A bloody elephant

I don’t believe I have ever, since arriving at voting age, voted Tory – in NZ that is the National Party.  My father regarded it as axiomatic that one would and should vote National.  He had got it into his head that, by and large, Labour (Socialist) MPs, by definition without private means, needed to be employed by the state and to draw a salary as MPs in order to eat.  National MPs by contrast were generally free of the need for any extra income, and were therefore in politics solely for the nation’s good.  

I knew when I first heard him propound this that it was utter humbug.   My sister votes National because she thinks they are “safe hands” and that is what matters.   I have always voted Labour, mainly because of their impressive history in NZ and because, at their best, they are genuinely principled.  Of course there have always been some ratbags and opportunists.  But now, ere the next general election in late 2014, I will have turned 80.  I find I am very tempted by the Greens. 

One of the many reasons is that they attract such contempt and vitriol from the Tories and others that, as it seems to me, they must be doing something right.  It is almost as though the powerful commercial interests and the diehard conservatives and “Right To Rule” lot, the “Natural Party of Government”, are actually afraid of the Greens.  The Greens, being so often factually and inconveniently correct, telling the truth, actually impede things the powerful want to do.  So you caricature them, ridicule, laugh contemptuously, make jokes about muesli – above all, avoid the issues.

It’s interesting…  As I write, a small flotilla of protest boats has arrived off the North Island’s west coast where the major oil consortium Andarko proposes to drill into the seabed.  Oil prospecting off our coast horrifies me, not only for its clear environmental dangers, but also for the fact that we do need to find alternatives to fossil fuels.  The Greens and others were prepared to confront the oil rig and its ancillary craft – but the rig failed to show up.  Well, well, well…   Maybe it will still come up over the horizon. 

Scoffing at principles and idealists has been a pleasant sport for as long as I can remember.  Cynics and realists are the ones who get rich and wield power.  But now it seems clear enough that all this is destroying the world our grandchildren will inherit. 

Climate change is not my specialty.  But to this layman observer it seems that extreme weather events are more frequent and more severe, with more consequences. It may very soon spiral out of control – well, control is clearly already an illusion.

So...  It is important now to deny political power to the climate change deniers and the remaining scientific mavericks on the bastions – as also to those who don’t care one way or another, so long as they get what they want and hang the consequences.  It is important to remove the pompous, comfortable and powerful from politics, to challenge their rule at every point. 

 I can see very well that the Green Party includes some wackos, vegetarians, millenarians, and women with no bras.  (Yes, OK, I’ll come quietly…)

I also have problems with the sanctity accorded to the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Reo.  Maori plundered the environment in their own ways, long ago, and without hindrance.  Our environment’s collapse will be without regard to ethnic status.

Then there is the latest spectacle of our Prime Minister, John Key, at CHOGM in Sri Lanka.  Yes, he assured us, he was certainly going to get tough about human rights and the hideous abuse thereof over many years in Sri Lanka.  He was going to confront the president about that very thing.  But in the event, smiling plausible John toned it all down in the interests of money, trade and Fonterra – and gratefully received the gift of an elephant for the Auckland Zoo.  Isn’t that wonderful!  Just what we need.  A bloody elephant.