Image: Sir Anon/Green Party NZ
Summarised by Centrist
Journalist Graham Adams casts an eye over Chlöe Swarbrick’s role as co-leader of the Green Party during its “annus horribilis”.
He calls her rise “a very public baptism in disaster management”.
Adams writes that Swarbrick is stepping into the role in a year that has seen her party’s ranks thinned by a series of unfortunate events.
The death of Efeso Collins, the resignation of James Shaw, and the public outburst by Julie Anne Genter have all added to the party’s woes. The ongoing saga involving Darleen Tana, who remains in Parliament despite instructions to leave, continues to create turmoil.
He describes the party’s support for transgender ideology and other policies as “an incoherent grab-bag of contemporary ‘social justice’ issues,” leading to public scepticism.
Also, the party’s stance on climate change is now seen by many as impractical and out of touch:
“The ramping-up of emotive rhetoric has been in inverse proportion to the electorate’s diminishing appetite for more climate doomsterism.”
He writes that the sentencing of Golriz Ghahraman for theft of some very expensive clothes and her departure from court in a gas guzzling ute is ironically symbolic:
“That is what poses the biggest existential threat to the Greens: the growing perception they are — despite their lofty rhetoric about principles and morals — first-class hypocrites,” he writes.
