These are supplementary notes for an article of the above title accepted for publication in New Zealand Sociology. I will add the volume and issue numbers once these becomes available – along with a link to the article in New Zealand Sociology.
To reduce the length of the article, without losing the added depth and sophistication of the analysis, around a half of the final full-length revised version of the paper has been removed from the published version and placed in supplementary notes. The notes are numbered in the order in which they appear in footnotes to the final shorter published version of the paper.
All references can be found either in the list of references at the end of the published article or in the bibliography at the end of the supplementary notes. This is where I have placed further references to Green Party of Aotearoa (GPA) publications and also provide a select bibliography of useful sources pertaining to the Values Party and the GPA of Aotearoa/New Zealand, New Zealand’s system of proportional representation, neoliberalism, climate change policy in New Zealand, and eco-socialism and ecological Marxism.
Contents:
1) Descriptive Overview of the Ecological Crisis
2) Reformism and Green Politics
3) Brief Descriptive Overview of New Zealand and its History
4) The Historical Emergence and Development of Green Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand – From the Values Party to the Green Party
5) The Green Party’s Policy Programme: Greening Third Way Social Democracy?
6) New Zealand’s Unique Greenhouse Gas Profile
7) Influence of the UK Climate Change Act
8) Green Party Climate Change Policy in Other Areas
9) The Blue Green versus Red Green Divide in the Green Party
10) Green Party Tax Policy
11) Why State Intervention and Investment should be given Priority over Market Based Instruments
12) Class, Class Struggle, Environmental Conflict and Reformism
13) Progressive Environmental Reform is Possible and Worth Fighting For
14) Acknowledgments
15) References for Supplementary Notes and Thematic Bibliography
Supplementary Note 1 – Descriptive Overview of the Ecological Crisis
We are experiencing an accelerating intensification of the ecological crisis. The IPCC’s 2021-22 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) presents systematic scientific accounts of rising carbon emissions, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, rising land, sea and air temperatures, the advanced and accelerating melting of the Greenland and Arctic ice caps, rising sea levels, increasing acidification of oceans, continuing deforestation of tropical rainforests, spreading desertification, increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and declining biodiversity. The media reports daily on the manifestations of the climate crisis such as increasingly frequent and severe hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, and wildfires. The planet is edging ever closer to a tipping point with abrupt acceleration of temperature rises, polar ice loss, sea level rises, and increasingly severe floods, fires, and extreme weather events. To make matters worse, the ecological crisis is intensifying in the context of a global pandemic and associated economic crisis, the crisis of cosmopolitan neoliberalism, rise of the far right since 2016, intensifying geopolitical competition and conflict amongst the world’s major powers, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and US aggression towards China.
Supplementary Note 2 – Reformism and Green Politics
Green parties have been established in more than 80 countries in recent decades, entered national government in several countries, and have maintained a substantial bloc of seats within the European parliament (73 out of 705 seats following the 2019 EU elections). But do Green parties provide the best possible means of promoting more effective climate change policies? What are their strengths and weaknesses in this regard?
Answering these questions, firstly, requires a consideration of reformism as a political strategy. ‘Reformism’ in the sense that it is used in this article, refers to political strategy and practice committed to working within the social structural parameters of capitalism and the institutions of liberal representative democracy. It rejects the idea that since capitalism is causing the ecological crisis, capitalism must be overthrown in a revolutionary manner to establish an ecologically sustainable democratic socialist society. Green parties are, in general, reformist rather than revolutionary parties, even if from time-to-time revolutionaries decide to enter and/or support them. This article investigates and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of green reformist political strategy with respect to combatting rising carbon emissions, global warming and climate change. Such an investigation can help to identify what can be achieved by working within the system in a reformist manner, while simultaneously recognising that such an approach also has serious weaknesses and is likely to encounter fundamentally entrenched limits imposed by the underlying economic, social, and political arrangements of global capitalism.
Secondly, it is important to recognise that on the terrain of Green politics there is a tension between Blue Greens who advocate neoliberal policy responses to environmental problems, and those who are more critical of neoliberalism, including Red Greens who combine green politics with socialism in various ways and who are much more critical of neoliberalism and capitalism. Within the Red Green camp some eco-socialists put more emphasis on a reformist Green Keynesian response to climate change than Ecological Marxists who consider that, while this response is well worth supporting, creating an environmentally society will be impossible while capitalism exists. Of course, this by no means exhausts the wide range of Green intellectual and political perspectives such as: deep ecology otherwise known as ecocentrism; eco-feminism; green anarchism; and indigenous green perspectives.
Thirdly, assessing the likely effectiveness of Green parties in promoting, among other things social and climate justice, requires more than a critical analysis of party policies; it also requires research that addresses questions such as the following. What is the broad political programme of the party? What are the various political and ideological currents within the party? Is there a strong eco-socialist current within the party? How internally democratic is it in reality? How did the party emerge and develop historically? What are the social bases of electoral support for the party with respect to class, gender, and ethnicity? How successful is the party in electoral terms? How important is the electoral system to the party’s political success and influence? If it managed to become part of a national government then how effective was it in promoting a Green policy agenda? What is the social composition of the membership of the party? Where does the party sit in relation to the other parties that form the mainstream political spectrum of a particular country? Is it the largest and most left-wing party or is there another substantial party or political movement that is also to the left of the main centre-left party? To what extent is the party openly critical of neoliberalism, capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and so forth? What are the international influences upon and affiliations of the party?
This list of questions highlights the extent of the empirical research that needs to be conducted to develop a sophisticated sociological, eco-socialist, or Marxist analysis of a green party and to draw tactical conclusions with respect to how eco-socialists and environmentalists should relate to this party in practice. But it also indicates the need to establish and maintain a tight analytical and empirical focus when assessing the likely effectiveness of the climate change policies of a green party or parties. The need for brevity means that this paper has only been able to address these questions in a very limited way. It focuses on the GPA both because as one of the world’s more successful Green parties it is intrinsically interesting, but also because a critical analysis of its climate change and related policies can act as a case study that has wider implications of interest to researchers and activists in other countries engaged in the struggle for climate justice.
Finally, in their useful overview of the intellectual history of eco-socialism since the late 1960s, Bellamy Foster and Burkett (2017, 12) argue that the persistence of anti-Marxist criticism is due to the need of those who are strongly committed to the conception of eco-socialism “as a new paradigm, superior to classical socialism or Marxism” to identify fundamental ecological (and other) flaws in the work of Marx, Engels and the classical Marxists who followed. This interpretation is, in my view, correct but it misses a related and equally important anti-Marxist intellectual impulse arising from the powerful attraction of reformist political strategies in a historical context characterised by an accelerating global environmental crisis, the continuing hegemony of neoliberalism, and the repeated failure of revolutionary movements to achieve lasting progressive political change, let alone create a democratic, egalitarian and environmentally sustainable socialist society.
