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Mike's Minute: What is the point of the Greens?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 18 May 2022, 9:45AM

Mike's Minute: What is the point of the Greens?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 18 May 2022, 9:45AM

Obviously there has been a fair bit of feedback to yesterday's James Shaw Special on this show, in which he appeared to not know a lot about what had been announced in his specialist area.

The overall reaction sums it up, a plan to make a lot of plans.

Someone else said it might be significant, but then it might be nothing.

Hard core campaigners fumed at the fact farming seemed to get off paying for stuff.

The conservatives fumed that business gets subsides when they really should be doing a lot of the heavy lifting themselves.

All in all, for something that was billed as significant, or as a moment in history, it all added up to yet more waffle that may or may not come to pass.

Which leads me to ask - what is the point of the Greens?

Is it the path of least resistance? No, the announcement wasn’t what they would have done, but it’s better than nothing. Is that their defence?

Did they actually get anything that Labour by themselves wouldn’t have done?

Never forgetting the Prime Minister's line about this being our nuclear moment.

The Greens are sort of in government, but you wouldn’t know it.

Chloe's major contribution to the term so far appears her upcoming role in the taxpayer-funded documentary about herself. I doubt we can name much she has done for her electorate of downtown Auckland, ram raid and crime capital of the country.

We had Elizabeth Kerekere, the Green Covid spokesperson who no one had heard of until she broke Covid rules by jumping on a plane while being a household contact.

I have seen Marama a couple of times, mainly moaning about the Government but the other day dancing at the launch of a mental health initiative as part of the Budget.

And then we have James, who may or may not survive much longer as co-leader given the only other thing I can think of that the Greens have done this term is change the rules around leadership. One must be a woman and the other must be Māori of any gender.

It seems to me the Greens have two major issues. One being they're not green. They are more social engineers which doesn’t appeal necessarily to greenies, and two, they are buried by Labour and largely ineffectual.

This was their big day in the sun, and to call it lukewarm is to be kind.

So the question remains; what is the point of the Greens?

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