by frog
Even a frog couldn’t help but get emotional as I watched Jeanette officially announce her stepping down from the leadership of the Green Party. It’s undeniable: She’s been one of the world’s great green leaders.
Bob Brown, the leader of the Australian Greens, had this to say about her: “Jeanette is a pre-eminent national and international campaigner, politician and thinker. She’s been at the cutting edge of Green politics in a world where it’s the only answer. Besides being a good friend, she is an enduring Green warrior.”
And she came of age right here in New Zealand. Along with Rod Donald, Jeanette joined the very first green political party in the world – the NZ Values Party – in 1974. Jeanette had to wait until 1996, however, and a change to a fairer proportional electoral system (MMP), before having the privilege of being the first actual Green to speak in the New Zealand Parliament. She was acutely aware at the time that she stood on the shoulders of thousands of New Zealanders who had worked tirelessly to see green ideas and policies represented in our Parliament.
Thanks in part to Jeanette’s inspired example, there are now plenty of Green leaders emerging. Other parties often go down with their leader. The Greens represent a new force in politics which is growing around the world and which is essential if the peoples of the world are to have a future.
So what happens now? Unlike other parties, the Greens don’t change leaders with a coup in caucus; our leaders are chosen democratically by members of the party through a vote of branches at our annual conference. This will take place at the Greens’ annual conference in June this year.
So we’re about to farewell the most trusted face in New Zealand politics, someone who fought tirelessly to give a voice to those on the margins. Her own words this morning say it all: “We want more people to share the secret of real happiness and satisfaction in life, which comes not from having more but from being more, and from being part of a society that values all its members, and values the land, the water and the other species with which we share them.”
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Parliament by frog on Mon, February 23rd, 2009
Tags: co-leader, female, Fitzsimons, happiness, jeanette, leadership, politician, secret, trusted, Values, zealand
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
>>Other parties often go down with their leader.
No need for the word “other”.
Jeanette was the appealing face of the Green Party. She didn’t scare the horses.
You’re left with plenty of horse scarers to choose from….
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May be a whisperer or two as well
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Dream on BP. We’ll be upsetting the likes of you for a long time yet.
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>>We’ll be upsetting the likes of you for a long time yet.
The Greens used to look like they understood marketing – perhaps that was just Rod – but in recent years, that hasn’t been apparent.
The selection will be very revealing. I think Sue is a very strong candidate.
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BP, you seem to be implying that Jeanette will be gone immediately, or somehow absent from the next election. That’s entirely up to her- all she’s said so far is that she’s resigning from her female co-leader position in time for the AGM this June, and she’s specifically stated she’s looking forward to being a backbencher.
How can we lose our “appealing face” until she actually leaves?
Not only that, I’m not sure either you or me can say for certain what Green politicians and policy specifically it is that appeals to the electorate, and whether a given person is irreplaceable. We survived and thrived after losing Rod, so that would suggest we can do the same with Jeanette when she’s ready to depart for good.
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The leaders are the faces come election time….
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Ari, BP wants us to do badly so much he can taste it. He’ll spout anything to make it seem inevitable, and even help out with “constructive” criticism.
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I’m quite familiar with the “old friends” over here, Valis.
I’ve debated with them as much as any of the G.Blog team who used to comment over here. 
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Can someone fill me in on Sue B’s Green credentials please? And, we might as well make a start on her Red CV as well.
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Know Bob Brown better than I do Jeanette – but he doesn’t sling compliments around to fill in time; That is high Praise from a Highly respected Senator who has a lot of International Respect.
A Blue Peter is a flag a ship hoists the day before it is due to leave port. I waved ta-ta a long time ago, but others would obviously like to see you shove off.
And no wonder; a vomity midnite attack Pete – you’d be an asset to who then? Pabulum Pabulae Pabulatus.
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SweetDisorder: Affects the mind hypoglaecemia.
A hard-working MP perhaps? Are you mayhap one too – somehow I doubt it.
