
As a Green party member, I'm seriously pissed off by the way this disagreement has been made public. I suspect that the leadership decided to call the two MP's bluff, and it backfired. -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
The party is understood to be furious at how the two MPs have handled it - going outside normal parliamentary channels to tell media of their plans.
And so they fucking should. If true (and apply salt and tequila to taste) the most shocking thing is how common it is. Every three years, every single party has its share of sulking, muttering and foot-stamping trantrums from folks who aren't happy their egos didn't get put sufficiently high up the list. Most have the good sense to either suck it up, or at least throw their tiaras behind closed doors.
But Grilled Jeebus, if folks think Meteria doesn't have the political smarts to organise a piss-up in an organic craft brewery, Graham and Clendon haven't exactly displayed top-shelf nous today.
"Hey, let's threaten to quit six weeks from the election unless THAT WOMEN resigns from the leadership of the party. What could possibly go wrong?"
The rats in the ranks got hit with shovels. Hard. Find it impossible to muster any sympathy.
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Enemies of the people? That's bullshit.
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Neil, in reply to
That's bullshit
Well, it was meant to be ironic. I was taken aback that the Green Party so quickly painted these two MPs as lazy unprincipled time servers. Given Graham's reputation that was a bit surprising.
But according to RNZ these allegations against them are untrue and quite possibly deliberately untrue.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
Excellent analysis, Trevor. I feel the same. Essentially, we have a failure of political management at the top level of the party. I'm not blaming James. It will go down to how the consensus decision-making process was conducted. The party has rules that define how the process is supposed to work. I helped design them, and drafted them on my computer at home when I was convenor of the GP Standing Orders Committee long ago.
The key point I'm seeing now is how their decision can be justified in relation to our charter principle requiring appropriate decision-making. Anyone who thinks hijacking the political agenda and shifting it to the far left is appropriate is a moron. It's disrespectful to all centrists. It's driven by the sectarian mind-set that prevents the left from acting in our common interests. Partisan. Those in the GP driving this prioritisation of the need to represent beneficiaries rather than other green voters have clearly lost the plot. This election will be decided by swing-voters. They are centrists. Metiria & her supporters are in denial. If they really believe the hijack will work as a political strategy to change the government, they're also delusional.
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Sacha, in reply to
I am just so sad at our msm for making the story about Metiria as opposed to the utterly oppressive benefit regime.
That was always going to happen. Party strategic comms people and leadership should have known that.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
And the mystery box challenge is goose.
And the mystery box challenge is LIVE goose.
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Sacha, in reply to
I hope the two guys will publicise their views of the situation.
RNZ interview yesterday (4 min video).
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Sacha, in reply to
As a Green party member, I'm seriously pissed off by the way this disagreement has been made public. I suspect that the leadership decided to call the two MP's bluff, and it backfired.
James Shaw interrogated by Guyon Espiner about the internal process (12min audio).
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Sacha, in reply to
I was taken aback that the Green Party so quickly painted these two MPs as lazy unprincipled time servers.
Yes, I hope their general manager got a telling off about talking out of line too.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
James Shaw interrogated by Guyon Espiner
Espiner once again won't let people finish a sentence - in his myopic quest for one word answers - or just the answer he wants., irrespective.
He is getting past his use-by-date.
Fast becoming a Hosking-light.He would extract more by leaving silences for interviewees to fill rather than whipping himself into a frenzy on his perceived 'home stretch'.
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Is the Green Party legally committed to its Party List at this point? ie. Would it be relying on David Clendon and Kennedy Graham to be refusing to accept their election if the GP achieved enough votes for them to enter parliament? Or does it still have time to amend its list?
Meanwhile Hooton's just been on RNZ tearing into Turei alongside Mike Williams (nice to see that commentary about the Greens from some neutral Nat and Labour insiders), then suggesting that it'd be a good idea for Clendon and Graham to be in talks with TOP, and create an incentive for Grant Robertson to step aside in Wellington Central and give his support to TOP's Geoff Simmons.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I am just so sad at our msm for making the story about Metiria as opposed to the utterly oppressive benefit regime.
That was always going to happen. Party strategic comms people and leadership should have known that.
