CHLOE SWARBRICK : OH, BEHAVE!

Green MP Chloe Swarbrick wants the affairs of the political establishment conducted in a more polite manner. So revolution is off the agenda then?

THE CRISIS OF our democracy is such is that we now have a representative democracy that is neither representative or democratic. Such has been the steady convergence of views, Parliament is now occupied by political parties who all share a loyalty to neoliberalism and 'the market'.

Even at a time of a deepening economic recession, folk are being offered little in the way of choice at the ballot box. When fundamental change is required, the political parties presently occupying Parliament are offering nothing more than a commitment to rebuilding the status quo and 'business as usual'. There will be no overturning of the neoliberal model.

None of this is of any interest to Green MP Chloe Swarbrick though. Something of a liberal darling with commentators who like to think of themselves as being down with progressive politics, her main concern is that the affairs of our unrepresentative democracy are not being conducted in a polite and orderly manner. She told the NZ Herald:

'Parliament is a toxic culture that chews people up and spits them out. You become inhuman and disconnected from the people you purport to represent.'

Chloe Swarbrick might be complaining about Parliament's 'toxic culture' right now, but that hasn't stopped either her or her fellow Green MP's from politely supporting a neoliberal Labour-led Government that has done little to arrest New Zealand's growing level of inequality and deepening poverty.

Swarbrick, who has never expressed any interest in socialist politics, has little to offer in the way of a political and economic alternative. She is reduced to complaining about the behaviour of her fellow parliamentarians. At a time when tens of thousands of people are doing it hard, it smacks of self-indulgence and a failure to understand that the reason she is feeling disconnected from the people she claims to represent is because our representative democracy has been captured by a plutocracy and not because of any 'toxic culture'.