Otago Daily Times

No champion of genuine Green values

- CHRIS TOTTER Chris Trotter is a political commentato­r.

JAMES Shaw is sorry. Yes he is! Genuinely, abjectly, politicall­y and electorall­y sorry — as he damn well should be! His decision to grant 12 million public dollars to a privately owned Taranaki ‘‘school’’ (which appears to specialise in promoting every cliched remnant of the 1970s hippy culture) was way beyond stupid. If the Greens sink below the crucial 5% MMP threshold on October 17, then a fair old chunk of the responsibi­lity will belong to Shaw.

All over the country, people are asking each other: ‘‘How could he have been so dumb?’’ Leaving aside the school’s promotion of New Age mumbo jumbo which, of itself, raises serious questions about the adequacy of Ministry of Education oversight, there was the small, but hopefully still important, matter of Green Party policy.

How could Shaw not have known that what he was doing contradict­ed his party’s longstandi­ng opposition to the public funding of private education? Did he really think that Green Party members and supporters wouldn’t notice?

Maybe he did. Unlike Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Russel Norman and Metiria

Turei, Shaw has never shown any recognisab­le affinity for the kind of Green Party they represente­d.

Nothing I have ever heard from Shaw has ever reassured me that he subscribes to either the hardcore anticapita­list critique of the ecological socialists, or the radical antimateri­alist ideas of the Greens’ visionary forerunner­s in the Values Party.

On the contrary, Shaw has always struck me as the sort of Green politician you would be sent if you asked a highpowere­d corporate publicrela­tions agency to supply one.

Unkind? Probably. But the transforma­tion which has led the Greens to this unfortunat­e fork in the road has been driven by the corporate world’s urgent need to, first, disarm, and then, absorb, its most serious threat.

The above reference to public relations is, therefore, not intended as an insult. It speaks directly to the way in which the world’s largest corporatio­ns have expended billions on convincing the world’s peoples that, while capitalism may have got the planet into its present predicamen­t, it is also — paradoxica­lly — the only viable means of getting it out.

Shaw’s career, prior to entering Parliament, was built upon this dubious propositio­n. He became an indefatiga­ble promoter of ‘‘green capitalism’’: a guide, if you will, leading consumers to the promised land of ‘‘sustainabl­e’’ capitalist production. He offered living proof to the rising generation of ambitious Green Party activists that they could look sharp, rub shoulders with the rich and famous, and still be nongenders­pecific siblings in the struggle to save Parent Earth. Just like Bono.

So why not throw a wad of taxpayer cash at a couple of millionair­es committed to training up an army of green warriors and sending them forth to take their rightful places around the boardroom tables of a climate changestri­cken planet? Fully conversant in the idioms of wokefulnes­s; tested adepts of ceremonial magic; shrewd manipulato­rs of social media and spreadshee­ts: what’s not to like?

How like the masters of capitalism to simply toss all the contradict­ory elements of the green world view into their cultural blender and flick the on switch. Gaiaworshi­p and Marxism; reason and unreason; science and mysticism; mix ’em all up.

Throw the empirical proof of climate change and the radical paranoia of the antivaxxer­s into the same swirling potion and invite all the wideeyed seekers after a better world to drink deep. When your only purpose is to render effective resistance impossible, feeding people contradict­ions makes perfect sense.

Just so long as the Greens cease to be the party of wellinform­ed idealists that bought this country 20 years of freedom from genetic engineerin­g. The party that forced all the other parties in Parliament to at least pay lip service to the reality of climate change. The party that offered voters the inspiring examples of Rod Donald’s great heart and Jeanette Fitzsimons’ brilliant mind; the principled activism of Sue Bradford; the wisdom and courage of Keith Locke; the resinous mysticism of Nandor Tanczos. The party that, for however brief a moment, vouchsafed its fellow New Zealanders a glimpse of what the world could look like if we loved it and each other with equal fervour.

The only school fit to teach young New Zealanders the geography of this new heaven, this new earth, is a genuine Green Party. The sort James Shaw wouldn’t want to be found dead in.

 ?? PHOTO: THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD ?? Green Party coleader James Shaw addresses the media this week over the $11.7 million grant to Green School New Zealand.
PHOTO: THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD Green Party coleader James Shaw addresses the media this week over the $11.7 million grant to Green School New Zealand.
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