All bets are off as agreement tossed aside
The MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) between Labour and the Greens has deteriorated to an MOU (Memorandum of Undermining) with the Greens standing a candidate in Ohariu at the 11th hour. This latest betrayal from the Greens will make it easier for Labour to ditch the Greens and go with NZ First in any coalition talks. It cuts both ways if the Greens, in their current ruthless mode, decide to go with National in a novel coalition that would put the gumboot into Fonterra, Federated Farmers and Dairy NZ.
The strange Nat/Greens bedfellows’ coalition would force the hand of the newly-formed political pop-up National Party rescue posse, the Farmers’ Leaders Group allegedly committed to make all New Zealand rivers swimmable. The Farmers’ Leaders Group (Fonterra, Federated Farmers, Dairy NZ, Beef and Lamb NZ) have said no to cow reduction and given no fixed date for the goal of swimmable rivers. If they were serious about making rivers swimmable, then surely the Farmers’ Leaders Group would have had a sit-down with the Freshwater Coalition (Forest & Bird, Fish & Game, Choose Clean Water, Greenpeace, Tourism Export Council, Federated Mountain Club).
That group has a seven-step Freshwater Rescue Plan for the Government. One of those seven steps is to put the kaibosh on the public funding of irrigation schemes and to redirect those monies to transitioning the agricultural sector.
Forget about the hysteria over Labour’s woolly water tax, a Nat/ Green coalition would spell immediate divorce to National’s long-term marriage with a conservative rural sector addicted to a free and endless supply of water. Their union may be antediluvian, but does National really need the farmers and their stigma of dirty dairying that has pitched rural against urban?
The Greens have already put one foot in the door of their possible new home when they gave the thumbs-up to the Working for Families part of the Budget.
That occurred just before former Green co-leader Metiria Turei called NZ First Leader Winston Peters a racist, and admitted to benefit and electoral fraud. That sparked Labour’s only act of borderline MOU betrayal when new Labour leader Jacinda Ardern ruled Turei out of any future cabinet position.
That decision registered approval in the polls by an electorate and some of the Greens’ party faithful confused by the once clean Greens’ sudden moral deficit. Two long-term highly respected Green MPs had resigned rather than swallow beneficiary fraud morphed into a social justice policy and the fall-out was fierce.
Green co-leader James Shaw, who backed Turei to her bitter end, is tainted by his loyalty to his former co-leader, and exhibited a lack of MOU integrity in his Johnny-come-lately insertion of candidate Tane Woodley into the party’s sudden last exit to Ohariu play. The Nat/Green coalition may not be a swimmable river, but in comparison it makes a Labour/NZ First coalition seem 100 per cent clean. As the Jacinda Effect quietens down and Labour’s detractors agitate over the party’s lack of numbers around policy and fudging over the capital gains tax, the man of integrity this election is surely former Labour leader Andrew Little.
The former union leader managed to do what no other failed contemporary Labour leader did, and that was to unify the party, instil discipline, and hold the line. But the writing was on the wall for Little’s lack of cut-through with the electorate and alarmingly bad polls.
Green co-leader James Shaw is tainted by his loyalty to his former co-leader, and exhibited a lack of MOU integrity.
He tried, but his best wasn’t good enough, and he did that rare thing in politics, dared to voice self-doubt in a television interview with TVNZ journalist Corin Dann.
Hours later, Little relinquished power with dignity and grace, and was seen at the Labour Party conference up on stage pumping the hand of the new Jassiah, smiling with genuine pleasure at her adulation.
The team player had sucked it up and stayed in the saddle when others would have limped away from the cruel bruise of the rodeo and hung up their spurs forever. His reward is that he gets to stay on the front bench and still play football for the coach, bravely weathering a difficult emotional transition while having the good grace to keep in the game.
John Key slipped out the back Jack and Peter Dunne declined to face certain defeat. Little puts one foot in front of the other and quietly keeps on keeping on, following the new leader.