I don’t think James Shaw has yet managed to fix this problem he’s created. 

He’s clearly scrambling to find a solution and so far that solution seems to be re-classifying the $12 million for the Green School as not a grant but a loan.  But that’s not going to solve much. 

Because it doesn’t really matter what he calls it – a grant or a loan or fairy dust – the fact is that is money that is still allocated to the Green School.  Which means it isn’t available to other schools that need it more desperately. 

And it doesn’t really matter whether – as Shaw argues - this comes from the infrastructure pot or the education pot.  In the end, it all comes from the taxpayer pot and if you take $12 million out to give to the kooky school, you don’t have it for anything. That’s called an opportunity cost. 

So, this attempt to change the terms of the deal is probably not going to totally placate unions or teachers or schools, who will watch a private crystal school get built for kids of wealthy families while other Taranaki kids get taught in damp classrooms. 

But that’s actually not James Shaw’s biggest problem right now.  His biggest problem is what he’s done to this party ahead of an already-difficult election. 

The Greens were already scrapping hard for the necessary 5% to get them back into parliament.  They’ve lost voters to Labour as it’s out-greened them with moves like the oil and gas ban.  The popularity of Jacinda Ardern makes it hard to win those voters back.  And they’re now getting drowned out by covid-19 like most other small parties.   

This is just makes that much harder for them.  Up to now, I’d been confident that it didn’t really matter too much where the Greens were polling.  On the night, I thought, their supporters would flock back to save them.  But now, you’ve got to ask whether those supporters think they deserve saving. 

This is not like the Metiria Turei benefit fraud stuff up from 2017’s election when they nosedived in the polls but got saved by supporters anyway.  Plenty of those supporters backed Metiria Turei’s position on principle.  This though, this goes against their principles. 

You have to almost feel sorry for James Shaw.  Imagine being the guy who made a hard-to-survive election that much harder.  Worst case scenario, imagine if he’s the guy who made a mistake big enough to lose the Greens their place in parliament?