When the problems faced by humankind in the 21st century are so big, and the scale of the environmental crisis is so vast, while the existing anti-Stalinist socialist left is so small, it is entirely understandable that many on the left reject classical Marxism and democratic Leninism in the search for new ideas and ways of organising that might enable them to more effectively build support, develop movements, enter government by electoral means, and bring about real change in the short- to medium-term. This search has led many to conclude that the most viable political strategy for eco-socialists and others is to develop and work within Green political parties.
The alternative is not to reject the struggle for environmental and other reforms, but rather to argue that revolutionaries are the best fighters for reform because, among other things, they clearly recognise which socio-political forces are most likely to support reform, and which forces will oppose it. In opposition to the predominant focus on electoral activity of reformist parties, revolutionaries advocate mass militant protest action and active involvement in progressive social movements and unions, aimed at achieving changes now, rather than waiting for politicians to improve things after the next election. Democratic socialist organisations also act as repositories of knowledge and experience gained from involvement in previous struggles and campaigns, which is why they can have a substantial impact despite their relatively small size. Finally, these organisations play a crucially important role in keeping alive the vision of a better world. Unlike Labour or the Greens, revolutionaries do not accept that a capitalist world of war, inequality, and environmental devastation is the best that humankind can achieve in its historical journey on this planet. They consider that it is both feasible and desirable to create an environmentally sustainable democratic socialist world without inequality, war, and oppression - a world in which production is for need, not profit, and in which the majority really do govern society.
Supplementary Note 3 – Brief Descriptive Overview of New Zealand and its History
NZ is an advanced capitalist country, with a population of 5.2 million in 2022 and a land area slightly larger than the UK. Pastoral and horticultural production accounts for around half of the country’s exports, but the overall economic and social structure is broadly similar to other advanced capitalist countries (Roper, 2005, 6-9). NZ’s modern history has been profoundly influenced by the specifics of white settler colonisation, Māori resistance to colonisation, and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between most iwi (tribal federations of sub-tribes or hapu) and the British Crown in 1840. The influence of the British heritage has been multi-dimensional, with its early white settler colonial society and parliamentary system of government being British in origin. Due in part to the British working-class origins of many of its white settlers, an increasingly militant and politicised working class developed a comparatively strong union movement from the late 1870s onwards, culminating in the formation of the Red Federation of Labour from 1908 to 1913, and the founding of the NZ Labour Party (NZLP) in 1916. Since the election of the first Labour Government in 1935, which established a comparatively generous welfare state, mainstream politics has been dominated by the centre-right National Party backed by business and farmers and the centre-left NZLP based in the union movement and working class. The 1972 election marked the end of a prolonged period of economic prosperity and political stability during which the conservative National Party governed for 20 of the 23 years from 1948 to 1972.[1]
Supplementary Note 4: The Historical Emergence and Development of Green Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand – From the Values Party to the Green Party
The Values Party was the world’s first green party to be organised on a national scale and to contest a central government election. Founded in May 1972, it contested the general election six months later on a platform, outlined in its first manifesto Blueprint for New Zealand, that included zero economic and population growth, abortion, drug and homosexual law reform, workplace democracy, adequate provision of childcare centres, and ending NZ’s involvement in the American War in Vietnam. Despite a lack of resources compared to the major parties, the fledgling Values Party received 2.7 percent of the total vote. The Party was formed and developed in the international context of an historic upsurge of working class struggle, the explosive growth of progressive social movements, and the emergence of the New Left from 1968 to the late 1970s (Harman, 1988). In this respect developments in NZ were influenced by, and resembled in key respects, similar developments taking place globally (Roper, 2011). The Party achieved 5.3 percent of the vote in 1975 but no seats due to the first-past-the-post (FPP) electoral system. Despite a comparatively large and active membership, and its most professional election campaign in 1978, its vote dropped to 2.8 percent as voters attempted (unsuccessfully) to rid the country of conservative Prime Minister Rob Muldoon by voting Labour. Torn by internal strife about its political orientation the Party virtually ceased to exist from 1979 to 1989.
The GPA was formed by a convergence of the remnants of the old Values Party and members of the environmentalist movement during 1989, with an official party launch in May 1990. In electoral and parliamentary terms, the GPA has been successful, maintaining a continuous presence in parliament since 1996 with MPs who, on the whole, have been a more talented, energetic, charismatic, and effective group than the Labour Party’s MPs. The GPA polled sufficiently well in the 2008, 2011 and 2014 national elections to be the third largest party in parliament. The Greens got 11 percent of the party vote and 14 MPs at the 2011 election. At the 2014 election, it received 10.7 percent of the party vote and 14 MPs (out of 121) compared to the Labour Party’s 25.1 percent and 32 MPs. Maintaining a presence in parliament has been important not only in helping the Party to receive substantial media coverage, but also with respect to attracting financial support from private donors and accessing substantial state funding for its activities. For example, in the financial year ended June 2016, the GPA received government funding of $11.6 million for “party and member support” (Parliamentary Service, 2016, 107).[2]
The initial and subsequent electoral success of the GPA can only be adequately understood if it is appreciated that it forms one strand of a wider unravelling of social democratic reformism in the context of a prolonged economic crisis and shift in the balance of power between capital and labour. The collapse of the long-boom in the mid-1970s and prolonged economic crisis that followed was ultimately determined by a falling average rate of profit. It was more severe than in many other capitalist countries because of the specific configuration of the relationship of NZ to the global economy (Cronin, 2001, parts 2,4; Roper, 2005, 103-110). In response business lobby groups, Treasury, Reserve Bank, and monetarists vigorously advocated the rejection of Keynesianism and the implementation of a neoliberal policy agenda (McKinnon, 2003, 274-401; Roper, 1992, 2005, 157-173, 2006). The strength of the union movement (NZ had one of the highest levels of union density in the world up until the late 1980s) and the populist conservative Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, blocked the abandonment of Keynesianism until the election of the fourth Labour Government in 1984 (Roper, 2005, 139-156). It was this government that, despite not clearly signalling this prior to the election, proceeded to implement a neoliberal policy agenda rapidly and comprehensively (Kelsey, 1997; Roper, 2005, 175-193).