The ‘Reds’ gave up on NZ as being hopelessly apathetic in the 70′s matey; – you can still join the SUP if you’re looking for some late night company.
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We need more positive leaders in the conservation field. Jeanette will be a big loss for all us that care about the issue.
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It may be new to SweetD, but ensuring that the burdens of society and its reformation to be cleaner, healthier, happier, and more sustainable don’t fall mostly on those already disadvantaged is port of the Green philosophy. Trying to call it “red” just makes you look like you’re trying to score cheap points than offer any substantive critique. Which is probably not inaccurate.
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Ari
the Green response to events is to ban and control. That in my mind is socialism. If you want to change peoples behaviors, then encouragement works a damn sight better than a big stick. All i have seen from the Greens is ban, ban this, ban that.
so again I ask, what are Sue B’s green credentials? because, Ari, everyone wants the world to be a better place, but that statement of yours is meaningless, much like the beauty queens at the miss whatever pagent, we all want world peace.
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sweetdisorder – you have fallen foul of the right wing stereotyping. They want you to think that we are all about the ban, and they will keep repeating that until they are blue in the face. That’s because they don’t want to face up to the logic of our arguments. Not that they will always agree with us, but many times they will. But to admit that we are sensible about anything threatens their meme that we are extremists and are not to be trusted. And you have bought into it. More’s the pity!
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>>meme that we are extremists
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2005/08/greens_refute_mcgillicuddy_serious_comparisons.html
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Well no worries if that’s the best you can do.
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We’re Greens: We’re Conservative
Dunno. Not quite ringing true….
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If I join the Greens, do I get a vote in leader’s elections? If my friends join, do they all get a vote as well? Is the leader decided by popular green party membership?
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The membership can’t be more than a couple of thousand.
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sweetdisorder said: The membership can’t be more than a couple of thousand.
Think much more than that sd! As someone who has access to that information, but not at liberty to reveal the total, but I know it is currently several factors substantially more than 2000. And it is rapidly growing.
The Green Party Membership Secretary is on holiday – otherwise I would have asked him to respond.
E noho ra
Toad
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But Toad, is the leader decided by popular green party membership? If so, seems likely that someone could organise membership for not for honest motives. Seems ripe for a takeover.
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sweetdisorder Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
> But Toad, is the leader decided by popular green party membership?
No, the vote is currently a vote of all delegates at the AGM, with the delegates instructed how to vote by the electorates they represent, and that is based on deliberation at electorate meetings. You would have to infiltrate a large proportion of the electorate branches.
Also, you need to have been a member for 6 months before you can be involved in an electorate meeting to direct a delegate, so it’s too late to infiltrate for this year’s co-leader election. There is a co-leader election every year, but there might not be as many candidates for the position next year (nobody challenged Jeanette for the Female co-leader position in 14 years), and the voting system may have changed by then (it is currently under review).
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“We’re Greens: We’re Conservative”
What do you think conservation is about anyway
But seriously, there’s plenty of space between these two extremes – no pun intended.
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Sweatdisorder.. there already has been a takeover, and it ain’t green.
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Yea right. Like most Green parties in the world, ours has always had social justice as part of its kaupapa. Even the Values Party in the ’70′s did. There is no conspiracy. We are what we are by design, so get over it.
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>>there’s plenty of space between these two extremes – no pun intended
I think it’s fair to say the Greens lay at the left end of those extremes. The Greens would enforce significant changes to the way we live, pulling everything to to the collective, austere.
I resist those notions, because one has proven not to work (Soviet Union) and the other is an outright lie (we’re not “running out” of things, and wealthy nations look after their environment better than poor ones).
“When Eastern Europe began to open up in the late 1980s, one of the great shocks was the severity of its environmental problems. Journalists reported on skies full of smoke from lignite and soft coal, children kept inside for much of the winter because of unsafe air, and horses that had to be moved away from the worst areas after a few years or they would die.
Many of the environmental ills reflected an abysmally low level of technology. Old, polluting factories of the kinds that are dim memories in the United States were the mainstay of socialist industry. Smelly, sluggish automobiles polluted the roads.
