OPINION:
As strange as it sounds, climate change may be responsible for the Greens' current leadership crisis.
To understand why, we have to go back to the founding of the party, and the competing tensions that have always been a part of its DNA.
The Greens' heritage is to the "new left" protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s – anti-war, anti-apartheid, Māori rights, the women's and gay liberation movements as well as the environmental movement.
These were movements built on the decentralisation and democratisation of power, and distrustful of those who wanted to rule over everyone else.
And, it's worth noting, these are movements that have been very successful at improving society, broadening opportunity and deepening social cohesion.
But, as former MP Gareth Hughes put it this week, this heritage makes the Greens "a party uncomfortable and distrustful of leadership and power".
Because by even forming the Values Party (the forerunner to the Greens) its members were giving up some of what defined the social movements they were a part of.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.By forming a party to contest elections, they were accepting the limits of protest movements and accepting that lasting change often required political and legislative power.
That acceptance was the basis of everything the Greens have achieved since.
By being in Parliament, the Greens have given a legislative voice to issues that would otherwise be ignored.
Even from Opposition, they were able to shape the agenda and then change public opinion until the major parties had to follow through.
It shouldn't be forgotten, for example, that the food in schools' programme, one of this Government's most successful and transformational policies, was an idea once championed by Metiria Turei.
But there has always been a natural tension between the need to win power to get things done, and the bottom-up, social movement instincts of the party's history.
The co-leader model, while often mocked by journalists, actually contained a way for the Greens to manage this tension as they grew and got closer to power.
It allowed the party to form a compromise between its competing instincts. A compromise that was perhaps best embodied by the Shaw/Davidson co-leadership.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.The problem is, ironically, that the issue of climate change rips that compromise apart.
Because in the face of the existential threat of climate change, protest is not enough.
Climate change requires a legislative response, and it requires it urgently – perhaps more urgently than our parliamentary system allows for, but that's the only system that can do it.
Think of the School Strike protests – the kids there got it. They marched on Parliament to demand climate action because they knew successful climate action can only come from Parliament.
You can't cut emissions from the protest ground – you have to do it from inside Government.
Huge numbers of the 200,000 plus people who voted for the Greens know that too – it's why the Greens' reliable vote share has risen sustainably as the climate issue has become more important to voters.
But delivering on that promise to voters requires all the messiness and compromise of a parliamentary democracy – on an issue where the Green membership knows we have no time to waste and are increasingly unwilling to tolerate compromise.
It's worth acknowledging just what Shaw and other Green ministers have been able to achieve – the Zero Carbon Act, the Climate Change Commission, billions of dollars for climate funding, reform of the Emissions Trading Scheme, and a clean car discount that has dramatically increased the uptake of EVs.
Hard as it may be for his critics to swallow, much of that would not have been able to happen without Shaw. No one else in that caucus could have delivered the Zero Carbon Act.
But in doing all this, Shaw has stretched his bond with some of his members past the breaking point.
For the Greens to keep moving forward, those bonds need to be repaired.
The process kicked off at the AGM is a chance for the Greens to renew the compromise that has underpinned the party at its most successful. Shaw has committed to doing that in a heartfelt Facebook post this week.
But it takes two to compromise, and now Shaw will have to see whether the other side of his party is willing to accept it.
Hayden Munro was the campaign manager for Labour's successful 2020 election win. He now works in corporate PR for Wellington-based firm Capital Communications and Government Relations.