NZ went from trailing the rest of the world with respect to the adoption of the neoliberal Washington consensus from 1975 to 1984 to being at the forefront from 1984 to 1999. Although hailed by the right internationally as a necessary, courageous, and exemplary implementation of the neoliberal policies it favoured, domestically these policies were extremely unpopular. Union membership declined dramatically following the passage of the anti-union Employment Contracts Act in 1991 from 42.9 percent of paid employees in 1991 to 17.7 percent in 2018 (Ryall and Blumenfeld, 2018: Table 1).[3] Labour Party membership fell from around 85,000 in 1984 to around 11,000 in 1989 when the left, encompassing around 5,000 members, departed to form the left social democratic New Labour Party (Roper, 2005, 180). Labour Party membership has not recovered to its former levels since then, despite Labour governing for nine years from 1999 to 2008 (the Fifth Labour Government) and since 2017. The Third Way social democracy of the Fifth Labour Government has continued to provide the broad intellectual and ideological framework for the Labour leadership from 2008 to the present.[4]
The GPA captured a share of the disillusioned Labour electoral support base and this has remained a key element of its electoral constituency since then. At least in part, this has been a factor in the electoral success of the Greens. The Party’s need to position itself to the left of the Labour Party for electoral purposes has also acted as factor constraining the ideological and political trajectory of the GPA since the 1990s. There is a lack of data regarding the social composition of party membership, but the balance of the available evidence suggests that although it has a socially diverse electoral base, a substantial proportion of its members and voters are left-leaning union members in skilled, well-educated and relatively highly paid occupations within the working class, such as teachers, nurses, public servants, local government employees, and other skilled white-collar workers (Vowles et al., 2017, 151-2; see also Dann, 1999, 312-319; Bale and Wilson, 2006, 394-396; Wilson, 2010, 499-501).[5]
Following a dramatic election campaign that resulted in a widely unexpected loss for the ruling centre-right National Party in September 2017, a Labour-led coalition government was elected (Roper, 2017). Labour polled 36.9 percent of the party vote giving it 46 seats out of 120, the centrist party NZ First got 7.2 percent and 9 seats, and the Greens 6.3 percent and 8 seats (a combined total of 50.4 percent and 63 seats- enough for a working majority). National received the most votes (44.4 percent) and seats (56) of any party but could not form a government. The Greens entered the government via a confidence and supply agreement.[6] Three Green MPs became cabinet ministers. Greens Co-leader James Shaw with ministerial portfolios for Climate Change and Statistics, Julie Genter with ministerial portfolios for Women and Transport, and Eugene Sage became Minister of Conservation.[7]
In response to the COVID pandemic, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Labour-led Government adopted an effective science-based elimination strategy. Despite the sacrifices resulting from the imposition of lockdowns and tight public health restrictions, the success of this strategy was the most important factor in Labour’s landslide victory in the 2020 election. The internal disarray in the opposition National Party’s caucus was also an important factor. Labour received 50 percent of the vote and 65 seats of the 120 in parliament, National 25.6 percent and 23 seats, GPA 7.9 percent and 10 seats, ACT 7.6 percent and 10 seats, and the Māori Party 1.2 percent and 2 seats. Even though Labour had enough seats to govern alone, it decided to negotiate a Cooperation Agreement with the Greens. The Agreement allowed the GPA to ‘determine its own position in relation to any policy or legislative matter not covered by the Ministerial portfolios and areas of cooperation set out in this agreement.’ It allocated ministerial portfolios to the GPA co-leaders with Shaw becoming Minister of Climate Change and Associate Minister for the Environment (Biodiversity) and Davidson becoming Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence and Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness).[8] The Agreement led to some angst amongst the party membership, especially the provision stating that ‘when speaking within portfolio responsibilities, [GPA ministers] will speak for the Government representing the Government’s position in relation to those responsibilities.’[9] Constrained by the Cabinet Manual and committed to collective responsibility in their portfolio areas, this meant that the Party’s co-leaders could not criticise the Government’s climate change policies nor its weak response to the housing crisis.
Supplementary Note 5 - The GPA’s Policy Programme: Greening Third Way Social Democracy?
With respect to macroeconomic management, the Party advocates ‘better coordination of monetary and fiscal policy’ to facilitate ‘a broader and more balanced approach to monetary policy’ (2014a, 12).[10] This appears, prima facie, to involve a proposal to substantially alter an institutional and legislative lynchpin of the neoliberal policy regime in a Keynesian direction. It cannot be so easily categorised, however, because the Party has clearly come to accept key features of the neoliberal policy regime introduced from 1984 to 1999, such as an emphasis on maintaining low inflation, rejection of Keynesian demand management, a primary focus on supply-side incentives for business investment, a comprehensive consumption tax set at a high rate, a paid-work focused welfare system, and a top marginal rate of income tax much lower than the top rate that prevailed during the Keynesian era.
The extent to which the GPA is prepared to accommodate itself to the prevailing neoliberal policy regime has become increasingly clear since it announced a memorandum of understanding with the Labour Party on May 31, 2016. The Greens’ leadership clearly wanted to be in government as a result of the 2017 election and the Labour Party had not polled strongly enough during the past nine years in opposition to form a government without entering into coalition or a support arrangement with the Greens. The two parties released a document entitled Budget Responsibility Rules in March 2017, six months prior to the 2017 election. The five ‘rules’ include: delivering a sustainable operating surplus; reducing net core crown debt to 20 percent of GDP within five years of taking office; adopting ‘a prudent approach to ensure expenditure is phased, controlled and directed to maximise its benefits’ and keep government expenditure to no more than 30 percent of GDP.[11]
The business press and mainstream media responded positively. According to the New Zealand Herald, ‘The message is clear, simple and directed at business and the financially comfortable middle classes who have been stubbornly loyal to National for the past nine years: vote for us and we promise we won't ruin the economy.’ In an interview about the rules, GPA co-leader, James Shaw, stated: ‘I get pretty annoyed by the idea that fiscal responsibility is a centre right [thing]. Actually, it's just a function of being in government. The Greens have always said you should control spending, you should control debt and you have to be, for the sake of future generations, accountable and transparent’.[12] As this makes clear, although some of the Green’s economic and social policies are broadly consistent with traditional social democratic Keynesianism, its overall policy programme is best categorised as a left and environmentally focused variant of Third Way social democracy, with which it is kindred both intellectually and politically. The foundations and central pillars of the dominant neoliberal policy regime, such the prioritisation of maintaining low inflation, fiscal surpluses, and reducing government debt, are not explicitly or directly challenged but largely taken-for-granted as constituting the terrain of the GPA’s politics and policy-making.
