According to this morning's Dominion-Post, the Greens have "moderated" their bid to be in Cabinet. Now, I'm not sure that it was ever a demand to be moderated so much as a recognition that they would achieve more of their goals by being in Cabinet than they would outside it, but its good to see that they recognise that having a government which is moving in the right direction is more important than who gets to wear the silly hats. And it does make clear their commitment to being reasonable and trying to find policies where they can work with Labour, rather than against it - unlike some people.
Realistically, even if they remain outside Cabinet, the Greens will have an influence on Labour's policies through the consultation process. Labour is already heading in the right general direction on transport and energy policy, and the Greens will be able to maintain and hopefully strengthen that. Over the last six years the Greens have shown that they are adept at influencing policy even when they are not formally part of a government, and I expect that trend will continue.
We haven't moderated anything, as I argue here: http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2005/09/25/reasonable/
ReplyDeleteAnd please, don't moderate on issues like Section 59 Repeal, peak oil, increased attention to mental health services, and other shared centre-left concerns, frog.
ReplyDeleteSome of us within your potential coalition partner would very much like the parliamentary party prodded leftward...
Craig Y.
Craig, you're forgetting that the Govt is meant to be for all people. ahuge majority of people don't like Green policy, why should we get stuck with them??
ReplyDeleteAnon: because they're able to convince enough parties to gain majority support for such policies in the House.
ReplyDeleteOh, it's by no means a sure thing. But the Greens will not be imposing their policies on anyone. Instead, like everyone else, they have to persuade. And if they can build majority support, then all power to them.
If you don't like such policies, then you should lobby those they are seeking to persuade, and ultimately vote for different ones next time. if you're unwilling to do this, you have no-one to blame but yourself.
(Oh, and if anything is clear from the election result, its that there are no huge majorities...)
Green Party Vote- 5.1%
ReplyDeleteThose who did not vote Greens- 94.9%
I don't think that 94.9% are opposed to their policies but well over half would be.
ReplyDeletenik
it really doesn't matter whether 94.8% or 50% are against their ideas - it's a representative govt and they represent the 5.1% who voted for them.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great things about having coalition govt is that those representative numbers get to add up - Labour+Progressives+Green+Maori = 40.7%+1.2%+5.1%+2.0% = 49% ... much more representative, or alternatively Nat+ACT+UF = 39.6%+1.5%+2.7% = 43.8% somewhat less representative ... but more than the Nats alone (remember Winston is not joining a coalition just providing support to whoever wins).
Interestingly the Nats are now back to the level of support they were in the last 2 Muldoon terms (78/81 which Muldoon won under FPP but in which Labour actually got more votes - wonderfully representative) - in those days Social Credit used to get 20% of the vote (honestly I don't know why) but only 2 seats
PaulC