Editorials on Jeanette
February 25th, 2009 at 11:00 am by David FarrarTwo editorials praising Jeanette. First the Herald:
Jeanette Fitzsimons’ decision to retire from the leadership of the Green Party in mid-year signals the end of an unconventional political career. In any other party, her outstanding qualities – high intelligence, intense application to problems and solutions, fairness, integrity, compassion, always civilised in debate – would have ensured her senior ministerial positions.
But Jeanette Fitzsimons would not be in any party. She was an environmentalist before she was a politician and left academic life only to further the cause. As the founding co-leader of the Green Party she, perhaps more than anyone in the party, has kept it out of close coalitions that would have given her ministerial positions but would also have required compromises from the party and associations it might regret.
I think they regret that Helen chose Winston as a preferred coalition partner over the Greens! I wonder if Helen regrets it though?
Jeanette Fitzsimons and her initial co-leader, the late Rod Donald, built a party that seems to have a durable appeal not just for its environmental idealism but for the collegial, almost non-political, style of its organisation and campaigning. It has “co-leaders”, quaintly of each sex, and gives its MPs room to pursue their own priorities. Sue Kedgley has her food safety campaign, Sue Bradford her concern for the welfare of beneficiaries, Keith Locke his suspicions of security services.
And Jeanette was one of those rare Green MPs whose priority was the environment!
The Press is equally positive:
During her 14 years as co-leader of the Greens, Jeanette Fitzsimons emerged as one of the most respected political figures in New Zealand, writes The Press in an editorial. She did not achieve this by practising the politics of ego, abuse and bombast, which have been all too common in Parliament. Instead her political style was based on her ideals, her integrity, a reassuring rather than threatening manner, and her unfailing politeness. Even politicians from other parties who disagreed with her policies found much to admire in Fitzsimons’ approach to politics, and her impending retirement as co-leader leaves a big gap for her party to fill.
That’s a nicer editorial than most people get as their funerals!
A feature of Fitzsimons’ approach was that she worked as part of a team. This is a stark contrast to some other parties, notably New Zealand First, which rose to prominence on the back of the same cult of personality surrounding its leader, Winston Peters, which subsequently destroyed it.
The Greens were the first third party into NZ that did not depend on their leader for survival. NZ First, Alliance, Progressive and United Future all do. The Maori Party do not. The ACT Party are a bit in between. They have a genuine brand, but would struggle to survive without Rodney holding Epsom.
Having said that Jeanette’s going will not help the Greens, but it won’t destroy them.
Even as Fitzsimons must be praised for her role, the future issue for the Greens is who should replace her as female co-leader, with sitting MPs Sue Bradford and Metiria Turei both contenders. In the eyes of some sections of the public, if not Green members, an impediment for Bradford could be her sponsorship of the anti-smacking legislation. Turei is less well-known, yet this need not count against her in the Greens, as Norman was not a headline figure when he became co-leader. For Turei, being Maori and from the South Island could be assets for the party’s future. The only certainty is that whoever does prevail will find it a hard challenge to follow in the footsteps of Jeanette Fitzsimons.
Another factor is Turei is 38, and Bradford is 56. Now 56 is far from over the hill, but it does suggest a medium term leader rather than a long term leader.
No tag for this post.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:14 am
She expressed regret about it in an interview before the election. No doubt the regret she feels is much greater than what she would express in a campaign interview.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Yes – Turei’s age will be a big factor in her win over Bradford. This is merely one of a number of ‘identity politics’ assets that Turei holds over Bradford. These shouldn’t be underestimated – issues of age, sex, and ethnicity are huge within the Green Party (although interestingly, not ‘class’). For more on this see my blog post “Metiria Turei – the next Green Party co-leader” at: http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2009/02/metiria-turei-the-next-green-party-co-leader.html
Bryce
Vote:http://www.liberation.org.nz
February 25th, 2009 at 11:18 am
A couple of generous and fair columns from the media and balanced comment from DPF. Let the chewing and gnawing begin!
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
DPF said: And Jeanette was one of those rare Green MPs whose priority was the environment!
Why the past tense DPF? She’s standing down as Co-Leader, not as an MP.
And the statement isn’t true anyway.
