WHERE DOES THE GREEN PARTY REALLY STAND ON A GREEN NEW DEAL?

The Green Party has joined the newly-formed Global Alliance for a Green New Deal even though it has consistently refused to join the call for a Green New Deal for New Zealand.

THE GREEN PARTY, under the conservative leadership of James Shaw and Marama Davidson, has consistently ignored local calls for New Zealand to implement a Green New Deal. As Jess Berentson-Shaw noted before the 2020 election:

'So far no Green New Deal has emerged in New Zealand despite growing calls for this more substantive approach to addressing our current crises. This election we see at best a group of individual policies from the main parties on climate change or conservation that don’t go anywhere near creating a vision of a country that has responded to climate change effectively in the timeframe that is required. There is no clear pathway laid out that articulates the upstream issues or solutions that a Green New Deal covers.'

Such has been the Green Party's antipathy toward a GND it has remained unmoved by overseas attempts to promote the GND. Many have been inspired by the push for a GND in the United States. Based around congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's ambitious plan to completely remake the American economy, it has been described by one economist as 'a welcome attempt to  reset the agenda for economic  and social policy in favour of labour in America, for the first time since the New Deal of the 1930s.'

But AOC remains persona non grata among a parliamentary Green Party that remains lukewarm to hostile to her socialist politics. This is a Green Party that continues to protect corporate interests and insists that its 'people' - you and I - who are responsible for climate change rather than our present economic system.

Similarly the Green Party had nothing to say when the UK Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn adopted a GND as part of its economic manifesto. Perhaps the Green's agreed with Finance Minister Grant Robertson's claim  that UK Labour's 'left wing policies would not necessarily work in New Zealand'.

But  despite the fact that it has consistently refused to join the call for New Zealand to adopt a GND the Green Party has joined newly-formed Global Alliance for a Green New Deal. The Alliance aims to advance 'the creation of a greener, fairer world where all people and the planet can flourish,'

The twenty-one founding members include Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson.

The Alliance says that it would 'redesign economies so that never again can so much be hoarded by so few' and that it 'will channel the investment needed to transform our homes and buildings, industry, energy, manufacturing, land, agriculture, and the systems of care that support us all to meet the challenges of the crisis in climate and nature'.

The declaration of the Alliance stands in opposition to the neoliberal and market-led policies of our Labour Government and which the Green Party has signed up for and continues to defend.

The Green Party now finds itself in the awkward position of joining a call for an international GND while opposing such a deal domestically. Indeed the Green Party's continued loyalty to a failed market environmentalism contradicts its support for the Global Alliance that understands that our present economic system is incompatible with the needs of the planet and that we need to 'prioritise people and the planet over profits'.