My View of NZ Politics

Politics, for me, is about society shaping the terrain in a way that enables us as individuals, families and communities to provide for ourselves and to strive for self-fulfillment in whatever creative direction we choose. That requires the right mix of group security and individual freedom. Those two values underpin the political philosophies of the two major parties in New Zealand – Labour and National.

But that’s the traditional approach to politics of previous times. It’s no longer sufficient for our age. In our lifetime societies everywhere, left and right, have taken a wrong turn down the path of unsustainable consumption.

The result is natural resource depletion, environmental degradation and widening inequalities. Global climate change and local pollution are the illnesses, and personal and societal stress are the symptoms. So what is the cause? Over-consumption in the rich ‘North’ and an imbalance between population and carrying capacity in the ‘South’ (the ‘developing world’). Our global ecological overshoot is about 23%.

Humanity only has a short time – a few decades at most – to turn this around, and move in the direction of sustainable living. It will not be easy; but it can be done and our quality of life will be far better when we achieve the goal of a sustainable society. New Zealand may be better off than most. We may appear to be insulated from its worst effects. But that’s an illusion. We’re equally vulnerable to global trends and we need to be in the vanguard of global change.

So, whereas the central message of NZ politics in the 19th century was freedom and in the 20th century it was equality, in the 21st century it is sustainability. And for me that is the over-arching concept underpinning the Green Party.

This doesn’t mean the Greens reject the other political values – our four principles (ecological wisdom, social responsibility, appropriate decision-making and non-violence) make that clear. But I believe that these four together build a sustainable country and a sustainable planet. Provided, of course, that they are genuinely implemented, rather than given lip-service.

The best way of understanding politics today is by supplementing the traditional left-right spectrum with a vertical axis of sustainability and unsustainability. The Greens, like all parties, encompass a range of individual opinion – on the horizontal axis probably from left to centre-right. But there is no question that our principles and policies place us above the threshold of sustainability on the vertical axis – the only party to be so positioned.