Ian Ewen-Street and National

So, former Green MP Ian Ewen-Street is now working for National. I can't say I'm entirely surprised. He was the "bluest" of the Greens' initial intake, and prior to the last election used the platform of the pre-election conference to attack the party's direction and its commitment to social as well as environmental justice. So a move to national seems to be a natural evolution for him.

As for what this means, if it results in National getting a serious environmental policy rather than the "gut the RMA and rape the planet" one they have at the moment, then that can only be a Good Thing. But I think Ewen-Street will be pushing shit uphill. As a party, National is committed to keeping costs for business as low as possible - which means less protection for the environment. It's committed to keeping electricity prices low (which means environmentally subsidised coal), building more roads for more cars (which means more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions), allowing destructive development in national parks (dams, gold mines, you name it, they're allowed to wreck it), and not allowing local communities to stand in the way of any form of development (unless they're rich or its in a senior MPs electorate, in which case they're all for it). Plus, they're led by a climate change denier. And I don't really see this changing. National is a first and foremost a party of farming and big business interests, both of which are overtly hostile to environmental goals. While they can adopt environmentalism as an electoral strategy (and Don Brash and Nick Smith seem to be trying to do exactly that), that is all it will be, and when push comes to shove - when someone wants to build a dirty stinking coal-fired power station or turn a patch of native bush into an open-cast gold mine and stick a giant pile of cyanide-laced tailings next to it - those business interests will win out and the environmental ones will be dumped by the wayside. And I think Green voters are smart enough to know this (and if they're not, then I'm sure someone will remind them of it before the next election; it's not as if anti-environment statements from national MPs are particularly difficult to find).

I'm not trying to deny that parties can ever change - but it will take a lot more than just a dash of green paint on National's coal-fired blue SUV to convince me that they have.