Energy waste was tremendous. Their own statistics showed that socialist economies were using more than three times as much steel and nearly three times as much energy per unit of output than market economies.1 One cannot look about in Warsaw or Moscow, Budapest or Zagreb, Krakow or Sarajevo, wrote economist W. W. Rostow in 1991, without knowing that this part of the world is caught up in a technological time warp.2
Not everyone realized it at the time, but the state of the environment was directly connected to the absence of property rights in the Soviet system. The authorities had refused to allow most resources to be privately owned. Most market exchanges were criminal acts, and entrepreneurship of most kinds was declared to be criminal behavior. Production was centrally planned, with land and other resources owned by the state, not individuals.
Although there were many repressive acts in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European nations, the absence of property rights, along with the absence of the markets that result from the exchange of property rights, was enough to devastate the environment.
To understand why, it is helpful to look at the reasons why private property rights protect the environment. There are several:……”
““…..Perhaps the biggest reason for environmental gains in Mexico from freer trade, however, would result from increased economic prosperity. To some environmentalists, this seems backwards. Many argue against trade because it encourages industrialization, which in turn, is blamed for pollution. Yet the experience of Western developed countries is just the opposite. Over the long term, emissions eventually fall, even as economic growth continues to increase. Several years ago, Hoover research fellow Mikhail Bernstam detailed what he calls “the environmental split of the 1970s and 1980s”–a divergence between consumption and pollution involving Western market economies and the socialist world. He found that resource use and discharges began to decline rapidly in those nations with competitive markets, even as economic growth, continued. In contrast, during the same two decades, consumption and environmental disruption were rapidly increasing in the USSR and European socialist countries even though their economies slowed down and eventually stagnated.”
Would you live in a different age than this?
I kiss the ground in thanks I was born into this era, and not any of the centuries that have gone before.
We’ll never optimize society, it will always be a bit messy because humans are involved, but overall, I think we in the west do a good job of making sure everyone is fed, clothed, nursed and educated. Other societies don’t organize as well, and suffer the consequences.
I see that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. We should be careful what we change, especially when it comes to markets and property rights, and the speed at which we change it.
In order to not destroy what we have, I lean towards protecting what we have, and tidying up around the edges.
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Source: Quotes are referenced in this post:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2009/02/fitzsimons_confirms_retirement.html#comment-536586
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Interesting how foibles travel down the generations. The Irish & mid-east problems being emblematic.
So we hear the hilarious ‘reds under the bed’ rhetoric here. One can only wonder why schools don’t police their computer use a little more stringently.
It is not fair to say the Greens are left at all, only in juxtaposition to the standard right to extreme right rhetoric.
The NZ Greens are a Centrist Party. It’s only cos Nz doesn’t have a left that this notion arises.
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>>It’s only cos Nz doesn’t have a left that this notion arises.
You’re clearly so far left you can’t see the wood for the trees.
The entire NZ parliament is left. The Greens have an overwhelming number of ex (yeah, right) communists and socialists in high positions. They formed part of the Alliance. They don’t think Labour are quite left enough, but they’ll do. National and Act are out o fthe picture for being too right.
Centrist? What a joke! Go back to your Sociology 101 tutorial, Mark.
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What would’ve happened to the Soviet Union’s pollution/efficiency problems if they implemented pollution taxes along with an income tax (or whatever they used) rebate?
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# StephenR Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 9:40 am
> What would’ve happened to the Soviet Union’s pollution/efficiency problems if they implemented pollution taxes along with an income tax (or whatever they used) rebate?
I don’t think they even had the price of energy included in their decision-making, let alone the price of pollution. Bluepeter’s comments on this issue are essentially correct.
The other thing Eastern Europe was missing was a free media who could hold decision-makers to account on things like the effect of pollution from their factories.
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>>pollution taxes
It’s the wealthy middle class who push for better environments.
They didn’t have a wealthy middle class.
