Bruce Bisset: Greens need political lesson

Cracks are beginning to appear in the until-now remarkably resilient facade of the Green party, with co-leader Russel Norman venting a number of politically-unwise criticisms of other parties. Photo / NZME.

Funny how everyone has suggestions for the way the Greens should think and act and who they should partner up with, yet most do not vote for them because they don't conform with whatever model a given voter thinks they should.

In other words, people recognise that we need a strong environmental party, but aren't prepared to accept said party's own terms of what that constitutes. Or, for that matter, to join and attempt to alter the party's foci from within.

A case of wanting your cake but not being willing to eat it unless it's iced just so.

Take economist turned rabble-rouser Gareth Morgan's latest rants denigrating the Greens for "forgetting" their environmental roots and suggesting they're missing the bus for not embracing a "bluegreen" centrist approach.

He complains myriad National voters are concerned enough to want such a remake, yet dismisses the obvious: If they really were concerned, they'd be voting for the only party which puts environment to the fore.

Clearly Morgan wants it both ways but, as the epithet bluegreen in itself implies, with economy trumping environment. That's the status quo.

It's argued the Greens have "moved away" from pro-environment values by also espousing strong social and economic policies, and should stick to being "just" pro-environment. This is inherently nonsense.

No one will vote a single-issue party into Government, so the Greens have to have a full range of well-rounded policy to pretend to Government, but in adopting such they are pilloried for widening their focus, so never will be in Government unless they return to being single-issue. Catch-22.

In concert, cracks are beginning to appear in the until-now remarkably resilient facade of the party, with co-leader Russel Norman venting a number of politically-unwise criticisms of other parties, particularly Internet-Mana and Labour - the former for causing a backlash against the Left, the latter for distancing itself from the Greens, thereby doing more harm than good.

Despite that, Norman's comments ring true and are milder than such comment from any other party tends to be, any chink in the "mister nice guy" image the Greens have maintained so well is seized upon to suggest they're losing the plot.

They're not. However given the unrelenting and often-vicious drivel written about them, is it any wonder if Norman, in the aftermath of a hugely disappointing result (even if it did maintain equivalence) has finally let his guard slip a tad and lashed back.

That said, the Greens' hierarchy and its campaign apparatus need to take a good hard look at themselves.

Because regardless of the falseness of many of the claims alluded to above, they are failing to engage new voters beyond their established base - even when, as now, there appears prime opportunity.

Bottom line: They've been concentrating so hard on becoming an established Parliamentary party they have neglected to grow their grass-roots base.

In particular, they have failed to get people used to voting Green.

Unlike National or Labour - albeit usually via very-transparent aliases - the Greens have never run a full-on local body campaign. Save for intermittent efforts in the major cities, they have ignored the local government cycle.

Which has always struck me as exceedingly odd, given local government is the level at which environmental law is put into practice.

More importantly, in this context, it provides double the opportunity for those who, especially in the provinces, otherwise only get the choice of voting Green once every three years.

You build core support from the bottom up, not the top down. That's a political lesson the Greens are, ironically, well-overdue to learn.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.