Why do the Greens get such an easy ride? Part Two - 50 questions that should have been asked of the Greens

As I wrote previously, it appears the Greens are having a media honeymoon.  However, is this justified?  Do the Greens not have policies that could be seen as controversial?  Do their MPs not make statements that deserve further scrutiny?

Well I have composed a long list of questions I think journalists should ask, and more importantly questions YOU should ask your local Green candidate, especially if you are thinking about voting Green.   You may wonder if the Greens are quite so cuddly and inoffensive as the media makes them out to be.

So here it is - 50 questions to ask the Green Party (and one light-hearted one at the end)

My only other question is, why hasn't anyone else been asking them?...

Does your Treaty of Waitangi policy that “All claimants to have the opportunity to have their land and resources returned to them” include claims of private land?  If not, why is that not clear?

Do the Greens still believe Sue Kedgley’s claim that it is wrong to “shift responsibility for health and improving diets from the state to society and to convince people that public health is all about personal responsibility"?  If so, how do see the state leading responsibility for people changing their diets, how would the state adequately replace personal responsibility?

What are “all reasonable steps to prevent immigration numbers and the sale of land to rich immigrants from having an adverse impact on Aotearoa/NZ and its Taonga.”?  How can they have an adverse impact?  What is a rich immigrant?  What will an immigrant do to land than a locally born New Zealander wouldn't? 

How does the Green Party plan to implement its policy to ”Minimise exposure to electromagnetic radiation especially for children and pregnant women”?  How many TV and radio stations would you shut down?  Will you want to close wifi networks at schools and home?  Will you demand children and pregnant women not use laptops, TVs or any other electrical appliance?  Will you demand all homes with children and pregnant women to be outside mobile phone coverage?  Does the party understand how pervasive EMR is and has been for decades?  Does it understand that visible light is electromagnetic radication, and if not, how can anyone trust the Greens on science in other fields?

Do the Greens still believe it is ok to frighten people about non-ionising radiation from mobile phone towers, despite the complete absence of evidence about negative health effects? Is it appropriate for the leader of a major political party to engage in name calling when someone calls him out on not scaremongering Radio NZ transmitter sites, which emit more of the same type of radiation and have done so for decades?

Do the Greens still believe there is a media conspiracy against them on this issue because telcos advertise in the media? What evidence do they have of this?  Could it just be that your science is extremely flimsy and the media refuses to engage with such ignorance?

Do the Greens trust potatoes still, or do they stand by Jeanette Fitzsimon’s press release of 1999 that it was then "the last Xmas when you could trust potatoes"?  Wasn’t all of the fuss over genetic engineering in 2002 just scaremongering?  How many people have been killed, hurt or harmed by genetic engineering anywhere in the world? 

What do the Greens mean about  “Recognise ancestral land ownership in rural areas” for Maori?  Why shouldn’t private land owners in rural areas be worried?  What will you stop them doing?  What isn't recognised now?

What did Catherine Delahunty mean when she said that the Pakeha nation is "racist"?  Does she stand by her use of the term “genocidal spindoctors” to describe National Party speechwriters in 2005?  Does she stand by her hope that Maori will be the largest cultural grouping in New Zealand by the late 21^st century?  Is this also Green policy?  Why is it that other parties don't care about the ethnic composition of the country?

When Catherine Delahunty said “We have plenty of beaten women; gutted communities and whanau living in state housing that have never had proper electricity or water supplies. But lots of Pakeha are drinking wine and surfing, and they say so loudly without saying a word, would you please shut up about the connection between racism and poverty” is she blaming Pakeha for Maori women being beaten up?  Why are Pakeha who drink wine and surf to blame for beaten women?

Do the Greens agree with Catherine Delahunty when she describes Pakeha as having "colonial privilege" even if they were born in New Zealand?  At what point can Pakeha be described by Catherine Delahunty as being equal to Maori as New Zealand citizens with equal rights, if ever?  Do you think Pakeha voters of the Greens know that you believe that?