To its credit, the GPA made reducing inequality a major focus of its opposition to the Fifth (Key) National Government and its recent election campaigns. Noting that Aotearoa has become one of the most ‘unequal among highly developed countries’, the Greens ‘have chosen to focus on inequality and its effects on children because income inequality has been shown to be the single most important cause of a wide range of social and economic problems.’[13] Recognising that changes to the taxation regime since 1984 have been central to increasing inequality, the Greens advocate progressive taxation reform (see Note 10 below). Increasing tax rates for high income earners and introducing a capital gains tax would increase the progressiveness of the taxation regime, thus contributing to a reduction of socio-economic inequality, while having positive economic impacts, particularly reducing the attractiveness of speculative investment in residential property. With respect to welfare policy, it proposes to raise all core benefits by 20 percent, to reduce abatement rates for those supplementing their benefits with income from paid employment, and to remove ‘financial penalties and excessive sanctions for people receiving benefits.’[14] Importantly, the Greens support ‘the right of workers and their unions to campaign for political, environmental, social and work-related industrial issues, including the right to strike in support of these.’[15] In addition, the Greens propose to increase the minimum wage until it ‘reaches 66 percent of the average wage by 2020.’[16]
Supplementary Note 6 – New Zealand’s Unique Greenhouse Gas Profile
NZ has a unique profile with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) 2021: 1), in 2019 agriculture contributed 48 percent of total national emissions, which is unusually high for an advanced capitalist society, the so-called ‘energy sector’ 41.6 percent (encompassing road transportation 16.6 percent and public electricity and heat production 5 percent), and the IPPU (industrial process and product use) sector 6.2 percent (within which metal industries contribute 3 percent), and waste 4 percent (all these figures are as a percentage of total gross emissions (MFE, 2021: 60)). The LULUCF (land-use, land-use change and forestry) absorbed sufficient carbon to offset 33.3 percent of gross emissions in 2019 (MFE 2021: 60). With respect to the gas composition of NZ’s total gross emissions, in 2019 CO2 made up 45.5 percent, CH4 (methane) 42.1 percent, N2O (nitrous oxide) 10.2 percent, and F-Gases 2.2 percent (MFE, 2021: 6, 62-63). ‘The agriculture sector in NZ produces CH4 (77.3 percent of all agriculture sector emissions), N2O (19.9 percent of the sector) and smaller amount of CO2 (2.8 percent of the sector)’ (MFE 2021, 70).
Total gross greenhouse gas emissions increased by 26 percent between 1990 and 2019. This figure is consistent with previous reports. Although previous reports calculated that net emissions increased by 63.6 percent due to “the combined effect of the increase in gross emissions and the higher harvesting rates in planted forests in 2015 compared with 1990” (MFE, 2017a, 11), the most recent Greenhouse Gas Inventory estimates a 33.5% increase of net emissions, the lower figure being generated by revised estimates of carbon removals by forestry (MFE, 2021: 18, 54). Major drivers of the increase in emissions were increases from road transportation, public electricity and heat production, manufacturing industries and construction, and ‘an increase of 88.5 percent in the size of the national dairy herd since 1990’, offset by large declines in the sheep flock (-49.7 percent) and beef cattle herd (-22.8 percent) (MFE, 2017a, 12). Compared to most other OECD countries, NZ has less scope to reduce emissions from electricity generation because 82.4 percent of electricity was from renewable sources, mainly hydro (58.2%), geothermal (17.4%), and wind (5.1%) in 2019 (MFE, 2021: 99). These basic facts are worth remembering when considering the policy developments described in this section.
Supplementary Note 7 – Influence of the UK Climate Change Act 2008
The Labour-led Government’s approach is heavily influenced by the U.K.’s Climate Change Act 2008 that sets a target of an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050 and established a nominally independent Committee on Climate Change. By 2016, the UK had reduced emissions by 42 percent below 1990 levels, which compares favourably to NZ’s increases of 24.1 percent (gross) and 63.6 percent (net) during the same period. It is important to note, however, that 75 percent of the UK reduction since was due to a shift away from coal-fired electricity generation combined with better waste management (Committee on Climate Change, 2017, 9-10). Given the already high level of renewable power generation, and that nearly half of NZ’s emissions are produced by agriculture, it will be much more difficult for NZ to achieve a substantial reduction in emissions without the Keynesian measures discussed below.
Supplementary Note 8 – GPA Climate Change Policies in Other Areas
An accurate depiction of the GPA’s overall climate change policy framework requires an extensive reading of its policies in related areas such as agriculture, conservation, energy, environmental protection, forestry, housing, mining, and transport. At the time of the 2020 election, such policies included the following: greater use of public ownership and investment; transforming agriculture through a reduction of livestock numbers and a diversification into more plant-based foods and fibres grown using regenerative methods, encouraging greater energy efficiency and environmental sustainability through regulation to counter planned obsolescence in manufacturing, increased government support for eco-housing, public housing, sustainable urban design and development, and greatly increased government investment in public and active transportation including cycle and walk ways, trains, buses, and ferries.[17] To this can be added, greatly increased investment in conservation including funding for DoC, enhancing and expanding nature reserves, pest eradication, habitat restoration, protection of endangered indigenous species, and urgent action to reverse pollution and degradation of waterways and wetlands. Government should aim ‘to protect, maintain, enhance and increase our indigenous forests’, both to counter declining biodiversity, and to provide expanding long-term carbon sinks.[18] In addition to expanding indigenous forests, the expansion of commercial forestry should also be encouraged but involve a move away from reliance on Pinus Radiata with increased planting of a wider diversity of longer rotation higher value species. The above is just a very small sample of the GPA’s more detailed policies which can be accessed on its website.
Supplementary Note 9 – The Blue Green versus Red Green Divide in the GPA
Although Metiria Turei, female co-leader of the Greens from 2009 to 2017, was not explicitly critical of neoliberalism, she was consistently critical of many of its effects, and well to the left of Labour in this regard. New Co-leader, Marama Davidson, who was the left-wing candidate in the 2018 leadership election, provides a passionate and inspiring critique of the negative impact of the neoliberal policy regime.
The next few years will be critical for Aotearoa and the world as we grapple with the crises of climate change, inequality and environmental degradation. … We have among the highest rates of homelessness, child poverty, suicide among young people, and incarceration in the developed world, alongside among the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, and rivers so polluted you can’t even swim in them. These environmental and social crises are the direct result of a flawed and broken economic model.[19]
The margin of her victory, 110 delegated votes to 34, suggests that the majority of party members wanted a red-green female Māori co-leader to act as a counter-weight to the blue-green Pākehā male co-leader Shaw, and also highlights the existence of strong support within the GPA for the progressive social and taxation policies. But despite the complexities and internal tensions within the party around these issues, the fact remains that an explicit critique of neoliberalism is largely absent from the public political discourse of the GPA. In this sense, Davidson’s reference in her speech to a ‘flawed and broken economic model’ is the exception that proves the rule- even here there is no explicit reference to neoliberalism as such.
Supplementary Note 10 – GPA Tax Policy
Although the GPA has consistently advocated progressive taxation reform throughout its history, there have been some interesting shifts. For example, whereas in 2014 the Party promised to introduce a tax-free threshold at the bottom of the scale for income up to $10k, this was replaced with a much weaker commitment to ‘reduce the bottom tax rate on income up to $14,000 from 10.5 percent to 9 percent’ in 2017 (Green Party, 2017b, 8) which, in turn, was replaced by a return to the 2014 position in 2020 (Green Party, 2020a: 21). The GPA has consistently advocated a comprehensive capital gains tax (excluding family homes) that it claims will generate an extra $4.5 billion of government revenue per year. But in 2020 it added a wealth tax of ‘1% on an individual’s net wealth above $1 million and 2% on an individual’s net wealth over $2 million. This would affect the top 6% of wealthiest New Zealanders’ (Green Party, 2020b: 2). It also advocates exploring the introduction of a financial transactions tax. With respect to marginal income tax rates, in 2017 the GPA proposed increasing the top rate of tax to 40 percent for income over $150,000, increasing this rate to 42% in 2020 (2017b: 2; 2020b2: 2).[20] As mentioned above, these tax changes would help to reduce socio-economic inequality, while having positive economic impacts, particularly reducing the attractiveness of speculative investment in residential property.
