OPINION: Reports of the Green Party's near demise have, it seems, been greatly exaggerated. The latest polls show the party cruising comfortably in the polls despite the departure of the Earth Mother of the Nation, Jeanette Fitzsimons.
The Government seems close to bowing to public pressure over its plans to mine Great Barrier Island and Coromandel in the face of a sustained anti-mining campaign, and the success of that campaign has clearly washed over the parliamentary wing of the Green movement.
The latest One News Colmar Brunton poll suggests it is even picking up disaffected National voters, to the point where its support is now higher than at the last election. That will buoy the party faithful as they head for Christchurch this weekend for their annual conference minus many familiar faces.
Surviving the loss of Ms Fitzsimons was always going to be the acid test of whether the Green Party was more than the sum of its parts after it also lost the late Rod Donald, the dreadlocked Nandor Tanczos and firebrand activist Sue Bradford.
The answer, surprisingly to those of us on the outside, appears to be yes. Compare that with the lot of some of the other minor parties. NZ First could no more survive the loss of Winston Peters than the Alliance was able to survive the departure of Jim Anderton (even if the remaining stragglers would insist that it still has a pulse).
Will the last of the "original" MPs – the glam Sue Kedgley and gritty Keith Locke – be the next to go? Ms Kedgley's food labelling and food safety campaign resonates as much with middleclass mums and dads as it does core Green voters, and Mr Locke has carved out an equally big reputation as a human rights activist. Both are said to be considering whether to contest the next election.
The loss of two MPs with such distinctive brands would, in the normal course of events, be a big loss. But the Greens are no normal political party. Even its own polling suggests that voters are not always able to distinguish between the party and other parts of the Green movement, notably Green Peace – and given the clout of the green brand, that is probably not such a bad thing. The question the party has grappled with, therefore, is whether being stacked with rugged individualists risks muddying and even overpowering its brand as a cog in the wider green movement.
Ms Bradford is the most powerful example of that. She was a reformer, an activist and a hugely effective parliamentarian, with a large following in the party.
But she was also polarising within the wider electorate. For every vote she attracted, hundreds were lost, particularly among the more mainstream voters who would otherwise consider exercising their "green" conscience by ticking Green Party at the ballot box. Mr Tanczos, whose pro-cannabis crusade attracted the youth vote but alienated many others, posed a similar dilemma.
Whether deliberately or not, the current lineup of new Green MPs lacks the quirky individualism of the past – and there are even days when the back benches of the Greens could pass for a lineup of conservative Nats. Kennedy Graham, the party's justice spokesman, is every bit as patrician and distinguished as his brother, former Cabinet minister Sir Douglas Graham. Kevin Hague is a former health board manager and looks decidedly at home in a suit. Of the other newbies, two have arrived in Parliament only recently so are yet to make a mark, while long-time activist Catherine Delahunty, despite having the mining portfolio, is surprisingly low profile on the matter, even if the green movement itself is heavily identified with the anti-mining campaign.
In the old days, Ms Delahunty or her predecessors might have been expected to become the face of the anti-mining campaign – in the same way that Rod Donald was the face of electoral reform, Ms Fitzsimons the face of climate change and Ms Bradford the face of workers' rights.
But that is where the subtle changes under the new broom leadership of Russel Norman and Meteria Turia are becoming apparent. The focus has been on building a Green team rather than leaving MPs off the leash in mad pursuit of their individual campaigns. There has even been a deliberate attempt to tone down the "stunt" culture that used to mark the minor party out from its opponents. The party used to have a genius for eye-catching and headline- grabbing stunts. The worry is that they didn't always hit the mark.
Worse, they might have succeeded in turning off potential voters who might have liked to vote green but saw the Greens as the lunatic fringe of the movement. In other words, the "crazies over the back fence", as one insider puts it.
No-one comes out and says it outright, but there is a new awareness within the party that for its environmental message to reach a mainstream audience, it needs to look and sound more mainstream. There is a hint from the latest polls that the strategy is working. The big political dilemma for the Greens to face up to at some point is whether by reaching out to a more mainstream audience, it should also be reconsidering its role as the perennial bridesmaid to Labour's other suitors. IN 2008, the minor party decided that though it could work with National, the gulf between them was too wide to consider a more formal coalition. The temptation must now be to compare itself with the Maori Party, which asked its followers to take a huge leap of faith in choosing to govern with National, and has profited with seats at the Cabinet table as a result.
But the Maori Party experience only seems to have hardened the Green Party attitude that their position heading into the 2008 election has been vindicated. Party insiders say the differences with National have become more apparent the longer National has governed.
They see the Maori Party's gains as largely symbolic, and its defeats (over the Auckland super- city and GST) as heavy. Supporting the recent Budget, which delivered a rise in GST and a less progressive tax system, would have been a step too far for Greens supporters, according to party wisdom.
So though it is yet to decide how it will deal with coalition questions at the next election, no-one is talking up the likelihood of a confidence and supply deal with National.
Does that rule out working more closely with a National government? Not at all. In fact, both parties have established a good working relationship during this term of government, notably over the $300 million- plus home insulation scheme. The relationship has been formalised by a memorandum of understanding. The Greens can see themselves doing more business with John Key and his ministers after the next election under such an arrangement, even if a governing arrangement seems unlikely.
It is a sign of the growing maturity of both MMP and the Greens that such an idea no longer seems revolutionary.