Do the Greens agree with Kennedy Graham when he said “The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.”?  What political rights does he think should be “calibrated” and what does he mean by that?  When he said “Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed, but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living”, what freedoms do the Greens want to “licence”?  What individual freedoms must be subordinate?

Don’t the Greens think Kennedy Graham flying to London to discuss climate change at taxpayers’ expense is remarkably hypocritical?  How many more long haul flights will Green MPs seek to undertake to support fighting climate change and why?

Does the Green Party still share the view of Sue Kedgley that “We need to challenge the doctrine of free trade and accept that people's right to food, to be free from hunger, must have priority over an ideological fixation on allowing market forces to prevail at all costs” so abandoning New Zealand’s long standing bi-partisan trade policy goal of opening up markets to its agricultural products?  Does it share her view supporting the official French policy to effectively continue the EU’s highly subsidised highly protectionist Common Agricultural Policy?  Does it believe that free trade actually really means highly subsidising exports?  If so, why? What future do the Greens see in New Zealand's farming sector if farmers face a world that is protectionist, subsidised and engaging in "food sovereignty" policies?  

Why is it good value for taxpayers to have spent $1.3 billion on a railway that private companies would only have paid a quarter of that for?  Why do you think the private sector hasn't bothered investing in it, despite you being convinced of "peak oil" and that the end of mass use of the private car and road transport is nigh?

Do the Greens still think that it was appropriate to blame the Brisbane floods on climate change linked to the coal exported from Queensland, as if Queensland was getting its just desserts?

How do the Greens think that making membership of student unions voluntary “takes away choices”?  Isn’t it the exact opposite?  Would you think differently of student unions if they had been  hot beds of free market capitalist and pro-entrepreneurial activism?  Doesn't this make you claims about believing in human rights superficial?

The Greens want to force electricity companies to generate a proportion of their power from expensive renewable sources.  In the UK a similar policy is estimated to be putting up prices by an average of 50% in real terms by 2020, with a fully privatised sector. How much will this policy of renewables put up power prices to New Zealanders? 

When Metiria Turei says “We need to get smokes out of our homes and out of our shops” what will you do to achieve this? Do you really want to stop the sale of tobacco products altogether? Why don’t you have the same attitude towards marijuana?  Why don’t you think tobacco smokers should be left alone? 

Do the Greens still believe Don Brash wants to smash Maori culture and force women to be subservient?  Do you have any evidence for such exagerrated claims?

How will the Greens “Support equitable access for Māori to secure employment and decent wages”? How do Maori not have equitable access?  Who is stopping them? 

Do you think Maori can be racist? Why do you think people of Maori descent should be given different political structures from those of other citizens? Why do you think this should be constitutionally entrenched?  Why should the accident of your birth determine how the state interacts with or consults with you?

How does offering Maori the same democratic rights as all other citizens shut them out of participation?

What examples do the Greens have of “unnecessary production and consumption”, and how do they propose to curb them?  Will this mean banning the production and sale of certain goods?  If so, what ones?

What products will be banned when the Greens implement their policy to  “Require domestic and imported products to be durable and recyclable”? Does this mean every producer of goods that are neither will be regulated out of business?  Does this mean no New Zealander could import a product that is neither durable nor recyclable?  Doesn't this ban anything perishable?

What exactly is "hugely harmful" to the public in private companies being contracted by local government to manage water services?  Where in the world has this proven to be the case?

Does the Green party still believe all of the Cuban government’s claims that its health care system is fantastic?  Is it in the habit of believing the official reports of one party states that imprison political dissidents as mental patients?  Why is Cuba exempt from the sort of scrutiny on human rights that the Greens apply to China or Burma?

Why do the Greens think parental choice of schools is a myth?  Why do they think the state always knows what’s best in education?

When you want to “Ensure all new houses and buildings fully comply with disability access requirements unless specifically exempted.”  Will this mean anyone building a house on a hill about a road having to build a ramp or lift unless they get a special exemption from a bureaucracy?  Wont this make it prohibitively expensive to build homes anywhere that isn't on flat land adjacent to a road?  Wont this just increase the price of homes and reduce the supply?