Nonetheless, even if the Greens proposed tax changes were fully implemented, they would fall short of recreating the progressiveness of the taxation system that prevailed in NZ from 1935 to 1984, let alone create a genuinely egalitarian society. To put this in historical perspective, under National Party Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon in the late 1970s the top marginal income tax rate was 66 percent, while currently the Greens propose to raise the top marginal tax rate to 42 percent (for income over $150k). Furthermore, although capital gains and financial transactions taxes would have progressive effects, the retention of GST and the introduction of eco-taxes, such as the so-called ‘Clean Car Levy’, will undermine the progressiveness of the taxation system. Of course, it is not possible to determine with empirical precision what the overall impact of these tax changes on the distribution of disposable income or the regressive effects of these consumption taxes will be, but it is reasonable to hypothesise that income and wealth would remain less equally distributed than in the early 1980s, prior to the implementation of the first phase of neoliberal tax reform (the best official statistical account of changes in income distribution and inequality from 1982 to 2018 is Perry, 2019).
Supplementary Note 11 – Why State Intervention and Investment should be given Priority over Market Based Instruments (MBIs)
There are good reasons to prioritise state intervention and investment over MBIs. First, the fact that around 82 percent of NZ’s electricity is generated from renewable sources, is due to large-scale direct state investment and ownership in hydro and geothermal power generation during the Keynesian era (1935-1984). Likewise, NZ’s largest exotic forests were initially developed and owned by a state agency – the NZ Forest Service - from 1919 to 1986 before being privatised from 1987 to 1996.[21] This means that the two main areas in which NZ is comparatively advantaged in reducing carbon emissions were largely developed by the state, not private commercial interests. Second, afforestation must of necessity play a key role in sequestering an increasing proportion of NZ’s carbon emissions if the target of zero net emissions is to be achieved by 2050. But since ‘this sequestration falls towards zero as forests reach maturity’, ‘additional approaches will be necessary in order to reduce emissions in the second half of the century’ (Kazaglis et al., 2017, 17). Given the comparatively high growth rate of exotic commercial forests, trees planted during the first half of the century will be ready for harvesting in the second, exacerbating this problem. Large-scale state investment will be required to create the infrastructure for a low-carbon emitting economy. Third, as Malm (2016, 367-385) convincing argues, the highly profitable nature of fossil fuel stocks relative to the free flows of renewable energy means that capitalists cannot be relied upon to invest on a sufficiently large-scale in wind, solar, hydro, tidal, and wave electricity generation. BP and Shell divested from the manufacture of solar panels, pointing to ‘the plummeting prices on panels. Since they could not extract the fuel and sell it on the market, the only thing amenable to self-expanding value would be manufacturing the technology; the margins were squeezed year after year, however, until little if any profit remained – a tendency with no equivalent in their core business’ (2016, 370). For these, and other reasons, a carbon tax can play, at best, a secondary role to encourage a shift away from fossil fuel use, and to partially fund direct state intervention and investment.
Supplementary Note 12 – Class, Class Struggle, Environmental Conflict and Reformism
‘Class’ is a word that is even more conspicuously absent from GPA discourse than ‘capitalism’. Although a focus on social inequality is a central theme in the Green’s politics and policy-making, there is no overt class analysis in any of the Greens’ policy documents, despite the incontrovertible fact that class inequality has increased substantially since the mid-1970s, when the post-war long boom collapsed, ushering in a prolonged period of economic stagnation and mass unemployment. Instead, there is the constant use of ‘our’, ‘we’, ‘human’. We hear that it is ‘our economy’, ‘our land’, ‘our resources’, and ‘we’ emit carbon, ‘we’ pollute rivers, ‘we’ have to do better.
The use of these terms is highly problematic. A large majority of the people who live in NZ do not own or control the economy. The economy is most definitely not ‘our’ economy and we certainly don’t own it. The means of production, distribution and exchange are predominately owned by capitalists (including capitalist farmers). NZ society is actually made up of classes – the working class, middle classes, and a capitalist class – and you can’t make sense of what is going on socially and politically unless you recognise this (Roper, 2005, 33-54; 2006). Putting it bluntly, it is the capitalist class that is exploiting the majority, generating high levels of inequality, and that is also exploiting natural resources and causing environmental devastation in the process.
Related to this, the GPA doesn’t fully appreciate the extent to which real reforms that would benefit workers, women, Māori, Pasifika, the disabled, elderly and students can only be achieved through mass struggles, involving strikes, occupations, rallies, and protests outside of the parliamentary process. The most important waves of reform in NZ’s history have been carried on high tides of mass working class struggle, such as the reforms introduced by the Liberal Government in the 1890s following the 1890 Maritime Strike, the rise of the Red Federation of Labour from 1908 to 1913 that led to the formation of the Labour Party in 1916 and, eventually, the election of the First Labour Government in 1935 that introduced the welfare state in the wake of the 1932 Depression Riots. More recently, the highest levels of working class struggle in NZ’s history combined with Māori protest movements and the women’s liberation movement to pressure the Third Labour Government into introducing major reforms from 1972 to 1975 (Roper, 2005, 145-149).
Although in the context of favourable economic circumstances and/or when subject to sufficient pressure from working class movements, social democratic governments have introduced reforms that have significantly improved working class life chances in the advanced capitalist societies (as took place during the golden era of Keynesianism from 1945 to 1973), no such government has eliminated the fundamental problems generated by capitalism such as class inequality, persistent gender and ethnic inequalities, unemployment, alienation within the workplace, the destruction of the natural environment, and industrialised military conflict between nations. Furthermore, as Lavelle (2008) and many others have shown, since the collapse of the post-war boom in the mid-1970s social democratic governments across the globe have implemented neoliberal policies, attacking their working-class supporters in the process.
Supporters of the GPA fail to engage critically and systematically with the historical record of social democratic parties and governments, many of which started out with radical aspirations and publicly stated intentions to implement progressive policies, and which once in office were forced to water down their policies and, since the late 1970s, accommodate themselves to the central pillars of the neoliberal policy regime. More specifically, they tend to ignore rather than explain the historical failures of social democratic governments to implement progressive policies. The reality is that social democratic governments have consistently failed to bring about fundamental change because capitalism is an inherently and unalterably undemocratic form of economic organisation. There is not a single historical or contemporary example of any government extensively democratising economic life in a capitalist society.