There are only so many environmental spokesperson roles to go round. Sue Bradford could hold her own with anyone here on climate change, sustainable housing and urban planning, sustainable fisheries, oil depletion etc. But she doesn’t get to say much about those issues publicly (housing excepted) because her main allocated spokesperson roles in the Greens other than Housing are Social Development and Employment, Industrial Relations, ACC and Children’s Issues.
Some Green MPs have to take on the spokesperson roles that are not primarily environmental – otherwise the Greens would be an environmental pressure group rather than a political party. Just because you don’t hear those MPs talking about environmental issues much doesn’t mean they don’t know or care about them.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:34 am
You mean she could read from the Hysteria Handbook.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Something is really bothering me about the Greens and their whole co-leader thing that requires one male and female co-leader. What about Transgendered? How can they be so discriminatory. Wont someone think of the Trannies?
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:45 am
“She did not achieve this by practicing the politics of ego, abuse and bombast, which have been all too common in Parliament. Instead her political style was based on her ideals, her integrity, a reassuring rather than threatening manner, and her unfailing politeness.
Hear hear. While I would not want anyone to copy Fitzsimons’ politics (with which I mostly disagree), I wish others would copy her style. For that reason alone her departure from the leadership (and eventually from politics) will be a great loss for New Zealand.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Brian Smaller said: What about Transgendered?
They would obviously stand for the position their current gender makes them eligible for. What’s the problem?
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Brian Smaller actually raises a good question, even if he’s just trying to be humourous or disparaging.
Why is gender the basis of the Greens’ co-leadership dichotomy (and not anything else)? There are obviously many other identity politics differences that could be used to produce a dispersal of power within the leadership. And I think that ethnic identity would make a lot of sense (in terms of the Green Party world view). But regardless of whether they imposed a constitutional rule about one of their co-leaders having to be pakeha (or tauiwi) and one having to be Maori, this will essentially be what party delegates will be thinking of when they vote Turei as the next co-leader.
Bryce
Vote:http://www.liberation.org.nz
February 25th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Jeanette’s personal “slash and burn” approach to farm management was impressive.
Free those carbons Jeanette, free those carbons.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Mothballing windmills comes a close second.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Indeed, Bryce.
Why don’t they insist on having one very sensible person, and one person who is batshit insane?
Too many candidates of the latter variety, and not enough of the former?
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Alternatively, Peter, you could put another way: why don’t the Greens have a co-leader from the left of the party and a co-leader from the right?
This has tended to be the way that the National Party has determined its leader and deputy leader positions for decades, as I understand it.
And this is actually another unofficial reason for why Bradford is unlikely to win the co-leadership. She is definitely from the left faction, and Turei from the more right faction. Meanwhile Russel Norman is perceived as being from the left faction (even if he’s probably done more than any other person in the party to shift the Greens further towards the centre of the political spectrum), and so there will be a huge reluctance within the membership to have to perceived lefties leading the party. This would be seen as media-suicide. The Greens are on a mega mission to be show how respectable and moderate they are, and having Bradford as co-leader to the ex-socialist Norman would ruin that project.
Bryce
Vote:http://www.liberation.org.nz
February 25th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
But what if their current gender was at issue? What if they didn’t want to be pigeon-holed by outmoded thinking such as toad’s? Or if they were a hermaphrodite.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 12:19 pm Vote:
February 25th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Alliance do? Who’s their leader?
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Well, if the point of having two co-leaders, one male and one female, is to ensure representation of male and female perspectives and issues, there are perspectives and issues they are not including in the leadership by virtue when neither leaders are:
1. I was going to write a list, but there are too many possibilities to list.
Vote:2. I feel compelled to put more items in this list.
3. Like this.
4. It’s not like I feel like my family will die if I don’t or anything.
5. Five’s a nice round number, though.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
So, the ideal leader of the Greens is an Ethnic transgendered person who advocates rights of the working person.
Anyone know what Carmen is doing these days?
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Things will become more complicated when the robots demand equal rights.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I have often shared a platform with Jeannette talking about diverse environmental issues and I genuinely liked her and we were able to have civilised discourse and I believe left our audience better informed for the experience.
We agree on many things and disagreed on a few. But she would often approach me afterwards to hear more of my reasons for the position I had taken.
