Greens gotta know when to hold ’em
Does James Shaw know he’s holding aces?
There is no way the Greens can work with National. Get that out of your head right now. They should, and the reasons they won’t work with National are getting flimsier by the day. But they won’t – it’s a matter that strikes too close to the heart of too many of their base – and for that reason, they simply can’t.
Too above the fray for their own good however, they won’t even play the first trick to let NZ First leader Winston Peters know he doesn’t actually hold all the cards. The Greens are refusing to pick up their hand.
The Greens made it back to Parliament by the skin of their teeth and perhaps fear a further weakening of their position.
But they are at ground zero and are perhaps in a better position than they will ever be to decide where they should start plucking voters from.
The allure of pulling the party to the centre-right must surely be hanging in the minds of some senior Greens.
And the thinking in senior National Party circles is that everyone will be talking about environmental issues at the next election.
National is completely aware – whether they think it’s fair or not – that the perception is they do not do enough for the environment and they will need to produce some big moves this term, with or without the Greens.
Regardless of which party gets to form the Government, this campaign has highlighted a set of problems that voters will expect vast improvement on by 2020.
There are also certain gains the Greens could force that would carry twice the legitimacy if they came from a National Government.
Their pollution tax on nitrates in rivers would be in for a bloody and protracted battle against farmers should Labour throw the Greens that bone.
But if National moved to tax farmers on pollution? Game over – the jig is up – and the Greens would have forced it.
On election night, Shaw – under considerable duress from reporters – conceded it could happen at a stretch. But National would, in his words, ‘‘have to make some pretty massive concessions’’.
Well, National Party pollster David Farrar has ‘‘speculated’’ on what the Greens could potentially get from National in an abstention deal – purely for their vote on confidence and supply.
That could buy the Greens $1 billion over 10 years for cycleways, their levy on nitrate pollution, a South Taranaki Whale Sanctuary, a levy on plastic bags, an accelerated timetable for rail to Auckland Airport, doubling the funding for the Department of Conservation, and still find another $65 million a year for the Predator Free New Zealand initiative.
It doesn’t end there: stricter water quality standards to ensure 70 per cent of New Zealand’s water were lifted to ‘‘excellent’’ status, a commitment to double the targeted reduction of children in poverty from 50,000 to 100,000 and to double the reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from 11 per cent to 22 per cent.
Farrar is so far up in National that’s not speculation – that’s an opening offer.
For all their dancing around each other, National is serious when it says it would be happy to talk to the Greens. But it’s also serious when it says it knows it has to make big environmental moves regardless.
If the Greens are serious about putting the environment above politics – and the long-term rebuild of the party – they really should listen.