This is because real power in capitalist society does not, for the most part, lie in elected governmental assemblies; it is heavily concentrated in the network of economic and political organisations of the capitalist class. Within the state apparatus itself power is heavily concentrated in cabinet and its key advisory bodies– central banks, Treasuries and other similar financial ministries. Furthermore, capitalism generates massive inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth, which means that capitalists can generally, but not always, exert more influence over the formation of policy by governments than environmentalists, trade unions or progressive social movements (Lindblom, 1977; Roper, 2005, 88-90; 2006, 165-167; 2013, 236-239). The state in capitalist society is constrained by its financial dependence on revenue from the taxation of incomes generated in the process of capital accumulation. Because state power is dependent on capital accumulation, every government in a capitalist society must promote conditions conducive to the continuation of capital accumulation. These domestic constraints have been compounded by the growing internationalisation of the economic system. In short, the particular kind of state that exists in NZ, a specifically liberal democratic state, is inextricably linked to, and fundamentally committed to maintaining, capitalism. Therefore, it is receptive to business lobbying and will not implement environmental reform that is fundamentally contrary to capitalist interests.
Supplementary Note 13 – Progressive Environmental Reform is Possible and Worth Fighting For
The critical points made in this article need not, however, lead to a pessimistic denial of the possibility of progressive change. Environmental policy reform is possible but to achieve it greater strategic clarity is required than that offered by the GPA or other similar parties around the world. At the very least what is required is a systematic critique of neoliberalism and a clear recognition that market-based policy responses will not work. Although eco-taxes may have a minor role to play in reducing emissions, by far the most important role needs to be played by the state. In this regard, the UK Green New Deal Group (2008, 3) correctly urges ‘a programme of investment and a call to action as urgent and far-reaching as the US New Deal in the 1930s and the mobilization for war in 1939.’ Neale (2008, 55) argues in a similar vein that if the world’s governments invested on a similar scale and with a similar degree of urgency as they did during the Second World War, ‘with that kind of money, planning and commitment, we could halt global warming’ (cf. Malm, 2016, 385). An equitable and effective international climate change agreement will be necessary to establish a timeframe and set targets for the reduction of emissions but it needs to make it incumbent upon the governments that become signatories to this agreement to directly invest, intervene and regulate on the scale necessary to achieve these targets.
Business lobby groups, centre right political parties, central financial agencies, and supra-governmental international agencies like the IMF, World Bank, and so forth, will actively oppose this kind of green Keynesian response. Hence the importance of building a mass climate justice movement at local, regional, national and global levels. It is important to see this as related to a wider project of rebuilding the left – especially unions and democratic socialist organisations. An upsurge of working class and related social movement struggle, including a mass militant climate justice movement as one of its central currents, is what is required to place sufficient pressure on governments to abandon neoliberalism and implement the kind of policies that really would lead to a reduction of carbon emissions.
Supplementary Note 14 – Acknowledgements
This has been a widely travelled paper. The first version was delivered at the Association for Heterodox Economics Annual Conference at University of Manchester in 2017. A related paper on the climate change policies of the current Labour-led Government was presented at the 2019 NZPSA conference at the University of Canterbury. An updated version was presented at the Climate Change Panel hosted by Politics at Otago in March 2022 and then subsequently at the Otago Politics Day School held in August. The research for this article has also formed the basis for several public meetings organised by the International Socialist Organisation (ISO). The research has formed the basis of several undergraduate lectures and postgraduate seminars (big thanks to the 2022 POLS 520 NZ Politics crew!). Finally, although formal interviews were not conducted, I gained valuable insights from the many discussions that I have had with Green Party members and MPs over the years. The feedback, discussion, and debates in response to earlier versions of the paper have strengthened it greatly. The weaknesses are mine alone, but I very much appreciate of all those folks who provided constructive criticism of my arguments in the settings mentioned above.
Supplementary Note 15 – References for Supplementary Notes and Thematic Bibliography
References for Supplementary Notes that are not in the main article bibliography
Bale, T. and Wilson, J. (2006). ‘The Green Party.’ In R. Miller (ed), NZ Government and Politics. 4rd edn., Auckland: Oxford University Press, pp.392-404.
Committee on Climate Change (2017). Meeting Carbon Budgets: Closing the Policy Gap 2017 Report to Parliament. Available at: https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/2017-report-to-parliament-meeting-carbon-budgets-closing-the-policy-gap/
Clarke, M. (1998). ‘Devolving forest ownership through privatization in NZ.’ Wellington: NZ Institute of Economic Research. Available online at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/x3030e/x3030e0a.htm
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Green New Deal Group (2013). A National Plan for the UK. London: New Economics Foundation.
Harman, C. (1988). The Fire Last Time: 1968 and after. London, Bookmarks.
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Lavelle, A. (2008). The Death of Social Democracy. Aldershot: Ashgate.
McKinnon, Malcolm. (2003). Treasury: The New Zealand Treasury, 1840-2000, Auckland University Press: Auckland.
Ministry for the Environment (MFE). (2016a). NZ’s Greenhouse Inventory, 1990-2014. Wellington: MFE.
MFE (2016b). NZ’s Emissions Trading Scheme Evaluation 2016. Wellington: MFE.
Ministry for the Environment (MFE) (2017a). NZ’s third biennial report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
MFE (2017b). NZ’s greenhouse inventory, 1990-2015. Available at: https://environment.govt.nz/publications/new-zealands-greenhouse-gas-inventory-19902015/
MFE (2021). NZ’s Greenhouse Inventory, 1990-2019. Wellington: MFE.
Parliamentary Service (2016). Working to Our Strengths: Annual Report 2015-16. Wellington.
Roper, B. (2011). The fire last time: The rise of class struggle and the progressive social movements in Aotearoa/NZ, 1968 to 1977. Marxist Interventions 3: 7-30 (2011).
Ryan, S. and S. Blumfeld. (2018). ‘Unions and Union Membership in New Zealand – report on 2017 Survey.’ Published by the Centre for Labour, Employment and Work, Victoria University, Wellington. Available at: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1814588/new-zealand-union-membership-survey-report-2017.pdf
Vowles, Jack et al., (2017) A Bark but No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 Election. Canberra: ANU Press.
Wilson (2010). ‘Greens.’ In R. Miller (ed), NZ Government and Politics, 5th edn., Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp.497-508.
Green Party – Selected Key Primary Sources since 2009
Green Party Website: https://www.greens.org.nz/
Green Party (2009). Green New Deal: The Green Stimulus Package at https://home.greens.org.nz/greennewdeal.
Green Party (2010). Mind the Gap – Combating Inequality in New Zealand at https://home.greens.org.nz/mindthegap.
Green Party (2011a). Economics Policy - Thinking Beyond Tomorrow, Wellington.
Green Party (2011b). Climate Change Policy, Wellington.
Green Party (2013a). Sustainable Business Policy, Wellington. At https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/sustainablebusiness_20131109.pdf
Green Party (2013b). Taxation and Monetary Policy, Wellington.
Green Party (2014a). Economic Policy - Smart, Resilient and Fair at https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/economic_20140811_1.pdf
Green Party (2014b). Industrial Relations Policy at https://home.greens.org.nz/policy/industrial-relations-policy-sustainable-working-life.
