The problem with ideology, especially blind ideology, is it prevents you from being effective, especially if you are in politics.

I have no doubt Julie Anne Genter wants to save the world. I have no doubt she thinks the planet is in trouble. But somewhere along the line, she has let her passion and enthusiasm for what she has decided is her calling card and mission get the better of her - she has lost sight of the ability to be effective.

Treasury has busted her. Last week, they confirmed that her fee bate scheme for EVs does not work. I told her that from day one, but she doesn’t listen to people like me. The real danger is she is not listening to people like treasury, because that’s what treasury are there for.

And every time she has a plan that is shown to be false, fraudulent ineffective or delusional and she persists with it, she weakens her argument, her role, her reputation.

And as a result, when she dreams up her next scheme it comes with pre-arrived baggage, it starts from a negative default position.

In some respects, Jacinda Ardern is suffering the same issue. Her government is now in that two year sticky patch where so much of what they said they would do either hasn’t been done, or, if it has, it isn’t working – hence, they look a bit lost and out of their depth.

Forcing people into actions they haven’t bought into is no recipe for political or indeed any sort of success, especially when there was a natural scepticism to start with, and then followed by official scepticism.  

On no level does a fee bate work. It’s not fiscally neutral and you can’t claim it is - it’s a lie.

The sheer practicality factor doesn’t work either. The cars we buy, we buy for reasons, and you can’t upend those reasons on mere ideology.

The simple example of small business, the life blood of this country. They drive  utes and four wheel drives. Sure, PC corporates line their sales fleet with EVs – Air New Zealand, councils, power companies, but that because of politics and image, not to mention they only shuffle between meetings .

In the real world of the small business, you buy and run what makes sense. Utes makes sense, cars with space and power. Just look at the most popular cars sold. You can’t argue with fact. Ideology doesn’t beat fact. Genter doesn’t get that.

Big ideas have to stack up, they have to work, be seen to work, understood to be able to work.

Kiwibuld of course remains the ultimate  example of sheer ideological madness. Something we could all see would never work apart from the ideologues. The fee bate is a lesser in size and scale, but no less dangerous as an idea. It lacks all the ingredients for success: logic, fact, backing, buy in.

Good politics is about delivery and results. Flogging dead horses just makes you look like you’ve only ever had a handful of ideas, and your solution now you’ve run out of them, is to is brow beating us into submission.