I have always said that the Greens are people who live in an ideological world, but I have recently changed my view. Their world is not entirely ideological. It is, in fact, quite possible. They live in a world where there are cycle lanes everywhere, pop-up walkways, few cars (and those that exist are electric), lots of trains, welfare is rampant and those on it live a decent and lavish life.
I was travelling on the Kapiti Expressway recently with a Greenie friend who waxed lyrical about the fact that the new motorway has a cycle lane, blissfully ignoring the fact that the cycleway was completely empty and added millions of dollars onto the cost of the road. Greens don’t worry about trivial things like the responsible use of taxpayer funds. In their utopian world, all these things can be achieved… we just have to tax people more.
How else can a party that claims to want to see less inequality in the country want to give discounts on cars that cost in the region of $70,000 when the people they claim to care about will be lucky if they can afford a rust-ridden, 20-year-old smoky old Toyota?
The truth is that those people do not vote Green. Their voters come from the leafy suburbs of Auckland or the trendy parts of Wellington; wealthy urban dwellers whose wealth makes them feel guilty and whose world has to be the way they want it, whether it will bankrupt the country or not. They can always blame climate change if anyone gets antsy about the cost of things. I mean, a perfect world will never come cheap, will it?
Thus James Shaw has found himself in very hot water this week, not only with taxpayers, but with factions of his own party, and his political career hangs by a thread. But the Green Party has only itself to blame, because its various factions are likely to disagree with each other as their different priorities take hold. If you are not sure what I mean, then just think about the fact that, if Shaw is forced to resign, the next male co-leader of the party will be either Teanau Tuiono or Ricardo Menendez-March. The thought of either of them in government roles should fill a reasonably thinking person with terror, but here we are.
Shaw knows many of his voters really want the Green school. The wealthy urban elites can probably think of nothing better than composting toilets and crystals for their kids. Shaw knows it would have won votes for the party, but the activist wing of the party wants nothing to do with the kooky elite wing. They want to burden white people with guilt, force everyone to speak Te Reo and increase tax rates to such a level that working people will leave the country in droves. No, the country will never be able to afford what the activist wing wants, but it cannot afford what the elite wing wants either. Cycle lanes and pop-up walkways don’t come cheap, no matter how many “car fascists” there are. And if it means you can’t get to work on time, never mind. Such things are not important to an elite Green.
However, either despair or over-eliteness has finally driven James Shaw too far. Aware that his party is on the brink of annihilation, he has acted in desperation, as supposedly he refused to sign off on $3 billion of ‘shovel ready’ projects unless the green school was included. Holding up projects that will create thousands of jobs for New Zealanders in an economic crisis unless he can get a pet project funded is blackmail. He deserves to lose his political career over it, and apologies simply don’t cut it. Such a person is not fit for the responsibilities of being a minister, and many ministers have stepped down for much less. It is as simple as that.
The prospects for the party are not great. If the activist wing takes over, in a conservative country, oblivion awaits, but pandering to the Green elite probably has no future either. Still, in Shaw’s utopian world, the green school was a great idea. Pair it up with Jacinda’s unicorns and rainbows and New Zealand would be a fabulous place indeed. It would be bankrupt, but no matter. No one ever said it would be easy being Green.
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