Greenpeace front line leader’s new frontier

Jack van Beynen talks to Russel Norman as he says goodbye to politics and sets out on a new environmental mission.

RUSSEL NORMAN wants to save the world. Yesterday the Green Party coleader, who had already said he planned to leave Parliament, confirmed he was taking on the role of executive director of Greenpeace New Zealand.

‘‘As I’ve grown older – and you know I’m 48 years old now, so I’ve been around a while – it’s like, the environmental issues now are so pressing . . . These are global, massive issues and how we deal with them in the next decades is going to determine what kind of future my children, your children, all our children inherit,’’ he says.

We meet Norman outside an Auckland primary school where he has been talking to students. Dressed in a tweed jacket, skinny jeans and brown boots, he looks more like a hip university professor than a politician.

His demeanour, too, isn’t what you’d expect from a politician. It’s hard to see how this earnest, candid and just generally nice guy could prosper in the cut-throat political arena.

But prosper he has. When Norman became Green Party co-leader in 2006, the party had only six seats in Parliament. Now they are New Zealand’s third largest party, with 14 seats.

Norman’s role in that achievement is what he is most proud of from his time co-helming the party.

‘‘That was for me tremendously important, that the Green Party became a big party with a really strong base,’’ he says.

‘‘The Green Party’s really gone from success to success.’’

However, he is now resigning from the party that he helped build. It’s important for Greenpeace to be independent of political parties, he says, and he needs to maintain the organisation’s independence.

Norman thinks some of the party’s biggest achievements have been bringing important issues like water quality, climate change, and housing insulation to the front of people’s minds.

Raising consciousness is something he hopes to continue doing at Greenpeace, an organisation he says is better than any other at reminding people of the importance of environmental issues.

‘‘It is so important that we keep that in mind with everything that we do, every day,’’ he says.

In his new role Norman will head Greenpeace’s operations in New Zealand and be involved in international campaigns.

He says he’s not afraid to get involved in protesting himself.

NORMAN CONQUEST

‘‘I think it’s important that the leadership of Greenpeace does be part of those protests when it’s appropriate.’’

Protesting is a different method of making change happen than politics, working outside institutions rather than in them. Norman says Greenpeace’s methods put them at the ‘‘cutting edge of change in this world’’.

‘‘When you’re in a political party, you operate within a different set of rules. You’re operating in Parliament, there’s a whole series of constraints over what you can do. Whereas when you’re an international campaigning environment organisation, you can be at the front line,’’ he says.

There’s a kind of superhero flavour to the rhetoric Norman uses when talking about his new job. He drops phrases like ‘‘the future of humanity’’, the ‘‘danger’’ of taking on ‘‘powerful forces’’.

A cracking example: ‘‘[Greenpeace’s] future is tied in with the future of humanity itself, because it’s so important to future of the human race on this planet.’’

Does he really believe that? Or is it just a politician’s spin?

‘‘This world really is our only home,’’ Norman says. ‘‘There is nowhere else that we know of that supports life. And if we don’t look after this place, our kids will inherit this disaster.’’

‘‘That’s what I really believe. I’m really motivated by that.’’