She had a genuine sense of humour and irony too. And a seminar of privatising water she had to concede that she, like so many in the room, ran her own private water supply and would not want it any other way and was well aware that water did not get to the tap free of all costs. It might be a gift of nature but it has to be gift wrapped to be useful.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
My memory of this otherwise mild grandmother will be forever tainted by hearing her impassioned but nevertheless irrational support for the Electoral Finance Bill from parliament steps. While she remains an MP she will be forgotten but not gone.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
She is retiring from the co-loserhip, not dying. Why are so many fawning over a very average politician?
I never met the lady and I’ll happily concede that she was a nice person as some above who know her have stated.
As a politician, she exposed her true character by using her position and influence to increase her own personal wealth.
Something to do with wind farms wasn’t it?
Maybe polly’s and lots of other people do similar, but why ignore or excuse that kind of behaviour just because she is retiring after living off the public trough for a decade and a half.
Like the rest of us (except maybe Richie McCaw) she is dispensible. Bye Bye. Move on.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I kinda agree with CraigM – there seems to be a bit of an obsession these days about those politicians that are ‘nice’. Or about those politicians that are ‘down to earth’. This is all part of the ‘depoliticisation of politics’.
There’s a hell of a lot of people in the NZ Parliament who might be nice or down-to-earth, but does this really matter?
I was no fan of David Lange – and not simply because he wasn’t particularly ‘nice’ – but he did encapsulate something correct about this issue when he said in 1999 that ‘I didn’t go into politics to be fair to my opponents – I went there to stand on their windpipes’. Parliamentary politics should be about conflict and representing different views and interests, not about being nice, respectable, collegial, or ‘above politics’ etc.
Bryce
Vote:http://www.liberation.org.nz
February 25th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Brian S> But what if their current gender was at issue? What if they didn’t want to be pigeon-holed by outmoded thinking such as toad’s?
What if one of the co-leaders had surgery to change their gender? They wouldn’t be eligible to be a co-leader any more since they’d be the wrong gender. Effectively, the Greens would sack someone because they were the wrong gender. You’d expect that sort of casual sexism back in the 1970s, but not in 2009.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Dude, you clearly don’t get it.
This is like those idiots who claim that affirmative action is racism.
It cannot possibly be racist or sexist because it is done by the left. It’s only racist or sexist when done by right-wing people. Don’t you filthy rich, white, capitalist pigs understand that?
Discrimination is purely a function of whether or not you support the repression of individual freedom by a State behemoth, desire to live well on the earnings of others and pulled the wings off flies as a small child.
Why are you so stupid that you think “sexism” should actually have any relation to “discrimination on the basis of sex”?
Fools!
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
YET AGAIN mention the Greens and you get to see KiwiPreschool at its finest!
“They’re all SOCIALISTS!”
“They’re all INSANE!”
“They all done smelly POO POOS in their PANTS hahahahahahaha!!!”
I’ve learned so much worthwhile stuff reading this thread… thanks guys! Now I really feel convinced by the power of right-wing thought.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Thought you were talking about Labour for a moment there.
As you were….
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
>>They wouldn’t be eligible to be a co-leader any more since they’d be the wrong gender. Effectively, the Greens would sack someone because they were the wrong gender
No, they would probably sack the other one
Also, the editorials today have been saying she is intelligent. She has always come across as a complete ditz to me, it’s just lucky for her that she has grey hair instead of blonde. The same goes for Turei, she was on an debate about IT issues on TVNZ7 before the election, even though she is the IT spokeswoman she basically admitted she knew nothing on the subject.
Vote:Go Bradford
February 25th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I attended an Institute of Professional Engineers’ meet-the-candidates thing pre-election last year, where all of the major parties responded to a list of questions about NZs infrastructure & economic future that IPENZ had put to them.
That was the only time I’ve heard Fitzsimons speak in person, and she impressed, although to be fair most of the other parties sent fairly lightweight representatives not their leader! She was certainly the only one who was prepared to discuss environmental and economic issues in detail, the rest of them seemed to depend on massaging their general political ideologies in order to give the bland non-committal answer they thought their party *should* give…
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I know. I would have thought they were bigger than that sort of petty discrimination. Still, just goes to show you that you can never tell about people. I blame it on colonialism.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
@Brian Smaller-
Vote:Would you care to explain which sex they are discriminating against by having one male and one female co leader?