When the Greens want to regulate broadcasting and the press with an authority that will “have the power to impose appropriate sanctions against media outlets in cases where it can be clearly demonstrated that it has exhibited wilful or negligent abuse of power and by doing so has either visited material harm on another party or pursued its own self-interest at the expense of the public interest.”, what examples of the media pursuing its own self interest do they have in mind? Doesn’t this mean introducing newspaper censorship in New Zealand for the first time in decades?

Why do the Greens fear foreign investment?  Do you share this fear of New Zealanders owning land and businesses in other countries, if not why not?  Why do you want to welcome refugees and migrants from all and sundry, but if anyone from another country wants to own a business, you treat them like the devil?

More specifically, what was the security threat posed by a Canadian company buying a New Zealand airport?  Should the British government be fearful that New Zealand company Infratil owns Prestwick Airport near Glasgow for the same reasons?

The Greens repeatedly criticise the trade choices made by New Zealanders in such banal terms as “swapping water with China”.  What exports do the Greens want stopped? What imports do they want stopped? Why do they think they know best what people should sell and buy?

Does the party’s support for taxpayer funding of the voluntary sector not make it the state sector?  Why should taxpayers be forced to support political advocacy groups?

What are the implications of “Requiring the inclusion of environmental science and ethics in all study programs.” involving science education?  Why is this relevant to physics for example?

What does “Support legislation that increases the reliability of the Internet” mean?  How do the Greens propose improving the reliability of a disaggregated global network by a law passed in New Zealand?  Can you pass laws to fix most problems?

Why do the Greens think that if central government doesn’t tell primary schools how to teach arts,science, technology, or physical education, that the schools are incapable ofknowing what or how to teach?  Does only the Ministry of Education know how to write a curriculum?

How many other traffic laws do the Greens endorse breaking besides walking on a motorway?

Do the Greens still stand by the view of Sue Kedgley that heavy freight be forced to go by rail?  Do the Greens still believe it is ok for their MPs to make speeches that are full of errors, hyperboles and misrepresentations?

Does Russel Norman still think that if customers of a shop want plastic bags, the shop shouldn’t offer them?  How is that democratic decision making?

Does Russel Norman stick to his belief that the London riots were caused by poverty, not opportunistic criminals seeking designer goods and electronics?

Do the Greens support the view of their blogger “Toad” that democracy doesn’t have to be secular, or liberal, and that it’s “ok” if democracies start a war if the people support it?  In which case, would the Greens support a Christian theocratic state that sent troops to Iran if it was democratically elected?

If the Greens think there should be fruit in schools, why don’t they set up a charity to raise money for it?  In fact, why don’t they ever advocate people raise money themselves voluntarily rather than make taxpayers pay?

When you expect that “significant time for environmental education” will be included in the teacher training curriculum, what should be excluded from the curriculum to allow for this?

Why do you think small business owners should be criminalised because they want to open on a religiously based public holiday?  How do owner-operator shops with no employees exploit people by merely opening their shops for people to choose to enter?

Why is it that a New Zealand Government following the US when a Republican is a President is “imperialism” but when a Democrat is a President, New Zealand should follow the US which is “leading the way”? Isn't it just about what policies you like and dislike? 

Why do you dismiss electric cars so flippantly, but treat electric trains as being the saviour to all of Auckland’s transport problems?  What proportion of trips in Auckland do you expect will be by train by 2014?

Do the Greens still support a Hamilton-Auckland train service, even though it would be slower than a bus, lose money and the local authorities wont pay for it? 

What’s Green about banning foreign ships that happen to be going from port to port within New Zealand as part of an international voyage, from selling empty space to carry cargo around New Zealand –when the ships would still be sailing regardless?  Isn't that policy just about pleasing militant  maritime unions?

