Green Parties

[Bizud]

I wish Canada's Greens were like the New Zealand Greens:

 

http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3422867a14095,00.html

By Greg Meylan.

 

They have been called petulant spoiled children, godless doomsayers, guileless communists and the greatest threat to New Zealand's economy.

 

They are the Greens, an odd mixture of humanists, Marxists and reformers held together by an emulsion of environmentalism and they give many of their parliamentary colleagues the absolute collywobbles.

 

Immediately after the election, United Future leader Peter Dunne said he would refuse to support a government that had a single Green cabinet minister in it. Retired Act MP Richard Prebble believes they represent old communism. During the election campaign, a sect of fundamentalist Christians spent half a million dollars attacking them, and small business leaders fear their transport and energy policies, albeit a little bit less with every rise in oil prices.

 

They are seen as a party of pie-in-the-sky idealists, but the stereotype of their typical voter as a handknitted jersey and sandal-wearing ning-nong is at odds with the truth.

 

Their supporters do include rural hippies, but the typical Green party voter is a neatly dressed student or a well educated, salaried, upper-middle-class urban Pakeha the sort of person who reads foreign newspapers online, has an engineer in the family and likes tramping and kauri trees.

 

In Wellington Central, which the Greens boast is the best-educated electorate in the country, the party won more than 15% of the party vote, three times its national showing.

 

Wellington Central voter Lissa Mitchell, who works in the cultural sector, says she voted Green because she was concerned about the environment.

 

"But also to have that different aspect in government as opposed to things always being about business and being profit-oriented, to have some other considerations as to why you would make a decision."

 

But according to Dunne, Green party voters are ruled over by MPs who are childish.

 

"They claim their way is the only right way and everyone must follow their lead, an attitude also interestingly found in petulant children," Dunne said when the Greens moved a motion to stop the Black Cap cricketers touring Zimbabwe in protest at human rights abuses.

 

Dunne has also described them as unthinking fanatical zealots, utterly irrelevant and on a several occasions as spoiled children.

 

Privately, Green MPs cannot understand what gets so far under Dunne's supposedly mild-mannered skin.

 

Dunne, who last week lost five of his eight MPs and saw his party vote fall below the 5% mark of MMP credibility, declined to answer the question.

 

Prebble believes Dunne's anti-Green sentiment is driven by the need to create a straw man for his own political existence.

 

"Peter Dunne is trying to justify the existence of his party by incanting some sort of boogie man that he has to fight against," Prebble says.

 

"The problem he has is he cannot give any examples of where he has done so, apart from stopping marijuana being legalised, but the Labour party was never going to legalise it anyway."

 

However, when Prebble looks under the green bed, he finds red eyes staring back at him. "I think the Greens are very dangerous.

 

"The Greens in New Zealand are socialists, people like Keith Locke and Sue Bradford are former communists who joined the party, while Metiria Turei is fundamentally an anarchist. The Green party are scary because many of their policies are very extreme," Prebble says.

 

Nonsense, says party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons.

 

"I think most of our policies are common sense and if Peter Dunne hadn't already co-opted common sense as a slogan we might have used it for ourselves."

 

As for the communist label, Green MP Nandor Tanczos (who is hoping to make it back into parliament on special votes) says his father fought the communists during the 1956 Hungary uprising.

 

He says that having lived with communism he is under no illusions about the merits of its political system.

 

Departing United Future MP Marc Alexander says he likes some of the Greens individually and Tanczos is a "very sweet guy" whom he "would not have too much trouble having as a neighbour".

 

"Not everything the Greens do is wrong, but they are the only party in parliament that has diametrically opposed views within itself. They exude a sense of quirkiness the other parties cannot get a handle on. Each member seems to have their own personal agenda, from chicken farming, to getting rid of prisons, to human rights in China. They just sometimes seem to be a bundle of contradictions."

 

Alexander indicates there are also discrepancies between United Future's policies and the views of some of its members. He has mixed emotions about leaving the United Future parliamentary party, having often found it difficult being the only committed atheist in a party whose members earnestly discussed after caucus meetings what heaven would be like. "They were also obsessed with homosexuality. I have never listened to people talk so much about homosexuality," he says.

 

Green co-leader Rod Donald believed the anti-Green opprobrium stemmed from political parties being unable to understand the new paradigm the Greens represent.

 

Certainly the Greens are the only party in parliament that talk about the mathematical impossibility of endlessly compounding economic growth in a finite world. "If you have a lily pad in a pond that doubles in size every day, day by day blocking out the light for the rest of the life in the pond, and it takes 39 days to grow over one half of the pond how much longer does it take to cover the entire pond?" Donald asks.

 

The answer, of course, is one more day.

 

In other words, the last half of the oil we are about to start burning will disappear a lot quicker than the first half.

 

And the first half of the world's oil reserves have lasted about 150 years, Donald says.

 

Fitzsimons is more prosaic.

 

"There are a few vocal people attacking the Greens who have a vested interest in not making the country sustainable," she says. "I do not think we are extreme but it would be fair to say that we are radical in the true meaning of looking at the root causes of the problems, and that is no bad thing."

[ecnarf]

At my parties, I like to serve organic popcorn.