February 25th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
reddeath –
people of indeterminate gender, transexuals and the genuinly confused.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
“Why don’t they insist on having one very sensible person, and one person who is batshit insane? ”
Actually, they do. All political parties are secretly required to do just this across their representation, though some increase the latter category above 50% just to be on the safe side . The trick for the rest of us is to figure out which ones are which.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
# Ratbiter (623) Vote: Add rating 2 Subtract rating3 Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
“YET AGAIN mention the Greens and you get to see KiwiPreschool at its finest!
“They’re all SOCIALISTS!”
“They’re all INSANE!”
“They all done smelly POO POOS in their PANTS hahahahahahaha!!!”
I’ve learned so much worthwhile stuff reading this thread… thanks guys! Now I really feel convinced by the power of right-wing thought.”
Oh yeah, Rabiter?
And when I start making intelligent arguments quoting from things like “The Index of Leading Environmental Indicators” by Steven Hayward, and “The State of Humanity” by Julian Simon, and the writings of Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, and the magnificent essay “Environmentalism Refuted” by George Reisman, what do you do…..?
“Capitalist Propaganda……nyah, nyah, nyah…….”; “Boring, long winded, nyah, nyah, nyah……..”; “Cut and Paste merchant, nyah, nyah, nyah…….”
BAH. Ratbiter. Says it all.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Hey, Sam Buchanan just said something witty……and I gave him a thumbs up….well, I’ll be………
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Hey, just as Ratbiter was bemoaning the lack of intelligent Right Wing criticism of environmentalism (while having ignored everything I have been saying for years), the next thing I looked at online, “Arts and Letters Daily”, had a recommendation for THIS:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1588/article_detail.asp
“All The Leaves Are Brown” by Steven F. Hayward
In a way, I agree with Ratbiter. There are far too few “Right Wingers” (in name) who are appallingly poorly-informed and who just let the environmentalist lies and myths extend their dangerous grip over the minds of the wide public, especially the young. I sincerely hope people observing our little spats on here, do actually read some of the things I point out. If you haven’t, and you aren’t aware that things are as I am saying, please start by reading THAT.
That is not to say that arguments about the green movement’s being joined at the hip to communist totalitarianism, are not also valid. It is just that far too much undue credit is given to their environmental arguments which are actually about as trustworthy as all communist propaganda ever was anyway.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
The usual platitudes from the illiberal press, as you would expect, on grandmotherly Fitsimons: nice, intelligent, etc.
The same press that has forgotten her anti-progress stance in many areas, from GE to mining, globalisation, trade agreements, and so on.
These are the facts that matter, and weighing them all leaves Fitsimons with a big negative number. She has worked against New Zealand for years, so it can only be good to witness her retirement.
Vote:February 25th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Your recent comments on here about the Greens have been really great, Manolo. Keep up the pressure, and keep up the pressure on the DomPost and any of the other MSM organs that you also try and keep honest.
Vote:February 26th, 2009 at 1:48 am
“high intelligence, intense application to problems and solutions, fairness, integrity, compassion, always civilised in debate” give me a bucket. I can’t let this drivel pass as journalism. She said this:
“Like the Victorian imperialists he’s emulating, Dr Brash’s vanilla vision is of a patriarchal, middle-class society where all women bake scones, all men are bankers – and the only brown faces are products of the tanning clinic”.
What’s fair about that? How civilised is it to say Brash’s vision was racist and sexist?
She also said “National would deny what will soon be a quarter of our children the chance to grow up understanding and celebrating their own heritage”. Again, when did National ever want to suppress Maori education or culture?
The silly bint said in 1998 that it was the last Christmas for people to enjoy potatoes they could trust, again drivel. She led the bandwagon against genetic engineering which was almost entirely based on scaremongering.
She does NOT have high intelligence, her press releases demonstrate this time and time again, she also could bring the knife out when she wanted it, and did so against National (what party are you a member of again David?) and Brash.
She was an average politician, who would tend to be civilised in person and would listen, and got a very easy ride from the media. She wasn’t very bright, she used scaremongering and lies when she wanted to, and the country should be grateful she never had too much influence on laws or policy. It is telling when the mainstream media continue to give Ms Nice but Dim such a free ride.
Vote: