With six months to go this year’s election is heating up with potential coalition parties already claiming what they will and won’t accept. Of course, those claims might all be thrown out the minute a chance to be in power presents itself for real.
Yesterday, the Greens held its “State of the Planet” address. And Shaw ruled out, in so many words, working with Luxon (or any successor) and labelled a potential National/ACT coalition “the most reactionary, race-baiting, right-wing government”.
“Just like Labour will need our support, the only way that Christopher Luxon – or whoever follows him – will become the prime minister is with the support of David Seymour and ACT Party.
“It would be an alliance addicted to fossil fuels […]”
Today, [Shaw] confirmed he would continue advocating for a government that would prioritise climate action.
New Zealand Herald
National hit back. Well, Chris Bishop did:
“The National Party’s not going to be lectured to by James Shaw and the Greens who have tethered themselves to a government that has been absolutely incompetent on almost everything they have tried to do in the past few years, including climate change.
“The Greens have laid out their stall, they want to be part of a Labour-Green government … it’s ultimately over to the Greens who they choose to work with, they have no interest in working with [National] and with comments like that, we have no interest in working with them.”
New Zealand Herald
Meanwhile Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was interviewed on TVNZ’s Q+A, saying:
“There is no way that we would be able to be in a relationship with anyone that’s opposed to any of the policies that pretty much want to undo any policy that advances Maori.
“I think there would need to be a lot of discussion on what we have in common … it would be about values and commitment to a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa and we’ve always said that.”
But she also says:
“We haven’t made a choice of who we would go with and deliberately because we may not go into relationships like have been done in the past.
“I think it’s really important that we don’t try and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go with this one or that one’, that we actually hold [true] to our values and our kaupapa and that we leverage our power or influence as we think is best and it may be in a relationship, it doesn’t mean that we have [two] ministers.
New Zealand Herald
Meanwhile, Rawiri Waititi told 1News he was “looking forward” to talks with Labour and the Greens with a view to working together.
Discuss it on The BFD.
