Firstly, my commiserations to Labourites. That’s a hard result for Labour. Not so devastating for the left generally, well done to both Te Pāti Māori and the Greens on increasing the left vote.
I’ve been seeing a few comments on twitter from across the political spectrum, people wondering why the Greens are so celebratory. Seems a good time to talk about green political kaupapa and how change happens.
First the obvious stuff.
The numbers
The Greens were nearly out of parliament in 2017 following the brutal backlash to then Green Party co-leader Meteria Turei’s groundbreaking welfare speech at the beginning of the election campaign. Everything is upwards from that point, both the numbers and the lessons learned.
This year the Greens will have the most MPs in parliament they have ever had. It’s currently looking like 14, up from 10, but they may pick up an extra seat on the Specials. That’s a nearly 50% increase.
It’s a renewal. With MPs retiring this year, six of the fourteen MPs will be new. This gives a solid core of eight experienced MPs to bring the new ones in. For those keeping an eye on the medium and long term this is gold.
Notable is that when the Green Party list was selected this year, the new candidates in top fifteen were heavily environmentally focussed, redressing the imbalance towards social justice of recent years. Think social justice more integrated than devalued.
Fourteen Green MPs is historic. The Greens now hold 30% of the Labour/Green bloc MPs. Along with the strong wins by Te Pāti Māori, the left should now be looking at moving past the old FPP/MMP position of major party with support parties, and instead how to form three very strong parties on the left (assuming it is possible for Labour to make that change).
Winning the electorates and the party vote
Also historic for the Greens is the winning of three electorate seats. Chloe Swarbrick retains Auckland Central, Tamatha Paul takes Wellington Central, and Julie Anne Genter takes Rongotai. The Greens have previously only ever won two electorate seats, Jeanette Fitzsimons in Coromandal in 1999 and Swarbrick in Auckland Central in 2020.
I haven’t had a good look at the party vote in electorates yet, but we can see something important happening in Labour stronghold Mt Albert. The very close result with Labour’s Helen White leading over National’s Melissa Lee by only 96 votes, is in part to do with the strong performance by the Greens’ Ricardo Menendez March.
TVNZ’s coverage of this last night was all a bit FPP, with a nod to vote splitting, and John Campbell shouting from the side ‘but look at the Greens!’ Menendez got the Greens 23% of the party vote in Mt Albert.
Likewise the Greens’ court jester candidate in Dunedin, Francisco Hernandez’s team ran a strong campaign, with the Greens getting 26% of the party vote there.
The Greens have long campaigned in electorates they cannot win because it raises their party vote. It speaks to how we could be viewing MMP differently, not as a contest of two sides, but as a confluence of many dynamics.
Being in Opposition
Opposition isn’t simply where parties get consigned when they lose an election, it’s a critical aspect of our democracy. Opposition holds government to account.
The Greens campaigned on more MPs and Ministers in a Labour-led government, but these numbers work in Opposition too. The Greens are good at Opposition and I for one am pleased to see them freed up to go hard on both climate/ecology and wealth/welfare. That’s hard against Nact policy, but it’s also about pulling Labour leftwards and greenwards.
All of which is to say that these results are the Greens coming into their own and building their party for the long haul. It’s a sign of how well their work on both climate/environment and poverty/welfare is paying off as well as the excellent ground game in those electorates.
The less obvious stuff
The stories we tell matter. My initial sense about this election is that people did want change, but it wasn’t only a swing to the right, there has also been a distinct swing to the left with the Green and TPM vote. The story we tell about this right now matters. We need to be honest about the truth about a right wing government, but we also need to look at the good changes happening on the left.
This need for change can be understood in traditional left/right politics, but there is more to it than that: the parties willing to push back against neoliberalism, and prioritise people and environment. That transcends trad left, and the left needs to recognise this and learn how to make it work for the broader progressive position. It’s not hard to see how Māori have their own politics independent of the left, and the Greens do too. This works for particularly younger generations who aren’t wedded to the traditional left/right spectrum.
The other critical aspect here are the visions being presented. Post-neoliberal policies matter, but so do strong voices saying TINA can be retired and here is what we can do instead. Te Pāti Māori and the Greens both did that in distinct ways this election.
Which leads to how change happens. The key here is that the Greens don’t want power for power’s sake. They want change. And that change is based in a set of specific values and principles that don’t waver.
The celebratory nature of the Greens’ response is partly to do with results, but it’s also a basic position in the world where relationship is seen as primary. People want to feel good, and presenting politics in ways that make us feel good is not only good strategy it’s imperative in the coming years of the climate/ecology crises.
Where to now?
The Greens can be criticised for being too conciliatory, and it’s been good to see them stand up with much stronger critique this year. But the default to celebration and joy here is natural, because when it comes down to it, this is what most people want. The Greens have built that social tech into their politics right from the start and we are seeing this now.
In contrast, mainstream politics is brutal and relentlessly negative. For three elections now the Greens have presented the most left wing (and costed) policies of any party in parliament, and yet there are those on the left who still consistently slag them off, in a ‘better dead than green’ kind of way. There’s an obvious challenge for the Greens to grow their base, but there’s a bigger challenge for the left in how to create a politics that most people want that is based in societal, community, and environmental wellbeing.
Of all the things the left could do right now, this is what I consider the most important: change how politics is done. Prioritise relationship over competition, and power sharing over power mongering. No more ‘river of filth’ rhetoric, instead learning how we can work across difference. We cannot force people to become left, we have to engage in relationship.
Labour have made shifts on this, first in 2017 with Little choosing to work proactively with the Greens to change the government, then with Ardern bringing the language and practice of kindness. Māori already have this built in culturally, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. The broader left struggles to recognise the importance and it’s going to take a change in world view to be able to tell a different story that more of New Zealand wants. Three years in Opposition is the perfect time to work on that.
Front page photo by Michael Craig via Isaac Davidson
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