Green Party members sneer at New Zealanders who don't "get" tino rangatiratanga, which makes them feel virtuous and superior. So says Chris Trotter on his Dominion Post column this week. And he's probably right. Trotter says the Greens have a strategy of competing with the Maori Party for the "honour the Treaty" constituency, which is a mere tiny fraction of society. They have an elitist orientation to politics which means that don't understand Jim Anderton's 1980s advice to Trotter, to 'Always build your footpaths where the people walk.' Obviously there's always a tension for political parties between leading and following, but if, as Trotter suggests, your party has contempt for a public that just doesn't 'get' your separatist ethnic politics, then you'll never really build anything significant. The problem for the Greens is that they lurch between populism and elitism.
Lost in the Green wilderness
11 August 2006
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Here's an exercise for the Green Party caucus. Go to Te Papa and find the "talking poles". They're an attempt to capture the diversity of the New Zealand public's views on the Treaty of Waitangi. By CHRIS TROTTER
The poles are actually pretty tame. Examples of the vicious racism many New Zealanders are still prepared to voice in private have not been included in the Treaty exhibit.
The trick is not to stop at the talking poles but to go further till you find the bank of computer terminals which allow you to test your attitudes toward the Treaty against those of your fellow citizens.
I should warn the six Green MPs in advance: they're in for a shock. My guess is that each of them will discover what I did – that the number of Kiwis sharing their beliefs about the Treaty's role in New Zealand society is less than 5 per cent.
It was after visiting the talking poles a few years ago that I realised how much danger Labour was in on the Treaty issue. Clearly, the party's policy of Closing the Gaps, its belief in positive discrimination, and its enthusiasm for writing the "principles" of the Treaty into legislation were politically premature moves.
None of them, I felt certain, could be supported by more than a tiny fraction of the voting public.
It was only the generous Irish spirit of Jim Bolger, Doug Graham's aristocratic sense of noblesse oblige and Simon Upton's intelligent idealism which had allowed "official" New Zealand to advance so far ahead of public opinion on the Treaty.
The centre-left was way out on a limb. It struck me that, if the bipartisan consensus on honouring Treaty principles were to break down, the Labour-led Government and its allies would be vulnerable to the most ferocious populist backlash.
Which is exactly what happened.
And that's why I'm suggesting that the Greens make an excursion to the talking poles – so I don't have to see it happen all over again. Mind you, if Jeanette Fitzsimons' rather bitchy response to former colleague Ian Ewen-Street's decision to join the National Party is anything to go by, history is going to repeat itself.
"I'm not surprised by his choice," snapped her media release. "Ian was increasingly at odds with our caucus over recent years. He wanted to support National Party legislation and their moves in select committee to water down environmental initiatives. He also wanted to support Labour's legislation on the foreshore and seabed, and was uncomfortable with the Greens' commitment to the Treaty."
All that proves is that Mr Ewen-Street has a much firmer grasp on where New Zealanders are at than most of his caucus colleagues.
Competing with the Maori Party for the "honour the Treaty" constituency is a perfectly sensible strategy if the Greens have no plans ever to win more than 5 per cent of the party vote.
As we've seen, that level of support is enough to earn them a footnote in Michael Cullen's budgets, but not a seat at the Cabinet table. To get its rump on one of those, the Green Party needs to broaden its appeal beyond the nose stud and dreadlocks brigade, to embrace a more "mainstream" audience.
Sneering at New Zealanders who don't "get" tino rangatiratanga may make the party faithful feel virtuous and superior, but it won't put them in a position to actually do something for the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who do "get" climate change, peak oil and the risks of genetic engineering.
Mr Ewen-Street certainly has his work cut out trying to persuade conservative National Party supporters to change their thinking on these issues. But if he does manage to succeed, then something will be done.
When I was a young Labour activist, Jim Anderton – another middle-aged white male Ms Fitzsimons is inclined to get snippy about – advised me and my comrades: "Always build your footpaths where the people walk."
Politics, he reminded us, is about power, and in a democracy, power is about numbers. Mr Ewen-Street's defection to the National Party is a forceful reminder that, at the moment, the Greens simply do not have the numbers.
If they are to be serious contenders for political power, Ms Fitzsimons and her team are going to have to do something about that. A quick visit to Te Papa would at least alert the Greens to how far from the well-trodden footpaths they have strayed.
