A good speech

Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, December 11th, 2014 - 17 comments
Categories: greens, Parliament - Tags:

A good speech from Green MP James Shaw in Parliament’s closing session yesterday.

17 comments on “A good speech ”

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  1. Chooky 1
    11 December 2014 at 9:39 am

    Wow what a speech!….brilliant!

    GO GREEN!

  2. Skinny 2
    11 December 2014 at 10:12 am

    I’ve been impressed with James Shaw in the limited time he has become a Green MP. Good to see another male outside of fanta pants Norman speaking. Keep it up very refreshing.

  3. batweka 3
    11 December 2014 at 11:33 am

    Very good.

    Nice Yes Minister-style parody of our involvement in the Middle East, and fantastic piss take of Key.

    More importantly, the GP restating their basic position of non-violence, not just physically, but across the board, and a clear statement of peacemaking for parliament itself.

  4. Sans Cle 4
    11 December 2014 at 12:21 pm

    Great speech, and nicely witty.
    Nice to hear conciliatory words, in the ‘love and forgive thine enemy’ rhetoric. Hard to do so in politics, when you fundamentally disagree with your opponent.

  5. MrSmith 5
    11 December 2014 at 3:10 pm

    Great speech, Yes the Greens have some talent coming through, go the Greens.

  6. Pete George 6
    11 December 2014 at 6:17 pm

    I think this was the best of the adjournment speeches. A serious message in it:

    I said in my maiden speech only 7 weeks ago that we must transcend and transform our petty politics and our partisanship. I said that to get unstuck we will all need to let go of some things and to be more committed to finding the answers than to being right or to others being wrong.

    The intervening weeks have not disillusioned me of that belief; they have reinforced it. To a new observer it may seem that we are stuck in a never-ending downward spiral of attack and defend that serves only to revolt the public at large and to turn them off participating in the political process or even bothering to vote.

    One of the four principles of the Green Party charter is that of non-violence.

    This is not simply an absence of physical violence; it is the method of social change given to us by Mahatma Gandhi , who preached ahimsa , the lack of desire to harm or to kill, and by Martin Luther King , who drew from the Christian tradition. It is through these principles and practices that we can transcend and transform the stuck situation we seem to find ourselves in.

    Let us take the summer recess to consider ways we might work together to fix this, to bring integrity and functionality to our political process, and to restore New Zealanders’ faith in who we are and the work we do here.

    There’s an unhealthy and unhelpful amount of ” petty politics and our partisanship” – perhaps with some reflection over the summer ways might be found of fixing this in social media and the blogosphere as well as in Parliament.

    Wouldn’t it be worth finding ways to transcend and transform the stuck situation we seem to find ourselves in?

    • batweka 6.1
      11 December 2014 at 6:22 pm

      Pretty hard to make any headway on that with disingenous troles like you Pete. In other words, look to your own behaviour and I think you will see a big improvement in the blogosphere.

  7. Clemgeopin 7
    11 December 2014 at 8:54 pm

    Excellent impressive speech with lots of wit and wisdom.

  8. Brian 8
    12 December 2014 at 12:11 am

    A young man’s passions and ideals eloquently stated. I hope he retains both as time progresses and he brings it all to pass.

    Merry Christmas all at the Standard!
    🙂

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