The Greens paint a picture of the environment getting worse,and Russel Norman selectively quotes the Environment 2007 report from the Ministry for the Environment to support stopping road building, even though the report does not say that and provides plenty of facts that are inconvenient such as “Home heating is the main cause of air pollution in populated areas in the winter”  yet the Greens beat up on cars and trucks. The report also said  “Levels of PM10 particulates at roadside locations in Auckland appear to have fallen over the past 10 years”.  Why does a party that purports to be about the environment ignore good news about it?

Do any of you laugh at Catherine Delahunty’s tweets too? Like “Despite the pretty words and new clothes am hoping new puppy at white house will stop killing afghanis and funding Israel wars on Palestine"?

So ask yourself if the Greens DO get around 10% of the vote on Saturday, how much they might have got if a few of those questions had been asked over the campaign, or the past few years, and why the mainstream media seems to have its tongue up the Green Party's proverbial.  Moreover, ask yourself why the National Party hasn't been doing that - is it because it has seen this party as a partner?  If you're planning to vote National, how will you feel if that is exactly what happens?

P.S.  Go here, register instantly and tick an up for this post if you like what you see, it seems the obvious people have been doing the opposite (and I have inspired over 100 comments there).

Why do the Greens get such an easy ride? Part One

With so much going on in the world (Syria, Eurozone, Egypt), it is unsurprising that I have seen no coverage in foreign media about the NZ election.  It is National's election to lose.  The Nats have played the traditional role they always have done well - upset no one - look confident, even though the record in Christchurch alone should send fears down the spines of any business owner, the mainstream media (MSM) has been absymal in confronting this issue.  The performance there has been an utter disgrace, to the point where I think anyone who ticks National who thinks she is supporting a pro-business, less government, is at best naive, at worst wilfully blind.

Labour is, understandably, lacking fire under Phil Goff.  A man who I think was probably too good to be leader of the Labour Party, as he didn't feed the vile envy laden, nasty bullying streak that has characterised the Party under Clark - until the latest round of campaign leaflets, which are a shadow of what is now seen in the repulsive self-indulgent and deliberately self-serving nihilism of Sam Mahon.  Imagine if a similar image had been painted of Helen Clark. Yet, he has been unable to attack the Nats convincingly because most of his team are waiting to do to him what was done to Mike Moore after the 1993 election.   Goff is on the right of the Labour Party, an anomaly at best as the last inheritor of those who had their fingers coloured by participating in Rogernomics.  He can't convincingly argue against asset sales, especially since he was in the Cabinet that sold 100% of Air New Zealand, Telecom and Postbank originally.

Beyond the two horse race, most of the attention on ACT has been about the John Key/John Banks meeting and a recording of it - trivia par excellence - and the loud campaign by ACT and National to promote support of Banks in Epsom, and the equally loud call by Labour and the Greens to back, the National candidate in Epsom.  I've already said I believe ACT should also have pushed for electorate votes for Don Brash in North Shore, given Wayne Mapp has retired from the seat.  ACT has fumbled this campaign and faces a media hostile to it on an almost tribal basis.  Compared to National, ACT could offer a change, but not one the media is interested in telling.

The Mana Party/Maori Party show is not getting that much national/non-Maori media attention, although there is a surfeit of material on the Mana Party mob that should render them unelectable (and frighten people if they are not).  However, beyond that the media loves giving Winston Peters the oxygen of publicity to try to bring him down and he loves that the media does it.   It is like a pantomine show, where he gets portrayed almost as a villain, and thrives on it with his shrinking geriatric racist Muldoonist voting base.   Nothing Winston likes more than proving the media wrong, and casting his supporters as heroes for rejecting what the media says of him.

Yet the real winner in all of this looks like being the Greens.  The Greens have, once again, become media darlings.  It's not because the environment is really an issue that would explain the "brand attractiveness".  After all, the words nuclear, GE or even global warming are not exactly important to most voters at the moment.   What it looks like is that the Greens have targeted disgruntled and uninspired Labour voters, on the basis that Labour looks almost certain not to lead the next government.    However, what is also shows is that the mainstream media is giving the Greens a very easy run - topped off most recently by TV3 broadcasting a documentary on child poverty in New Zealand, most certainly presented from a strong leftwing point of view.  Indeed, had TV3 broadcast a documentary that was how high taxation and regulation stymied growth (like John Stossel's series comparing Hong Kong with India) it would be accused of being in the pocket of ACT.

