RICARDO MENENDEZ MARCH : CENTRIST POLITICS MASQUERADING AS PROGRESSIVE

Ricardo Menendez March is coordinator for Auckland Action Against Poverty. He's also the Green Party candidate for the seat of Maungakiekie. Despite his attacks on the Labour-led government's welfare policies, he's standing as a candidate for a party that subscribes to a neoliberal model that is only perpetuating and deepening the level of poverty in New Zealand. And when to fight the climate crisis we must break every rule in the free-market playbook, Menendez March is standing for a party that is only prepared to tinker with the lever and dials a bit...

WHILE RICARDO MENENDEZ MARCH, as coordinator for Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) has done a relatively good job representing the immediate interests of beneficiaries and the poor, its difficult to see how he thinks he can advance the fight against poverty as an MP for a Green Party that loyally subscribes to the very neoliberal model that is only perpetuating and deepening the poverty that he is fighting against.

But, just as he did in 2017, Menendez March is standing as a candidate for the Green Party. In 2017 he stood in Phil Goff's old seat of Mt Roskill and came a distant third behind Labour's Michael Woods. This time he's sanding in Maungakiekie, which is currently held by National MP Denise Lee. In 2017 the Green's Chloe Swarbrick ran third, with about eleven percent of the vote.

In 2017 Menendez March said that the Green's were 'campaigning for radical and genuine change in the interests of the vast majority of people, not the privileged few.' But the Green's, under the authoritarian grip of co-leader James Shaw, were in 2017 ,as they are now, an avowedly centrist party. It was unlikely that the Green's were going to campaign for 'radical and genuine change' once they were again safely ensconced in Parliament.

And so it has proved. Rather than campaign for 'radical and genuine change' the Green's have loyally supported a Labour-led government that has pursued neoliberal economic policies that have only deepened the level of poverty in this country. In January last year Oxfam released a report on New Zealand's widening inequality gap that revealed that in 2018 the collective wealth of New Zealand's rich increased by $1.1b while the poorest 50 per cent of New Zealand's population saw their wealth decrease by $1.3b. Despite the obvious economic distress for an increasing number of people, James Shaw as associate finance minister, has consistently talked up New Zealand's 'strong economy'.

This time Menendez March has again borrowed from Jeremy Corbyn claiming that on 'September 19th we have an opportunity to change politics so that it works for all us, not just the wealthy few'. But the problem is that you can't simply suggest that the Green's are somehow left and anti-establishment when the track record of the Green Party is to lean into the status quo. This is the same Green Party that supported the decision of the Labour-led government not to increase core welfare benefits. While Menendez March attacked the government for this decision, Green co-leader and welfare spokesperson Marama Davidson somehow escaped any criticism from him.

Its also misleading to say that the Green Party are leading the fight on climate change when in reality its dragging its heels. When New Zealanders have demonstrated that they want urgent action taken on the climate crisis the Green's, led by Climate Change Minister James Shaw, think we can sleepwalk to supposed carbon neutrality in 2050. Which will be about thirty years too late.  When we really do need transformational change and when we really do need it now, when we really do need to tip over the machine that is eating up the planet, how can the Green's desire to limit the fight to merely tinkering with the system's controls be defined as leading the fight on climate change?

By peddling progressive fantasies about the Green Party, Menendez March is  doing us no favours at all. I'd sit up and listen if he started talking about the obvious deficiencies of capitalism and advocated ecosocialist solutions. I'd sit up and listen if he stopped suggesting that there are market-led solutions to the climate crisis and started advocating a Green New Deal for New Zealand. But, unfortunately, we're getting none of that from Ricardo Menendez March. Given the centrist politics he's actually espousing, he'd fit right into the present parliamentary Green Party.