Toby Manhire on The Spinoff this morning:
The strategy around Turei confessing to having lied to Winz started promisingly, bringing a poll boost and to a large degree prompting the conversation about welfare she sought. But it became unwieldy, and tipped over into further revelations around an electoral roll breach. What seems as extraordinary as anything is that the strategy could have gone ahead without the full buy-in of caucus. There’s only 14 of them.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
then suggesting that it’d be a good idea for Clendon and Graham to be in talks with TOP, and create an incentive for Grant Robertson to step aside in Wellington Central and give his support to Geoff Simmons (TOP).
It's not going to happen, and Hooton knows that.
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izogi, in reply to
I read that last night and was surprised that Toby Manhire seems to think it's horrible for Labour on the grounds that centre-voters will think it looks bad. My impression had been the opposite.
As far as I've been able to tell, Labour's been losing support to the Green Party on one side, but also to the likes of Nat/NZF because those people are terrified of the Green Party having too much influence on Labour.
If the Green Party's having such obvious problems, wouldn't the expected movement be for people to come back to Labour from both sides instead of merely from the Greens?
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simon g, in reply to
Hooton's RNZ rant was a series of fantasies, unchallenged because Ryan is off today and Mike Williams might as well have been. I lost count at about five (TOP, Robertson, Clendon's ethnicity, reversing Richardson's cuts, Greens 5% ... maybe a unicorn in the studio too?).
I happen to know that Ardern will get 90% of the vote, can I have a long monologue on Nine to Noon?
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Metiria answering questions on the move at Wellington airport this morning.
She was impressive – and showed a degree of grace that perhaps some of the party’s activists could take a lesson from.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Hooton’s RNZ rant was a series of fantasies
That's basically every week. But yeah, he was turning it up today.
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Its all been very messy, self-initiated, and a sad way for Kennedy Graham in particular to draw his tenure and service to climate change awareness in NZ political life to a close
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Alfie, in reply to
Espiner once again won't let people finish a sentence - in his myopic quest for one word answers - or just the answer he wants., irrespective.
He is getting past his use-by-date.
Fast becoming a Hosking-light.+1
Espiner demanding a simplistic yes/no answer from Shaw while continually talking over him was just plain rude. Now RNZ is running "Shaw refuses to give answer on benefit fraud" as their top news headline this morning.
RNZ can and should be better than this.
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Neil,
What strikes me about this is how it highlights the difficulties of running a society.
If a party of like minds and of high principle can so quickly fall into bitter factional infighting what hope that national politics could ever be smooth and easy.
It's easy to identify problems, much harder in reality to fix them.
And that mix of identity vs class vs environment is a potent brew.
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william blake, in reply to
Fast becoming a Hosking-light
Like a night light but really scary.
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Angela Hart, in reply to
She was impressive – and showed a degree of grace that perhaps some of the party’s activists could take a lesson from.
Hear, hear.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Espiner demanding a simplistic yes/no answer from Shaw while continually talking over him was just plain rude.
He seems to keep missing the point by miles. Moral decisions are seldom clear black and white.
Is ‘lying to a public official’ generally a good thing? Probably not – IF you live in a fair and honest society. (To make the point in a highly exaggerated, but hopefully clear way, in Nazi Germany, if the public official is asking where your Jewish neighbours are, it’s likely we’d call lying heroic.)
We need to ask: do we live in a fair and honest society, where public officials are there to help? And: is it possible that not reporting honestly to WINZ is wrong, but also on at least some occasions the lesser of two evils (the larger and more looming evil being unable to pay the rent, and thus not having a home?)
Can public debate right now even begin to engage with this level of moral complexity? When the big question is simply ‘do you condone benefit fraud?’ and/or the assumption is ‘the Greens condone benefit fraud’ we’re shouting past each other, and no one is listening. -
andin, in reply to
When the big question is simply ‘do you condone benefit fraud?’
I wonder if there was any moral anguishing by the axeman as he stepped up to chop someones hand off for stealing bread to feed a family. Yes, that has happened in our not so glorious past as a species. This is a sort of Marie Antionette moment for a lot of people it seems. Cant see past their own moral uprightness.
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