It’s not easy being teal, as James Shaw now knows all too well

Sunday, 5 May 2024

Vernon Small is a journalist and former adviser to the Labour government.

OPINION: Some leaders have to be shoe-horned out of the job, either by their allies or, less often, by their foes.

Others know when it is time to go, but do so with a mix of relief and regrets.

Greens co-leader James Shaw, in his valedictory speech, gave relief top billing.

He may have been underplaying it.

Shaw and I live on the same street (but as is the Wellington way, hundred of metres apart on a road of three parts) and I bumped into him on the day Chlöe Swarbrick replaced him as leader.

As he skipped down the hill, looking at his watch, he said with theatrical precision, “I’ve been free for an hour and sixteen minutes.”

For all his lightness of mood, Shaw’s leaving took from the Greens its greatest electoral asset, except perhaps for Swarbrick. As well as his other attributes – smarts and negotiating skills - he also appealed beyond the party’s natural base to a small but significant slice of the centre-right pie.

But as he left Parliament this week, he tossed over his shoulder the old perennial - a possible deal with National.

He even suggested, in an interview with TVNZ’s Q+A programme, that the bulk of activists at a Dunedin meeting he attended thought the door could be opened for talks with the old enemy.

That has always had champions within the party.

And from the other side of the political fence, there are frequent yearnings for a “purer” environmental party, without the strong strain of social justice mixed with left-wing policies of the current Greens, that the centre-right could deal with.

National has often talked up its blue-green credentials, without gaining much traction with the voters. Nor has a viable blue-green dream party ever emerged to challenge the broader-based Greens.

The argument usually goes that, like NZ First, such a party could swing right or left, winning significant policy concessions by negotiating from a position of greater independence.

During the Greens’ early years as a parliamentary party, that was never really a goer. For election after election, they hovered in the barely sustainable 4-7% share of the vote, repeatedly threatened with exclusion from the House if they fell under the 5% MMP threshold.

During those years, tactical voting by left-wing voters, aiming to ensure Labour had a potential coalition partner, that Green votes were not “wasted” and that a message was sent to Labour, were seen as critical to the party cresting the threshold.

Flirting with National would have been an existential risk, because Labour-leaning tactical voters, not to mention many Green activists, would have decamped at any suggestions of a deal with National over Labour.

A possible “Teal Deal” did become a serious debate in 2006, when dreadlocked Green MP Nandor Tanczos, as part of his pitch for the co-leadership, floated the idea of greater flexibility to work with National or Labour. But he was defeated in the leadership race by Russel Norman.

When Labour was turfed out of office in 2008, the Greens did sign a one-term memorandum of understanding with the Key government in exchange for input into energy and home insulation initiatives. But they had little power because John Key didn’t need their votes for a majority.

The question now is whether things have changed in terms of tactical voting after the 11.6% the Greens won at the 2023 election, and with their polling numbers consistently in the 9-12% range.

The outcome of the election did raise some beguiling mathematics. A Greens deal with Labour and Te Pāti Māori would not deliver a majority, but only National and the Greens could form a two-party majority government.

The argument runs that the Greens could have squeezed ACT and NZ First out of power by dealing with National.

Wouldn’t it be better to win some limited concessions rather than abandon the field to the other side, allowing policies that nauseate Green voters?

In reality it was all but impossible. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had ruled it out (not because of Shaw, so much as other Green MPs).

Shaw, with his instincts to reach across the aisle that delivered bipartisan support for the Zero Carbon Act, said he would have taken a call from Luxon.

But the Greens gave no indication they were open to that during the campaign, and it could have sparked a repeat of the internal uprising that saw Shaw temporarily tipped out of the leadership in 2022.

Campaigning on a bob-each-way centrist position would probably be suicide for the Greens.

But the 2023 election maths suggest a third way – a strong guarantee of a deal with Labour and Te Pāti Māori if the numbers fell that way, but otherwise a willingness to talk with National.

It is probably too cute, though.

How much of the current fast-track laws, National’s tax cuts, environmental concessions to business and farmers, squeezes on beneficiaries or any number of other policies could the Greens find common ground on?

It is hard, too, to see what would be in it for National to dump their natural allies in favour of the Greens just for a simpler majority in the House.

“We are dancing with the Greens, see you in 2026,” is a dumb plan.

But it is no longer Shaw’s concern.

He has shed his party membership card, pirouetted out the door, and quick-stepped back to the corporate world, leaving others to figure out if teal could ever be the new green.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.