Analysis: On the campaign trail with the Greens, TVNZ's Chief Correspondent wonders how they can carve out a bigger place for themselves in the electoral landscape.
Stories take. And then they shape how we see people. And political parties.
When Greens’ co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons trailed National in Coromandel on election night in 1999, awaiting the special votes that would eventually win her the seat (although she didn’t know that yet), the New Zealand Herald reported what was an historic contest under the headline “By midnight the organic feijoa had lost its fizz”. She was drinking, they noted, sparkling wine, “organic of course”.
Of course.
Contained within the feijoa wine story were ripples and remembrances of the Values Party, “the world’s first national green party” (according to the International Encylopedia of Environmental Politics), and of hippies, and of people who had a crack at politics but never quite made it into real power. The Values Party contested six elections, all of them under First Past the Post. And despite winning just over five percent of the vote in 1975, they never made it into Parliament.
Coromandel in 1999 was the first electorate the Greens ever won. It took them 21 years to win a second one - Auckland Central, in 2020. From Jeanette Fitzsimons to Chlöe Swarbrick. From feijoa wine to chardonnay, or IPA, or whatever. From the Brian Boru Hotel in Thames, to the middle of Karangahape Road.
I’ve come to the Green Party office on K Road, to see how their campaign is going.
James Shaw and Marama Davidson are there. Swarbrick is there, as she so often is, working on her campaign to retain Auckland Central. Volunteers and party workers come and go, animated by a sense of possibility.
Outside, life is as life usually is on one of the most famous and beloved streets in the country. All of life. Bustling, and confident, and cool, and precarious, and (sometimes) lost.
Inside, the co-leaders are sitting side by side, and I am sitting opposite them.
“We’ve got a campaign machine now,” Shaw says to me, “that in our strongest areas, not across the country, but in our strongest areas, is the equal of, or better than, Labour or National.”
“We’re getting savvy”, Davidson says, and then repeats herself, struck by how good the words sound. “We’re getting savvy.”
Their “strongest areas” are here, in Auckland Central. And two Wellington electorates: Rongotai and Wellington Central.
If you don’t know Rongotai, think of it as the electorate you’re in no matter which way you travel to the central city from Wellington airport, then add in the southern coast, which on a still, clear day, with snow on the Kaikōura Ranges, has a view so magnificent it feels ridiculous that Lambton Quay is only 20 minutes away. Rongotai is also where Ma’a Nonu grew up. And, when I lived in Wellington, it was home to two of the best fish and chip shops in the world.
Rongotai has always been a safe Labour electorate, although its Party vote is capable of jerking right. But Annette King was a beloved MP, and won eight consecutive terms for Labour. Then Rongotai got Paul Eagle on the Labour ticket, and duly voted for him, although they deserved better.
The Greens’ candidate is Julie Anne Genter, who announced her candidacy early, has a high profile in Wellington (and beyond) and has been door-knocking like a Mormon (which she most assuredly is not).
Wellington Central is equally fascinating. But madder.
In 2020, and I’m not making this up, Grant Robertson stood there for Labour, Nicola Willis stood there for National, James Shaw stood there for the Greens, and Brooke Van Velden stood there for Act. (Nuts!)
Robertson got more votes than everybody else combined, which suggests “safe as” for Labour, but that’s slightly deceiving. Firstly, this is an electorate in which the Party vote can swing about. Secondly, none of the candidates from 2020 are standing there this election.
Thirdly, the Greens are running Tamatha Paul, who Wellington has twice elected to Council. And, as in 2022 Local Body elections, the Greens have a highly organised door-knocking game.
Still, the Greens are an MMP party. And with the exception of Jeanette Fiztsimons and Chlöe Swarbrick, every MP they’ve ever had has got into Parliament on the List.
Shaw tells me the story of the 2011 election campaign.
“We had 4,000 phone numbers, and that was it. That was all we had. And we had these two kids, I’ll never forget them, and they just sat there for two weeks and rang all of them.”
How many do you have now? (And this is where the “savvy” comes in.)
“It’s over 300,000, and in this election we have already contacted over 100,000 people.