However, all is fair in politics if it is your side doing it.  Yet according to research by the University of Canterbury on the election media coverage up till the halfway point, the media coverage of the Greens has been more positive than for any other party.  51.5% of its total coverage has been positive.  On top of that, coverage of the Greens has been higher than for any other minor party at 9.7%.  

Why is that and is it justified?

On the why, it is rather easy to see.   Party names are potent brands, and only some of the parties have names that lend themselves to instantly reflecting the image they want.   Greens, NZ First, Maori and Mana are the clearest.  Labour is less obvious, but still fairly clear.  National is meaningless (there are no regional parties after all), and the acronym ACT means little to most.  So the Greens start off with a name that is instantly linked to trees, pastures, rivers, lakes and wide open spaces - the types of things many New Zealanders have affection for.   On top of that, it is the only party name that can also be used as a collective noun for its caucus and membership.  Nobody says the Nationals or the Labours or the ACTs.  

So "brand Green" is pretty special, this potency was seen in 1990 when the Greens got 6.85% of the vote under First Past the Post, with relatively little publicity, beating New Labour under Jim Anderton (who still won his own seat).

The images that brand cogitates with reporters are instantly positive, indeed so positive it seems almost counter-intuitive to go against them.  How can one oppose or attack people who love clean air, oceans, rivers, and animals?   It's not just emotive, it can even be seen as rational, given the love of the outdoors and the obvious value of unpolluted air and water.   I think for many reporters that is enough, and to be seen to attacking the Greens may be like attacking parks, pets, home cooking, grandparents and so many things that are "good".

Beyond the brand, the Greens themselves carefully nurture policies and principles that at a high level can appeal to many.   Besides being against pollution (who isn't?) and supporting endangered species (who argues against endangered species?), the Greens carry simple, easy to understand messages that are difficult, on the face of it, to fight.

Who wants to be against peace and peaceful dispute resolution?  The Greens are against war, it takes a hardy soul to be in favour of war when necessary.   Statements like "we shouldn't be involved in other countries' wars" require some effort to claim "what about our allies" and then rebut the string of questions around "What did the Afghans ever do to New Zealand".  Most reporters aren't up to that or delve into a foreign policy agenda that is decidedly apart from Australia and the Western world.

The Greens talk passionately about addressing child poverty.  Children suffering, who will openly attack policies aimed at that, without having to be seriously armed on the philosophical and economic fronts?  The Greens wont say loud that this is resolved by taxpayers spending more on social welfare benefits and giving poor people who breed more money from others. 

The Greens talk of full employment, about meaningful jobs, about increased incomes, about better health and education, about communities, about all of the things that most people find it hard to disagree with at a high level.  What reporter dares think that unemployment is good, that health and education should be worse or that communities aren't important?   However, the Greens don't emphasise the need for much more government spending, and tax revenue to pay for it, nor how they would regulate employment and employers.

The Greens talk of "fairness" "equity" and other carefully honed words that describe and define little, but are general phrases that are again difficult to confront directly for most reporters.   Pushing lower taxes for the poor (and higher taxes for the rich), looks fair to those raised on a basic diet of believing in egalitarianism.   The idea that the poor should be helped, and that society should be "fairer" is powerfully simple to promote, it is rather more difficult to dig underneath that to see what it really means.   Again, the Greens are clever to talk about their goals much more than the means, the goals are more generally accepted than the means - increasing welfare payments.