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I’m not interested in who would’ve pushed for such things, more what the commentary from KB would’ve made of the SU’s environmental achievements if such measures had been put in place…
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Who would watch the watchers?
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Valis, you say the Values party touted social justice etc. That’s the point so many here are saying. If you want a party that emphasises social justice, then go and re-form the Values party. The name Values means values.
The problem we now have is that the name Green means values and that is a hijacking of the environmental banner.
With JF’s departure the party is at a crossroads and, should it appoint another ‘social justice zealot’ over a ‘green zealot’ then I certainly predict the party disappearing below 5%.
I feel that the Green party is currently like a tree in summer. Green and strong.
Autumn is upon us, oh look, it’s turning red!
The last green vestige has gone…
Oh look, all the leaves are falling off…
Bare…
Rebirth as Green again? Or will the winter prove too harsh and it’s dead?
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BP, I’ve too little time today, but an Eastern European model is so far from Green goals that it seems clear we’re just talking past each other. Its just a non-sequitur – I largely agree with what you say about their experience.
“In order to not destroy what we have, I lean towards protecting what we have, and tidying up around the edges.”
Can’t agree with this though. A lot of what we have deserves protecting, but there is way more that needs to be done than just tidying the edges if we’re going to achieve it. I know you disagree, so no point in rehearsing the same old arguments again.
samiam, why do you think the Values Party is known as the first national green party? Its not that they were so different, they just hadn’t coined the term yet. Those of us who believe environmental issues can not be solved in isolation from social justice issues (the large majority of the world’s Green political movement) obviously cannot accept your framing. There is no doubt that the person we choose as leader is important for all sorts of reasons, but we are not at the sort of crossroads you describe, as anyone who gets the job will operate from the frame I describe, not yours.
And who’s this ’social justice zealot’ you speak of? Certainly not Russel, whose main campaigns so far have been on water quality, toxic site cleanup, sewerage leaks, waste minimisation, diary intensification, tourism and public transport.
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It’s just that the current trend in the party seems to place human issues AHEAD of environmental. Just look at the topics on this blog, or the criteria used to find a way to not work with national prior to the election, there are more social issues than environmental.
This country NEEDS a strong environmental voice IN government, The Green Party fails to deliver this. Is the new leadership going to (whoever that might be) going to help or hinder?
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If you’re talking about having Green Ministers in a National government, that would be a tall order for any leader to achieve. It is interesting though that Greens and Nats are currently talking about areas they might be able to work on together, so who knows where that might lead over time.
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Samian Says: This country NEEDS a strong environmental voice IN government,
The trouble is the taking of an environmental perspective is different things to different people. It may be the desire to preserve the ‘natural state’ (presumably unaltered by human activities) of things for everyone, including future generations to ‘enjoy’. Again, it may be managing the environment in such a way that any harmful environmental effects on human activities are minimal – so that we don’t harm ourselves by harming the environment. It may be simply species protection – the cute, cuddly or interesting results of evolution (or creation). Or again, it may be protecting biodiversity, based on a belief such as biodiversity is directly related to the health of this planet. Other perspectives are conferring rights on various facets of the environment – for example animal rights and the land ethic. This is the ‘moral extension’ argument, for example: when we consider how our actions impact on the environment, we should not just evaluate how these affect humans (present and/or future), but also how they affect the interests and rights of animals Yet another perspective believes that all life forms and the richness in the diversity of these life forms have value in themselves (yes, Sapient, intrinsic value!) irregardless of their value to humans.
It would seem unlikely that people with such apparently disparate takes on the value of the environment could find their way to agree on overall environmental policy, let alone a social policy. The one thing in common may be that they all seem to place a ‘positive’ value on entities (and their respective processes) that need not be the result of human activity. That is, entities other than humans or anything that is directly or indirectly created by humans (e.g. robots, computer games, buildings). (The position of entities such as pets, farm animals, Man-made forests and the like would need some closer analysis!)
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Maybe it’s the other kind of blue Peter anyway…try and get some travel done Pete – as for me – I’m ambidextrous.
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