“And we’ve done that by building up a database of people to contact, over more than a decade, and refining it so that’s it’s high quality. And we focus on things that we know work, which is having conversations with people. So we knock on doors. And we get on the phone. And we try to contact everybody that we’ve got a phone number for, or an address for.”
The “savvy”, when door-knocking might seem old fashioned to the point of anachronistic, is not only the development of such a large database, rigorously maintained to ensure that as many people on it as possible have at least the potential to vote Green (there’s no point door-knocking the Luxons), and the mobilisation of highly motivated volunteers and candidates to get out and do the knocking.
The Greens still feel like a protest vote
It’s also the self-awareness to understand that they don’t have the money for expensive ad campaigns, and that they don’t tend to get the news coverage received by Labour, National and even Act. And it’s the understanding that the Greens still feel like a protest vote to some, or a second choice for when Labour are stumbling, and not yet as “real” as voting for the big two, and that the best way to persuade someone to vote for you is to ask them to, directly.
The left, though. Or, the centre-left. A vanishing Labour Party, so timidly centrist that its biggest selling point appears to be that it’s not National. What a cluster.
Just three years ago, Labour received 50% of the vote and won 65 of Parliament’s 120 seats.
On Wednesday, the latest 1News Verian poll put them at 28% - or 35 seats. Down thirty seats in three years.
It’s a fall so dramatic that AJ Hackett could build a platform above it. “3, 2, 1 - BUNGEEEEEE!”
What makes this truly embarrassing for Labour is that National (who Wednesday’s 1News Verian poll had at 39%) are led by a man people appear not entirely persuaded by. And their tax cut policy (a richly deserved windfall for the most disadavantaged amongst us – landlords) is being funded out of money given to them by a really cool friend, who you don’t know because he lives somewhere you’ve never been to, but he does exist and he’s mega rich and foreign and anyway, and stuff.
I shouldn’t laugh. Although it’s laughable.
Matthew Hooton, whose writing about the National Party is sometimes so full of rage it supports the theory that no form of war is as brutal as a civil war, described National Party leader Christopher Luxon’s defensiveness when faced with questions about National’s tax cut policy as “Muldoonist” and “un-Christian”. Those were the tame bits.
“Unless he is a complete simpleton - which, to be fair, he sometimes sounds like - he must know his tax-cut con is a fraud and doesn't add up.”
And Labour are currently 11 points behind that.
Which leaves the Greens, where?
The 1News Verian poll on Wednesday had them at 10%, which is 12 seats. The Newshub-Reid Research Poll on Monday had them on 12.3%, or 16 seats. The latter would be their best ever performance. The former, though up on last election, and on the election before that, which is unprecedented for a Government support party, might still feel disappointing.
In party vote terms, the Greens have performed best in 2011 (11.2%) and 2014 (10.7%). Both were elections National won, comfortably.
In 2020, when Labour romped home and looked set to govern for as long as they could remember who they were, which turned out to be less than three years, the Greens polled 7.9%.
And the Greens’ worst performance this century? 2005. When the battle between Helen Clark’s Labour and Don Brash’s National was tighter than a fish’s bum. So tight (40.74% to 39.63%) that the centre-left and left merged like a zip, or became as one-eyed as a Crusaders’ supporter, and backed just the one team.
This is so inexact as to be almost meaningless. But the conditions do feel more like 2011 and 2014 than 2005 or 2020. And the Greens are now openly hoping this election will see their best performance, ever.
To achieve that, the Greens need to get more than 11.1% of the vote.
Which isn’t a great deal. New Zealand First once even managed more – and, as I wrote last week, their current platform appears to be a frothing belief in the supremacy of the English language and a desire to put GPS tracking on “male appendages”.
So why, a quarter of a century after they became a standalone party, have the Greens not done better than 11%?
In part, it’s been a question of identity.
Who the hell are the Greens?
In 2015, the New Zealand Journal of Psychology published a genuinely fascinating study by Lucy J. Cowie, Lara M. Greaves, and Chris G. Sibley, out of the University of Auckland.
In contrast to the excellent middle initial game of its authors, the study has a title that almost seems designed to put people off reading it: “Identifying Distinct Subgroups of Green Voters: A Latent Profile Analysis of Crux Values Relating to Green Party Support.”
