Room for a mix of blue and green

Afascinating electoral race is under way in the affluent northern suburbs of Sydney, where former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is being challenged by Zali Steggall, a Winter Olympics medallist and fiscal conservative whose point of difference is that, unlike Abbott, she wants action on climate change.

Australian politics is not exactly comparable to ours, but Steggall’s run shows the potential of bluegreen politics. There is a growing space for those who want to save the world without necessarily overhauling the entire economic system.

Backers of a proposed blue-green party in New Zealand will look on with interest. Former Green Party leadership challenger Vernon Tava, pictured, has been linked to talk of a new party that could support National in future coalitions, and the blue party seems to be encouraging the discussions.

At a cynical level, National needs all the friends it can get: the ACT vote has flatlined and the New Conservative Party is an idea in search of a moral issue to crusade on. But as National leader Simon Bridges has said, the blue-greens must be ‘‘organic’’, not the same old National in green drag. Of course it would suit National if a blue-green party acted as a spoiler and siphoned votes from the Greens, pushing its vote below 5 per cent. The downside is it could also strip votes from National.

For two decades, the Greens have had a nearmonopoly on environmental concerns but, as a political brand, it is surprisingly vulnerable. It only just returned to Parliament in 2017 after the disaster of former co-leader Metiria Turei’s welfare confessions, and Turei’s replacement, Marama Davidson, has pushed the party further towards social justice and identity politics activism, which risks alienating middle-class voters. Do voters want to hear about native birds and clean rivers, or Davidson’s nutty campaign to ‘‘reclaim’’ the c-word and Waihopai protests?

And while Green support tends to be Leftleaning, one in five Green voters in 2014 reportedly wanted National to lead the government, not Labour. There is a small, fluid group of environmental voters in the centre.

The philosophical question is whether a bluegreen party is a contradiction that could not be taken seriously. Could a party that purports to be environmentally conscious find common cause with National MPs who spent their summer breaks urging more motorways? Would a bluegreen party support Bridges’ intention to reverse the oil exploration ban? How blue would it be, and how green? Gareth Morgan’s Opportunities Party (TOP) took innovative environmental ideas to the electorate in 2017, indicating there is room for a new party with new thinking about ‘‘smart growth’’, rather than no growth. TOP managed just 2.4 per cent of the vote, and an entirely new party might struggle to do much better in 2020 unless an MP in a safe electorate defected from National, which could then signal its support with an Epsomstyle cup of herbal tea arrangement.

A blue-green party that is sensible and strategic could promote itself as an environmental handbrake on a centre-Right Government. With the Greens consistently ruling themselves out of a coalition with National, there may finally be a place for a party that can figure out how to combine pragmatism and principle.

There is a growing space for those who want to save the world without necessarily overhauling the entire economic system.