COMMENT
I guess the important thing we need to know now, or by October anyway, is how forgiving Green Party supporters are.
Co-leader James Shaw - a politician I rate, by the way - seems to have lost his way and made a bizarre decision that he's now paying for.
But will he still be paying for it by the time we head to the polls?
He'll be hoping voters have short memories, but this mistake is huge, and it's not just the mistake, it's the lack of judgment attached to it, and crucially, the hypocrisy of it.
How did they get something so big, so wrong? An amount of $11.7 million is not to be sniffed at.
Throwing this money in the complete opposite direction to where traditionally a Green Party would throw it, has burned people and he knows it. He's finally fronted up and apologised. He's apologised for the error of judgment, he's apologised to Green party members, principals, teachers, unions -pretty much everyone.
I think he's even apologetic for the backlash to the school itself, which has faced a battering of bad press since this story broke. The backlash has been particularly fierce from other schools in the region.
An open letter to Education Minister Chris Hipkins from the Taranaki Principals' Association, asked for a full retraction of any fund or loan offer. The association said principals were united in their opposition to the funding, they didn't like how taxpayer funding had been "directed to individuals who will privately own the expanded asset and profit from the venture".
Fair enough.
Shaw said he'd canvassed his colleagues about withdrawing the funding, but the agreement had been made in good faith and so the decision had to be honoured.
Anyone who wasn't voting Green anyway won't be concerned about any of this of course, but it's their own base and those swing voters the Greens will be worried about. Because based on current polling, the Greens don't have much wriggle room.
They are just on the cusp of the 5 per cent threshold, they can't afford to lose any votes, they can't afford to turn off swing voters.
And if you take into account the fact that history shows the party tends to over-poll and under deliver on election day, then they have every right to be genuinely concerned. And Shaw has acknowledged the risk that this error of judgment may well cost them.
Which leads us back to Labour. If they get enough votes come election day to govern alone, that's all well and good, but they'll still want the Greens to perform, because either way they'll want to sew up a deal and have them on board.
More crucially, if Labour don't get enough votes to govern alone, their only mechanism for survival is the Greens (given we can, probably at this point, write off NZ First).
So a lot rides on the Greens doing well on election night, which is why Shaw will be praying their supporters have short memories.
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