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2. Parliament destroys, community rebuilds A variety of lessons derive from the disappointing outcomes for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand from the September 2005 General Election. The most telling is that whatever parliamentary politics is worth, it is less than the value of a decent human life. RIP Rod Donald, e hoa ki te ao marama - friend to the world of light. And so many more lives are wasted each week by this ailing joke of a representative system. Western history has bequeathed us an intemperate mess to clean up, mirrored in road carnage and homicide rates as just two parallels. Navigating the corridors of political influence is the opposite of where Greens belong, but it is necessary in the interim and here too we require survival techniques. These begin with the knowledge that politics is not what anyone is here for, by choice. However, the Greens can deliver real, distributed decision-making into everybody's realm - as social responsibility, and utilising technology. |
Green Future offers a practical programme for connecting the Green politics of today with a salvaged, surviveable ecosystem of the near Future. The Green party's primary function is public education and empowerment, through a grass- and flax-roots revolution in political method, to be enhanced by election publicity rather than substituted. Of course it is a thoroughly exploitative world economic system that has shaped New Zealand to be how it is: liberal and beloved, warts and all. But New Zealand is uniquely placed to non-aggressively role-model the positive change all the world needs. Mahatma Ghandi's memory inspires us how to rise above the rifts of religion, race, nation, and imperial contest. Ownership and enjoyment of political choice would become a minor daily expression of culture and community, for one and all, through online referenda. 'Representation' of our interests by others is a mediated, inferior, and temporary means of expressing individual wants and needs. Rational reconstruction of work-life-family routine will increase happiness and productivity throughout society. |