(Stick with me here. Truly.)
It found the Green voter base is “is composed of a number of distinct subpopulations who differ across a number of crux values”.
(Honestly, you can do this.)
“We uncovered four distinct profiles that differed in their pattern of support across seven attitudinal domains; value for the environment, equality, social justice, wealth, belief in anthropogenic climate change, views about historical injustice and reparations for Māori, and value for Māori culture.”
That’s a broad church. And it’s nigh on impossible to (briefly) describe in terms less academic than above.
So the Greens just said, “we’re the Greens”, made sure their list and leadership was as reflective as possible of the distinct subgroups, or the crux values, or the attitudinal domains, or whatever, and assumed, or hoped, or fantasised the voter would get it.
And some voters did. Or thought they did. Or wanted to. But never more than 11%.
As the study concluded: “A key challenge for the Green Party will be continuing to grow its voter base while representing the interests of the diverse subpopulations of Green voters.”
Yup.
Meanwhile, the Greens have been up against two major parties straddling the centre like a road marking. A National party so profoundly on autopilot that when Captain Luxon came up against turbulence in the form of Jack Tame on Q+A, he looked like he needed a sick bag from the seat pocket in front of him.
And a Labour Party so terrified of its own shadow, whenever its shadow threatens to point left, that it took out a trespass order against a Capital Gains Tax.
Against this, the Greens have represented a kind of disorder. And a frequent “mainsteam” rejoinder to some of the “subgroups” was – why can’t you just be an environmental party?
“There is no such thing as being a Green party for those people who to plant lots of nice trees, but want inequality to remain. That is an absolute misnomer,” Marama Davidson says to me.
“It’s really hard to convice people to put a solar panel on their roof if they’re struggling to put food on their table,” James Shaw adds.
“We had to overcome the baggage, the perception, of being a white, middle-class party,” Davidson says. “Well we were,” Shaw responds.
“We’ve been slowly but surely broadening our reach, broadening our understanding, and our relationships into other communities,” says Davidson.
And here’s where the University of Auckland study (above) is so revealing: “Our model indicates that only 4% of Green Voters are motivated purely by their concern for the environment.”
So, Green voters want what? And in which order?
Back to the Cowie, Greaves, and Sibley study: “Our study identifies points of convergence (such as environmental values) and crux values that represent points of divergence (such as valuing social justice and Māori rights) across distinct subpopulations of Green voters.”
In other words, the Greens aren’t only involved in a campaign to win voters from other parties, they’re campaigning to retain and balance the distinct subpopulations within themselves.
Sometimes this is contained. Sometimes it bubbles up. As with the bewildering leadership challenge on Shaw in July of last year, in which 32 of 107 delegates voted to reopen nominations for his co-leadership position, and then no one put their hand up to replace him, so he was returned, like a schoolbag left in a playground, less a coup than a time-out.
This makes the Greens a confounding proposition, particularly for an electorate fed the pro-forma centrism of the two main parties, or the “look at my bum” routine which Act and New Zealand First sometimes use to get attention.
“Appealing to the best of us doesn’t get the media headlines, doesn’t get that level of cut through,” Davidson says. “A lazy but faster way to whip up emotions is by being racist purposefully. Or by being clickbaity. And that’s not our style.
“So, our strategy, and the way we make it through the toxic, is our phonecalls, our door-knocking, our markets, our stalls, the human conversations. That’s how we get through all that stuff.”
Everyone loved John Key in the Koru Lounge
On Monday, I followed as they door-knocked at Western Springs.
Politicians like to take you to where they feel safe. An ambush is bad, wilful indifference is worse.
Most parties have a home crowd.
In my childhood, we had a dog that humped legs. He never met a leg he didn’t like. When John Key entered the Koru Lounge nearly everyone in it was as excited to see him as Buster was to see a leg. Truly. If the Koru Lounge alone could have voted, John Key would be Prime Minister until the end of air travel.
