New Zealand Green Party co-leader James Shaw knocked it out of the park with his speech to members at the party’s election campaign launch yesterday. Video below starts around 19m. Speech transcript is here.
It’s always worth listening to the Greens in their own words if you want to understand what they are doing, so I encourage people to watch or read the speech. Here are some of the important bits that jumped out at me.
More Ministers, inside Cabinet
Success in this election will be measured by how many Green Ministers the party has inside cabinet in a post-election government. This means a Labour-led government (no, the Greens won’t be considering supporting Nact into government, because a Nact government is antithetical to Green Party policy and direction).
Having Ministers inside cabinet matters. In the last two governments the Greens have been locked out of the power they needed to action progressive policies on climate transition and ending poverty via a GMI and wealth tax. They have had Ministers via their relationship with the Labour/NZ First government and then the Labour majority government, but those Ministers have been outside of cabinet. This means they are excluded from the core decision making processes the government uses, an oft ignored fact by those critical of the Greens for not doing enough.
More votes equals more Ministers which means faster and better change.
The wealth tax and ending poverty
The Greens are not toning down taxing the most wealthiest of New Zealanders in order to lift everyone out of poverty, they’re doubling down. This includes now openly criticising Labour election year policy,
The leader of the Labour Party ruling out any meaningful change to the tax system.
“With many Kiwi households struggling, now is simply not the time for a big shake-up of our tax system,” he said.
We disagree.
…
Let’s be clear: there has *never* been a better time to shake-up our tax system.
Inequality is not an inevitability.
It is a political decision – and different decisions can be made.
Ruling out tax changes that would benefit millions is essentially saying to thousands of people who cannot afford to put food on the table, that’s it.
That’s your lot.
Well, we say, the time for half measures is over.
The time for political courage is now.
End of story.
Volunteers will determine the election
Yesterday’s speech was for the members and supporters to encourage them to step up and make the election happen for the Greens. There’s a lot here about the power of volunteers, and the importance in this tight election of every door knock and billboard.
No matter what it is, no matter who you are, or where you’re from, this election is about you.
And only you have the power to make a difference.
So use it.
We will win this election not because we’ve got millions in the bank, but because we have the most powerful tool any campaign has ever had:
You.
The cross benches option
Which brings me to the final, and most exciting point. I was cheering when Shaw said this,
The Green Party has never been interested in power for its own sake. We are – and have always been – focused on what you do with it.
Which is why no party who wants to work with us after 14th October should ever take our support for granted.
Whatever hand we are dealt after this election, New Zealanders should be in no doubt that we will make use of every inch of it.
If that means more Green Ministers in Cabinet, or sitting on the cross benches and fighting on every piece of legislation, we will use our power in the most effective way we can to get the change we so desperately need.
You probably have to watch the speech to get the full force of that, and understand the process it’s taken to get here and why the Greens are choosing this election to play their final card,
I believe, with every fibre of my being, that we will only achieve the urgent change that our communities need right now, when there are more Green Ministers, sitting around the Cabinet table.
But even more than that, I know that we cannot afford another term of little steps and half-measures.
The way I see it, if political leaders are not willing to take difficult decisions on behalf of the people of the country they purport to lead, why be in politics at all?
This is a significant shift from the Greens’ long held position of working co-operatively and proactively on government formation rather using the balance of power that small parties can have within the MMP structure. For many years the Greens have courted Labour to establish and maintain a strong working relationship in government formation (remember 2016 and Andrew Little speaking at the Greens AGM as part of the Green Party’s Our Plan to Change the Government?).
Their commitment has been to maintaining that relationship because of the high value placed on consensus within the party and how this enhances democracy. It outweighs the downsides like the risk for smaller parties of being subsumed, or blamed for the larger party’s policy failures (think climate). This has by and large worked in the Greens’ favour and given them time to establish Ministerial experience and make changes within the related government departments.
The shift now to not simply considering the cross benches but actively campaigning on that option, can only be understood in the context of the true nature of the climate and ecology crises, including the absolute urgency of acting now. Not in three or six years, but now. Thus the party’s campaign slogan is “The Time is Now”. Most people are still not acting as if the climate crisis is that urgent, but this is exactly what needs to happen: acting as if we have no time to lose. Finally we have a party in parliament who is willing to lead on this not with rhetoric but action.
People can join the volunteer team (you don’t have to be a member), or donate to the Green Party.
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