Good day today, Greens got our 14th MP, 10.7% of the party vote, and the largest number of people ever voting Green in NZ history (though of course we wanted more). Two weeks after the election is a good time to reflect on a few issues. The basic problem facing those of us trying to change the Govt was the perception that the Nats are good economic managers. This nonsense is based on : Chc rebuild stimulus; Auckland housing bubble wealth perception effect; Govt borrowing; and temporarily high commodity prices. So it wont last but it was the Nats biggest ally and always meant a change of Govt was difficult. However we had some problems of our own, the Greens billboards and TVs ads werent great but otherwise we ran a pretty good campaign. We can do a lot better and next time we will as we develop as an organisation. Our ground campaign was just the beginning. Labour were a problem again, enough said. And then there was InterMana. IM had a big negative effect on Labour by scaring away people who didnt want a Labour led Govt dependent on Dotcom and Harre. IM had a negative effect on Greens by occupying airspace with their string of negative stories, airspace that might otherwise been available to the Greens. In my opinion, the lesson of IM is that there is no shortcut to progressive social change. We need to build progressive political organisations with democratic processes, grassroots, expert advisors, dispersed financial bases, experienced and deep leadership teams...And we need to do the painstaking process of winning people to our ideas. This last part is critical and takes time. Most of all IM were a distraction from the job of making real and enduring progressive change. The Greens are committed to such a project, join us.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 09:21:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015