 

But yeah, I'm a green. I even tried to volunteer with them at one time, but those guys are so unorganized I couldn't even get around to volunteering. Maybe the next election.

[TheKwas]

I'm seriously thinking about getting involved with provinical green politics.

 

But, I'm also really lazy.

[Bizud]

You live in Saskatchwan, your Green Party is legit. Do it.

[TheKwas]

Maybe closer to election time I'll do stuff, right now I'm not even sure if the party does anything in the slightest.

[ecnarf]

Oh, they certainly do things.

 

And since an election is coming within the first months of next year, they'll be gearing up for election time very soon, if they haven't already (at least, on a federal level)

[Moonlight_Graham]

lol "the greens are obsessed with homosexuality". lmao.

[TheKwas]

Yeah, I don't really support the federal greens all that much. I'd support them over the liberals or the Conservatives, but the NDP are an all-round better party on the federal level.

 

Who I'm talking about are The Green Party of Saskatchewan which is alot more (for lack of better terms) "Grassrootish" and "Green" than the federal Greens. They actually outflank the Provinical NDP to the left (they claim they were born due to the right shift the provinical NDP have taken since retaking power).

 

They don't have a single seat in parlament.

[BritSavant]

A cut and paste job, 'Boon?

[Russell]

The Greens would do a lot better if more people cared. Canada is now one of the world's biggest polluters, so it should be no surprise that few Canadians care about the Green parties here.

 

Maybe one day...

[crazycanuck]

So, the whole article went on about what the Green Party isn't, but not much about what they actually do stand for.

 

But they seemingly have the votes of the yuppies.

[pandabears]

well everyone has good intensions...i respect them for what they 'wish they were doing'

what they are doing....

[Independence/Indifference]

I'm seriously thinking about getting involved with provinical green politics.

 

But, I'm also really lazy.

then youd fit right in with every single green party member ive ever met

[WalrusMeat]

My friend was playing at a Green Party Bennifit, so I went, and got a pin. It's now stuck in my sterio's speaker guard. It won't come out.

It's a shame I didn't pay more attention at that Bennifit, I'm very strong about my political point of veiws. But the food they were surving was too damn good. And Pat wouldn't stop feeding me inbetween his sets.

 

(bloody typos)

Edited December 2, 2005 by NinjaStyle

[supercanuk]

I

Edited December 2, 2005 by supercanuk

[josiegross]

could you imagine how lovely it would be if WE were the government? i don't necessarily mean you and i specifically. but people LIKE us. people who give a shit about what 's going on. people who take seriously the effect the government has on every aspect of our daily lives and the lives of those around us.

[supercanuk]

could you imagine how lovely it would be if WE were the government? i don't necessarily mean you and i specifically. but people LIKE us. people who give a shit about what 's going on. people who take seriously the effect the government has on every aspect of our daily lives and the lives of those around us.

Any such suggestion in the "real" world about said hope of having people who actual care in the government would be viewed as idealistic and be disavowed as some type of utopian existence. The sad part is, accepting that notion (which just about everyone has) does/is leading into a culture of apathy and complacency where real effective change will never occur and elite interests will continue to dominate. Breaking through that apathy and complacency is the task for those who want revolutionary changes to a system that just doesn

[ecnarf]

could you imagine how lovely it would be if WE were the government? i don't necessarily mean you and i specifically. but people LIKE us. people who give a shit about what 's going on. people who take seriously the effect the government has on every aspect of our daily lives and the lives of those around us.

What if we all had magical powers and could read people's minds and dissapear when we wanted to and we could eat an infinite number of cookies without gaining weight?

 

Man, that'd be so awesome.

 

But really, to be a big-league politician, you have to be a sociopath. There's no other way.

[Independence/Indifference]

could you imagine how lovely it would be if WE were the government? i don't necessarily mean you and i specifically. but people LIKE us. people who give a shit about what 's going on. people who take seriously the effect the government has on every aspect of our daily lives and the lives of those around us.

What if we all had magical powers and could read people's minds and dissapear when we wanted to and we could eat an infinite number of cookies without gaining weight?

 

Man, that'd be so awesome.

 

But really, to be a big-league politician, you have to be a sociopath. There's no other way.

L

O

L

 

[rebellious_L]

I agree that something needs to be done about the environment, but in the end all the greens would manage to do is cause the unemployment rate to double while our cities crumbled into ruin around us. Like someone on this forum said, they are so unorganized they couldn't even volunteer. How are these guys supposed to run a government?

[ecnarf]

I agree that something needs to be done about the environment, but in the end all the greens would manage to do is cause the unemployment rate to double while our cities crumbled into ruin around us. Like someone on this forum said, they are so unorganized they couldn't even volunteer. How are these guys supposed to run a government?

What I said was that they lacked the infrastructure for me to come in and volunteer.

 

Besides that, we're all supposed to be intelligent enough to know that Jim Harris isn't about to become the freaking prime minister. It's not about getting the Greens into the PMO, it's about getting the Greens representation in parliament, and representing the considerable percent of the population that supports Green policies.

[Bizud]

Left-leaning voters concerned about the environment should vote NDP, as most environmental lobby groups gave them slightly higher marks than the Greens.

[Monochrome Rainbow]

I

Edited December 12, 2005 by Monochrome Rainbow