The Greens are Bloody Muppets [New Zealand Politics]
Our Green Party has decided to gift its quota of parliamentary questions to National.
As a bit of background, we currently have a coalition government between Labour and New Zealand First, which relies on the support of the Greens to stay in office. So while the Greens aren’t formally part of The Government(TM), they are on the team, and do have Ministers outside Cabinet. New Zealand, as a Westminster democracy, has a Question Time session of Parliament, where the different parties get to ask questions of the Ministers. Unsurprisingly, this means that Government MPs ask questions that make the Government look good, while Opposition MPs ask questions that make the Government look bad.
The Greens have decided that asking ‘patsy’ questions to make Labour and New Zealand First look good is pointless, so have gone and given their share of questions (some 42 a year) to the opposition National Party. Their reasoning for hurting the left-wing Government they claim to support, and helping the right-wing Opposition they claim to oppose? Supposedly, the Government needs held to account, even when they support it.
In short, New Zealand’s Green Party are a bunch of naive muppets.
If ‘patsy’ questions are pointless, then so are the ‘gotcha’ ones the Nats will be firing across. All this does is give the National Party more airtime and more visibility, and if Labour and New Zealand First are being “held to account” under this decision, it will only be from the Right, not the Left. One could, for instance, ask questions about trade deals, climate change, or inequality – but the Nats won’t be doing that. Their questions will be about areas of concern to the Right.
Now it may be argued that the Greens asking any sort of critical question might lead to destructive speculation about a rift between Labour and the Greens – only National can safely ask a critical question. To which I would note that the distinction between ‘patsy’ and ‘attack’ questions is not a binary thing: one can construct a question that clarifies what the Government is doing without making it seem like the Greens are about to bring everything crashing down. These guys are politicians, for goodness sake: fudging wording is what they do.
But if the Greens are still so terrified of the dreaded media spin (“OMG! Greens attack Labour!”), the obvious solution is to do what Jeremy Corbyn did in Britain, and ‘outsource’ questions to the public. That way, one can safely ask critical questions of the Government – and hold them to account – while hiding behind a cosy veneer of impartiality (“these are not our questions; they’re the public’s!”). Easy. As it is, there will be media spin from this decision, playing up the possibility of a future deal between National and the Greens – which will only hurt the Greens. Meanwhile, Labour can be forgiven for preferring another deal with New Zealand First after 2020, if parliamentary numbers stack up, with zero concessions to the Greens.
The cherry on top of this cake of stupidity? The Greens have Ministers outside Cabinet – but those Ministers can still be asked questions. So the Greens aren’t just giving National space to attack Labour and New Zealand First – they are giving National space to attack the Greens too.
As I’ve said, the Greens are a bunch of naive muppets on this issue. They will be bloody lucky to get back into parliament after the next election at this rate.
A Phuulish Fellow 