The Greens’ Unvarnished, Eye-Swivelling Lunacy

John Bowie, LawFuel publisher

There was a time the Greens were about rivers, birds and the occasional knitted hat. Now it’s performative rage with a compostable sticker slapped on. The weekend stunt at Winston Peters’ place wasn’t protest but the political equivalent of keying a car and then lecturing the owner about carbon footprints. Spare me.

Cue the party’s local patron saint of earnest disruption, Chloe Swarbrick, explaining it all with that counter-culture karaoke routine who manages to turn every busted window into a teachable moment.

Apparently when the “right” people do the “wrong” thing, it’s “complex.” It’s actually simple. People have homes and they don’t need attacking to make some political point, particularly when the point is your main focus of irrelevant distraction – joining the rabble who want to punish Israel. Note to self Chloe, Jews have been punished for millenia and Winston’s broken window ain’t going to alter anything, anywhere, any time, ever.

A broken window in Freeman’s Bay is not activism; it’s cosplay revolution dressed in a terror-chic keffiyeh scarf with someone else’s insurance excess and intense aggravation.

The Greens brand that used to mean hedgehogs and clean water has been re-skinned into a catch-all bin for grievance politics, taking its cue cards and TikTok talking points from headline-hogging goblin Greta Thunberg. Environmental issues has become a mere prop for performative moves about anything that moves the needle on a political agenda.

When your movement starts auditioning for every culture-war skirmish, don’t be shocked when the audience forgets what you were meant to be about.

The UK’s cautionary tale is pretty blunt: a drift from conservation to corrosive identity posturing leaves you with plenty of placards and precious little virtue.

New Zealand doesn’t need a TikTok Che Guevara society. It needs adults who can argue hard in Parliament and behave decently out of it. Break windows today, break trust tomorrow. And once trust is gone, the public stops listening to your climate plan or your transport policy or anything else you think is sacred.

You wanted a headline. Congratulations. You’ve won one that writes itself and none of it is complemtary.

Here’s a radical proposal, since radicals seem to be in charge. Grow up. Condemn the thuggery without footnotes. Tell your followers that democracy happens in the chamber, not over a fence after dark. Put the hedgehogs back on the poster. You might be surprised how fast the country starts listening again.

But, there again, maybe they’ve gone for good. Excommunicated and extradicted again, like Greta.