Green Party (2014c). Climate Change Policy at https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/climatechange_20140601.pdf
Green Party (2014d). Income Support Policy at https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/Green%20Party%20Income%20Support%20Policy.pdf
Green Party (2015). Yes We Can! A Plan for Significantly Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions at https://www.greens.org.nz/policy/cleaner-environment/2015-climate-action-yes-we-can.
Green Party (2017a) Climate Protection Plan. Available at https://www.greens.org.nz/climate-protection-plan
Green Party (2017b) Mending the Safety Net: For a Fairer Society. Available at: https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/policy-pdfs/Mending%20the%20Safety%20Net%20policy%20paper%20updated%20FINAL.pdf
Green Party (2020a). Economic Policy. Available at: https://www.greens.org.nz/economic_policy
Green Party (2020b). Poverty Action Plan. Available at: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/beachheroes/pages/12689/attachments/original/1594876918/Poverty_Action_Plan_policy_document_screen-readable.pdf?1594876918
Green Party and Labour Party (2016). Memorandum of Understanding at https://www.greens.org.nz/news/press-release/labour-and-greens-sign-historic-agreement-change-government
Green Party and Labour Party (2017a). Budget Responsibility Rules at https://www.greens.org.nz/policy/smarter-economy/budget-responsibility-rules.
Green Party and Labour Party (2017b). Confidence and Supply Agreement at https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/NZLP%20%26%20GP%20C%26S%20Agreement%20FINAL.PDF
Green Party and Labour Party (2021) ‘Cooperation Agreement between the New Zealand Labour Party and the Green Party of Aotearoa / New Zealand.’ In Levine, S. (ed) (2021), Politics in a Pandemic: Jacinda Ardern and the New Zealand General Election of 2020. Victoria University Press, pp. 459-464.
Green Party – Secondary Sources
Bale, T. (2003). ‘The Green Party.’ In R. Miller (ed), New Zealand Government and Politics. 3rd edn., Auckland: Oxford University Press, pp.283-292.
Bale, T. and Wilson, J. (2006). ‘The Green Party.’ In R. Miller (ed), New Zealand Government and Politics. 4rd edn., Auckland: Oxford University Press, pp.392-404.
Dann, C. (1999). ‘From Earth’s Last Islands: The Origins of Green Politics.’ PhD thesis, Lincoln University.
Davidson, M. and J. Shaw (2021). ‘Growing Green support from a position of government.’ In Levine, S. (2021) ‘Politics in a Pandemic: New Zealand’s 2020 election.’ In Levine, S. (ed) (2021), Politics in a Pandemic: Jacinda Ardern and the New Zealand General Election of 2020. Victoria University Press. Ch.4.
Farquhar, R.M (2006). ‘Green Politics and the Reformation of Liberal Democratic Institutions.’ PhD thesis in sociology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch.
Ford, G. (2015). ‘Green Party.’ In J. Hayward (ed), New Zealand Government and Politics, 6th edn., Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp.229-239.
Ford, G. (2022). ‘Green Parties and Greening Party Politics.’ In J. MacArthur and M. Bargh (eds). Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa / New Zealand, Auckland University Press, ch.11.
Miller, R. (2005) Party Politics in New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2005
Patel, K. (2018). ‘Candidates and campaigning: A green MP’s campaign.’ In Levine, S. (ed) (2018), Stardust and substance: the New Zealand general election of 2017. Victoria University Press, ch.20.
Rainbow, S. (1993) Green Politics. Auckland: Oxford University Press.
Roper, B. (2002) “Green Politics: A New Radicalism?” in Socialist Review of Aotearoa, no. 10, 2002, pp.22-24
Roper, B. (2005). Roper, B.S. Prosperity for All? Economic, Social and Political Change in New Zealand since 1935. Victoria, Thomson Learning.
Roper, B. (2011). The fire last time: The rise of class struggle and the progressive social movements in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1968 to 1977. Marxist Interventions 3: 7-30 (2011).
Roper, B. (2017). ‘Why Vote, and Vote Left?’ Published (14-9-2017) on the International Socialist Organisation website at: https://iso.org.nz/2017/09/14/election-2017-why-vote-and-why-vote-left/
Shaw, J. (2018). ‘The Green Party’s campaign: A leader’s perspective.’ In Levine, S. (ed) (2018), Stardust and substance: the New Zealand general election of 2017. Victoria University Press, ch.4.
Taylor, D. (2008). ‘What’s Left? An Exploration of Social Movements, the Left and Activism in New Zealand Today.’ MA thesis in Sociology, Victoria University of Wellington.
Vowles, Jack et al., (2017) A Bark but No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 Election. Canberra: ANU Press.
Wilson (2010). ‘Greens.’ In R. Miller (ed), New Zealand Government and Politics, 5th edn., Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp.497-508.
The Alliance (New Labour Party, Green Party, Mana Motuhake, Democrats)
• C. Trotter “Alliance” ch.4.3 in R. Miller (ed), New Zealand Government and Politics, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 2003.
• B. Jesson, “The Alliance”, in R. Millar (ed), New Zealand Politics in Transition, Oxford University Press, 1997, ch. 3.3.
• “Alliance Meltdown— What the Hell Happened?” in Socialist Review of Aotearoa, no. 11, Winter 2002, pp. 8-10.
The Values Party
Browning, C. (2012) Beyond Today: A Values Story. Wellington: C. Browning
Dann, C. (1999). ‘From Earth’s Last Islands: The Origins of Green Politics.’ PhD thesis, Lincoln University.
Climate Change Policy in New Zealand
Bertram, G. and S. Terry. (2010). The Carbon Challenge: New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme. Wellington: Bridget Williams Press.
Blakeley, R. (2016). ‘Policy Framework for New Zealand to Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy’. In Policy Quarterly. Vol.12, Issue 2, pp.13-22.
Boston (ed), J. (2007). Towards a New Global Climate Treaty: Looking Beyond 2012, Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington, 2007.
Boston, J. (2015). ‘Climate Change Policy’ in J. Hayward (ed), New Zealand Government and Politics, 6th edn., Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 482-493.
Chapman, R., J. Boston, and M. Schwass, (2006). Confronting Climate Change: Critical Issues for New Zealand. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Hayward, B. (2017). Sea Change: Climate Politics and New Zealand. Bridget Williams Books, Wellington.
Hayward, B. (2022). ‘Climate Policy.’ In J. MacArthur and M. Bargh (eds). Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa / New Zealand, Auckland University Press, ch.12.
Leining, C. (2022). ‘A guide to the New Zealand emissions trading scheme: 2022 update.’ Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
MacArthur, J. and M. Bargh (eds). (2022). Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa / New Zealand, Auckland University Press.
Ministry for the Environment (MFE). (2016). New Zealand’s Greenhouse Inventory, 1990-2014. Wellington, New Zealand Government.
