[Marxism] Green vote in Oz and NZ

[Philip Ferguson]

The Aussie elections have confirmed that there is a Green brand which
can draw 5 - 10 percent of the vote in both Oz and Nz.

In NZ, because of the nature of PR here, a vote of just over 5 percent
gets the Greens at least six seats in the 120-seat parliament.  In fact,
in 1999 they won an electorate seat as well - I think the first time
they ever won an electorate seat anywhere in the world - plus over 5
percent of the vote, so they ended up with 7 seats.  In 2002, they lost
the electorate seat but increased their party vote to over 7 percent and
won 9 seats.

In 2005, they lost some votes, going down to 5.3% and got six seats.

(In Nz, you get two votes: one for your local electorate and one for the
party you want to vote for nationally.  If you reach the 5% threshold of
the party vote you automatically get 5% of the seats in parliament; if
you win an electorate seat you also get seats in parliament commensurate
with your party vote - eg if you win a seat but only get 2.5% of the
party vote, you still get 2.5% of the seats in parliament.)

The Green brand clearly has an electorate in both countries and it's
also clear that a section of left-of-Labour voters choose to vote Green.
However, in NZ the Green vote is certainly not automatically a left
vote.  If you look at the constituencies where they get their best
votes, there is a chunk of wealthy areas and clearly a section of
well-off people who support right-wing economic policies but give their
party vote to the Greens because of concern about GM, food branding,
pollution etc.  They see the Greens as nice (mainly white) middle class
people like themselves.

In NZ, one of the staunchest anti-abortion MPs is a Green.  The Greens
can also almost always be relied on to support NZ imperialism abroad as
long as it is under a 'peace-keeping' guise or has the imprimatur of the
UN.  They are also the chief architects of a reactionary
kiwi-nationalist 'Buy NZ Made' campaign which the government formally
endorses (part of the deal by which the Greens agreed to support the
Labour government; Labour is a minority government with support from the
right-wing nationalist NZ First party and the liberal nationalist
Greens.

On the other hand, one of the Green MPs, Keith Locke, has often played a
useful role in challenging the state and government over civil liberties
issues, from the "anti-terror" legislation to the detention of migrants.
Another Green MP, Sue Bradford, pushed a bill to improve youth rates.
Locke is an ex-Trotskyist and Bradford is an ex-Maoist.

The Greens in NZ have little in the way of a functioning party
organisation.  And, like the other parliamentary parties, they are
overwhelmingly financed by the state.  Numerically, they are very small.
But the brand is one that has a core support base in NZ society of
around 5 percent, with swinging voters sometimes adding an extra percent
or two.

Their political trajectory, overall, has tended to be rightwards.  This
is probably true from the moment they left the (left social-democratic)
Alliance party in the late 1990s and one of the leading Green MPs threw
a champagne party to celebrate getting away from the 'socialists'.

Philip Ferguson