I thought of that when I followed Davidson, Shaw and Ricardo Menéndez March on a visit to Western Springs College, between Grey Lynn, Westmere and Pt Chevalier in affluent, liberal, central Auckland, “a state co-educational, co-governance secondary school”, at which “Western Springs College and Ngā Puna o Waiōrea operate collaboratively from one location.”
I know that school well. And if you want to find a young person desperate to turn 18 so they can vote for the Greens, that would be a good place to start.
But the questions the students asked were big, seemingly without party affiliation, and forward looking, beyond the three-year cycle of governments.
Housing, climate change, addressing disadvantage, the Treaty.
We were walking between buildings and Davidson said, “Wow, what great questions.”
“We want to be a party of enduring impact,” she says to me, back on K Road.
And to do that you have to be there.
But when you’re there?
Russel Norman, writing for Greenpeace, in August of last year, said: “The Government has done some good stuff on climate, but on the really big and difficult climate policy issues they are greenwashing.”
And then the previous male co-leader of the Greens continued: “Jacinda Ardern makes the climate policy in this Government and James Shaw presents it. The first rule of politics is to learn how to count – look at the numbers and you will understand this Government – Labour has a simple majority and Shaw isn’t even in Cabinet.
“James Shaw may like the climate policy, he may not, I don’t know. He may be the architect of crucial bits of it, or not, I don’t know. He is allowed to say he would like to improve the climate policy, but he cannot speak out against it and keep his job. And once you dwell on that hard political truth, all this makes a lot more sense.”
This is the “convergence”, and the “crux values that represent points of divergence”, and the “distinct subpopulations of Green voters”.
Too left and you frighten people away.
Too centrist and you betray your own aspirations, your own purpose, and those of supporters who’d hoped for more.
Somehow, the Greens accommodate those tensions (the convergence, the divergence), but an all time high of 11% suggests they take their toll.
In her valedictory speech, in 2010, Jeanette Fitzsimons said that, “most of all, the role of the Greens has been to set the agenda—to raise issues that had never been raised in this House before”.
“And I think, I hope, and I actually do think this based on our polling data,” Shaw says to me on K Road, “that people are responding not just to what we’ll say we do in the future, but they’re actually kinda recognising that we’ve made a real difference in the time that we’ve been here.”
Politics, is about winning, of course. But at what cost?
I’ve written about this before. I keep writing about it. Chris v Chris. And the voters looking for something beyond what we call the centre, but which has become a kind of drive-thru, dispensing politics like fast food: quick, bland, sugar hits, largely empty of lasting nutrition.
Are the Greens winning? Can they hold Auckland Central? Can they pick up an electorate, or even two, in Wellington? Can they get more MPs into Parliament than ever before, which may still be just a quarter of the number of MPs National look on course to have?
“How long has it taken for us to get climate change to be taken seriously?” Marama Davidson asks.
But does He Waka Eke Noa, “a partnership to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions” that Russel Norman describes as having “almost no impact on actually reducing emissions”, take climate change seriously enough?
And if that’s what Governments do when they’re working with the Greens, imagine a government without Green input.
“Could the Greens work with National?” I ask Shaw and Davidson.
“I think that the Greens have demonstrated that whether we’re in Government or in Opposition we’ve always tried to work constructively with the main parties of Government,” Shaw replies.
But...
“What would we work with them on, because I can’t fathom it. It’s great to hear that Christopher Luxon is personally committed to hitting the net zero target, that’s a big movement from where they were. But they want to get rid of the single most successful policy that we’ve had, which is the Clean Car Discount.
“They want to re-open oil and gas explotation off the Taranaki coastline. They want to defund the entire Government work programme in order to fund their tax cuts. They’re kicking agricultural pricing out another half a decade, given that it’s been 25 years so far. All their actual policies will guarantee that we can’t hit that target.
“It’s like they’re gaslighting us.
“It makes me so angry.”
Anger is an energy, to quote John Lydon.
But what the hell do you do with anger when too much of it drives people away?
And not enough of it looks like acquiescence.
You amass a database of 300,000 people, and you go out, and you knock on door after door after door, and you tell the story of who you are, in all its convergence and divergence, in all its non-centrist complexity, and every single time a door opens, you hope that someone listens.
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