KEY POINTS:
I wouldn't go so far as to call it an epiphany, but it certainly represents a sudden and significant change of heart. It happened on Tuesday when I decided that in this week's column I would have a bit of fun at the Greens' expense in the wake
of their annual meeting.
But since the spartan media coverage given to that conference was insufficient to provide 800-odd words, I went to the Greens' website to see what more I could find.
Having downloaded the full addresses of both co-leaders, Jeanette Fitzsimons and Russel Norman - which, incidentally, between them run to more than 9000 words - I sat down in a comfortable chair to plough through them.
And within a few minutes these documents had me as absorbed as would a Tom Clancy bestseller.
In particular, Dr Norman's dissertation on the state of our water supplies and Ms Fitzsimons' exposition on world and local food production, processing and sale brought me to an inescapable, albeit somewhat uncomfortable, conclusion: that the Greens do have a vital part to play in Parliament, and that part is to be its political, economic, social and environmental conscience.
If you're as astonished as I was at this revelation, and have noted that "moral" is missing from the list, then pay a visit to greens.org.nz, go to the homepage, take a look at the two items on the right under "recent speeches" and decide for yourself.
Since my childhood and youth spent at the bottom of the South Island, rivers and lakes have been important and much-loved features of my environment and 35 years in the wilderness of metropolitan Auckland did nothing to dim their appeal.
Nowadays, I get a glimpse of Lake Rotorua every time I glance out the windows in our dining room and have dozens of other lakes and their inflowing streams close at hand. Most of them suffer the deleterious effects of intensive agriculture and its runoff, yet others are relatively unsullied.
Lake Okataina, for instance, on a fine day is as near to an environmental paradise as you'll find anywhere on Earth and every time I go there I find myself praising God yet again for the wonder and beauty of his creation.
Yet the state of our waterways has been of only passing interest to me since I still get pure water at the turn of a tap and was under the impression that much was being done to reduce pollution inflows to our lakes and rivers and to rectify the damage already done.
Not so, according to Dr Norman's well-researched speech to his party. "Our rivers are quite literally so full of crap that they are dangerous to human health," he says giving examples, and "our beaches are dangerous for swimming because of the faecal bacteria flushed out of our rivers and into the sea".
Well, I should have known better, anyway, since I am well aware of the smoke and mirrors antics of governments, whose leaders make a big fuss, call lots of meetings, make lots of promises and spend millions on advertising while bugger all gets done.
Dr Norman paints a sinister but believable picture of a Government held to ransom by industry and business with a vested interest in the use of water, and numbers among them Landcare, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Department of Conservation.
Ms Fitzsimons strikes a similar note in the substantial section of her address devoted to food supplies.
"There is enough food produced in the world to feed the population," she says. "The problem is it doesn't get to those who need it."
That's something I've known for years, ever since I read about mountains of subsidised butter and grain and lakes of wine being stored throughout Europe and the United States while millions starved in other parts of the world.
Ms Fitzsimons, however, giving plenty of evidence, puts it in the context of today: "We have allowed food to be transformed from something that we eat to something that we trade; an international commodity on a speculative market.
"Increasingly a few large companies own our food chain and dictate not just what we eat and how much it costs, but how much we eat and when."
Sure, the Greens are idealists and a lot of them are eccentrics. But in a nation desperately short of idealism and eccentricity that's no bad thing.
It doesn't matter a damn which major party they attach themselves to because the major players are, as Dr Norman says, as much alike as Coke and Pepsi, and whichever one wins the most seats will need the sort of passionate, principled input only the Greens can provide. Just so long as there aren't too many of them.