The Greens talk about "investing" taxpayers money (but they never mention that part) on things that are also hard for reporters to criticise, like "renewable energy", railway lines, schools and the rather amorphous "jobs" in "green industries" and "green businesses".   The Greens are less loud about cutting spending on road maintenance (they will happily talk about a handful of big road projects that would be stopped, as if that would save enough money), or the need to spend more on subsidies for renewable energy and trains, or exactly who or where these "green industries" are, or what happens to the other industries in an environment of much more regulation and tax.

Beyond that, the Greens also seem nationalistic, playing on some of the strings Winston Peters is happy to pluck.  They paint foreign ownership, foreign investors and imports as negative, dark, pernicious and taking "our" jobs, and taking "our" money away to go overseas - that distant, unfamiliar place where we can't protect, regulate or look after our interests.  This is caught in the word "sovereignty".  Who argues against having sovereignty?   Yet, do the Greens ever face a challenge to their rather fanciful notion that has malignant notions of "them" (foreign investors) and "us" (New Zealanders), or that an exporting trading nation can hardly close itself to the world, or it faces not being able to afford what it produces?

The "non-violence" label is one they use themselves, but it never gets challenged that this belief in non-violence doesn't extend to violently breaking and entering property and occupying it, and the violence of the state regulating and taxing, is not seen as violence at all, but as the people exercising their democratic sovereignty.  The image very deliberately put out by the likes of Jeanette Fitzsimons, but now Metiria Turei and Russel Norman is one of friendly, smiling, thoughtful, engaging people, people who wouldn't hurt a fly - not people eager to get their hands on power and to use the state to be as interventionist as Rob Muldoon was in his heyday. 

Finally, the Greens are keen to call out labels of negativity to support those they claim are oppressed by the major parties.  "Racist", "sexist", "blaming victims" is how the Greens respond to policies that they disagree with, if the impacts appear to be higher on certain groups.  Criticising such points takes some effort.   However, the Greens are very strongly supportive of government spending, institutions and authorities that are race based.  The Greens tend not to emphasise any of this, for they probably know that this doesn't go down well with most voters.

The easy ride is something the Greens have masterfully managed to manufacture.   It is obvious to anyone with some political nous that the Greens are far to the left of the Labour Party, yet the mainstream media persists in discussing the idea that there could be some accommodation between the Greens and the National Party.  Not that both parties wouldn't think about it on some level, the Nats will negotiate with anyone except Winston, and the Greens would argue that if they can make some progress on a major issue for them (e.g. RMA or transport), it would be worth it.

Yet a look at Green press releases, commentary and policies over the past few years should have induced investigative journalism into exactly what the party means by certain statements, it should have put all sorts of claims of fact under scrutiny and it should have resulted in the Green brand not looking as unsullied as it is - especially compared to other parties.   Take simple points such as how the Greens advocate non violence and democracy, yet fought to deny university students the right to decide whether they wanted to join a student union.   The Green policy of having a new state regulatory institution for print and broadcast (and presumably online) media that could "impose appropriate sanctions against media outlets in cases where it can be clearly demonstrated that it has exhibited wilful or negligent abuse of power and by doing so has either visited material harm on another party or pursued its own self-interest at the expense of the public interest" should have been highlighted, as it literally means a state bureaucracy censoring the press.  What is "abuse of power"?  The right to decide what you broadcast or print?  What is "material harm"?  Reduced the reputation and membership of a voluntary organisation?  What is "the public interest"?  Whatever the government of the day thinks it is?

So it is time a long list of questions were asked of the Green Party.  Questions voters should see, and that Green MPs and candidates should respond to, and be expected to be questioned about.   For a party that looks like having its best ever result in a general election, and looking to be a serious coalition partner for a future government, the "public interest" demands no less.  It would also be a welcome shift in attention from the childish side-shows around Winston Peters and the Johns' "cup of coffee".  The fact that papers and broadcast media haven't done so, doesn't surprise me, but it is no excuse for it.   Traditional Labour supporters who think they are getting a friendlier, cuddlier version of Labour may think twice, and first time voters might learn that, as in advertising private businesses, marketing does not mean all is as it seems.   I will attempt to raise some of these questions in the coming days...