MFE (2016b). New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme Evaluation 2016. Wellington: MFE.
MFE (2017a). New Zealand’s Third Biennial Report: Under the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. Wellington, New Zealand Government.
MFE (2017b). New Zealand’s Greenhouse Inventory, 1990-2015. Wellington: MFE.
MFE (2019), ‘Reforming the NZ emissions trading scheme: Proposed settings.’
Mutu, M. (2022). ‘Environmental Ideas in Aotearoa.’ In J. MacArthur and M. Bargh (eds). Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa / New Zealand, Auckland University Press, ch.3.
New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) Electoral System
Arseneau, T. and N. Roberts (2015). ‘The MMP Electoral System’ in NZGP(6th edn), ch.5.1, pp.275-286.
Atkinson, N. (2003) Adventures in Democracy: A History of the Vote in New Zealand, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, ch.7 ‘Searching for a Better Democracy, 1984 to 2002’, pp.201-233.
Further Reading (in order of importance):
Miller, R. and Lane, P. (2010) ‘Future of the MMP Electoral System’, in Miller, R. (ed) New Zealand government and politics, fifth edition, Miller (ed), South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp.168-184.
Catt, H. and others (1992), Voter’s Choice: Electoral Change in New Zealand? Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, pp.17-31, 68-82.
Jackson, K. and McRobie (1998) New Zealand Adopts Proportional Representation, Ashgate, Brookfield, especially pp.120-122.
Levine, S. and others (2005) ‘A Wider View: MMP Ten Years On.’ In S. Levine and N.S. Roberts (eds), The Bubbles of Office: The New Zealand General Election of 2005, Victoria University Press, Wellington, pp.445-76.
Denemark, D. (2003) ‘Choosing MMP in New Zealand: Explaining the 1993 Electoral Reform.’ In Soberg Shugart, M. and Martin P. Wattenberg, M. (eds) (2003) Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, ch.4, pp.70-95.
Roper, J., Holtz-Bacha, C. & G, Mazzoleni, The Politics of Representation: Election Campaigning and Proportional Representation, Peter lang Publishing, New York, ch.2 ‘New Zealand: The Popular Overthrow of an Electoral System’, pp.29-44.
Barker, Fiona and others (2003) ‘An Initial Assessment of the Consequences of MMP in New Zealand.’ In Soberg Shugart, M. and Martin P. Wattenberg, M. (eds) (2003) Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, ch.14, pp.297-322.
Vowles, J. (2008) ‘Systemic Failure, Coordination, and Contingencies: Understanding Electoral System Change in New Zealand.’ In Blais, A. (ed) To Keep or To Change First Past the Post? The Politics of Electoral Reform, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.163-183.
Boston, J. (1996) Governing Under Proportional Representation: Lessons from Europe, Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington, ch.2.
Hunt, G. (1998) Why MMP Must Go: The Case For Ditching the Electoral Disaster of the Century, Waddington Press, Auckland.
Temple, P. (1993) Making Your Vote Count Twice: MMP versus FPP, McIndoe Publishers, Dunedin.
The New Zealand Electoral Commission website has a lot of useful information relevant to this topic: www.elections.org.nz.
Neoliberalism in New Zealand – Selected Key Sources
Boston, Jonathon and others. (Eds.) 1999, Redesigning the Welfare State in New Zealand: Problems, Policies, Prospects, Oxford University Press, Auckland.
Chatterjee, S. and others (Eds.) 1999, The New Politics: A Third Way For New Zealand, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North.
Cheyne, Christine and others, Social Policy in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Critical Introduction, Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 2008.
Duncan, Grant. 2007, Society and Politics: New Zealand Social Policy, Second Edition, Pearson, Auckland, 2007.
Dalziel, Paul and Robert Lattimore, The New Zealand Macroeconomy: A Briefing on the Reforms, 4th edn, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 2001.
Dalziel, Paul and Robert Lattimore. 2004, The New Zealand Macroeconomy: Striving for Sustainable Growth with Equity, 5th edn, Oxford University Press, Auckland.
Easton, Bryan. 1997, In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy, Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
Hager, Nicky. 2005, The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception, Graig Potton Publishing, Nelson.
Hager, Nicky. 2014, Dirty Politics: How Attack Politics is Poisoning New Zealand’s Political Environment, Craig Potton Publishing, Wellington.
Harvey, David. 2005, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, New York.
Kelsey, Jane. 1997, The New Zealand Experiment, Second Edition, Auckland University Press, Auckland.
Kelsey, Jane. 2002, At the Cross-Roads, Bridget Williams Books, Auckland.
Kelsey, Jane. 2015, The FIRE Economy: New Zealand’s Reckoning, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington.
Lunt, Neill, Mike O’Brien, and Robert Stephen. (Eds.) 2008, New Zealand, New Welfare, Victoria, Thomson.
Massey, Patrick. New Zealand: Market Liberalization in a Developed Economy, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1995.
McClure, Margaret, A Civilised Community: A History of Social Security in New Zealand, 1898-1998, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998.
McKinnon, Malcolm. (2003). Treasury: The New Zealand Treasury, 1840-2000, Auckland University Press: Auckland.
O’Brien, Mike. (2008). Poverty, Policy and the State: Social Security Reform in New Zealand, Policy Press, Bristol.
Rashbrooke, Max. (Ed.) (2013) Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington.
Roper, B. (2005), Prosperity for All? Economic, Social and Political Change in New Zealand Since 1935, Thomson, Southbank Victoria.
Roper, B. (2017). ‘Neoliberalism and New Zealand Politics from 1984 to the Present: The Rise, Entrenchment, and Modification of a Neoliberal Policy Regime.’ Paper presented at the NZPSA Annual Conference held at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand from November 29-December 1, 2017.
Rudd, Chris and Brian Roper (Eds.) 1997, The Political Economy of New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1997.
Trotter, Chris. (2010). No Left Turn: The Distortion of New Zealand’s History by Greed, Bigotry, and Right-Wing Politics. Penguin, Auckland.
Kelsey, Jane. 2002, At the Cross-Roads, Bridget Williams Books, Auckland.
Whitwell, Jan. (1990), ‘The Rogernomics Monetarist Experiment’, in Holland, M. and Boston, J. (eds), The Fourth Labour Government: Politics and Policy in New Zealand, 2nd edn., Auckland: Oxford University Press.
Climate Change and Marxist Ecology: Analysing the Causes of Resource Depletion, Habitat Destruction, and Global Warming
Useful Journals:
Capitalism, Nature Socialism: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcns20/current
Capitalism and Climate: http://climateandcapitalism.com/
International Socialism: http://isj.org.uk/
Socialist Review of Aotearoa: https://iso.org.nz/climate-and-environment/
Global Warming and Climate Change: Causes and Solutions
Neale, J. (2008). “Abrupt Climate Change” in Stop Global Warming: Change the World, Bookmarks, London, 2008, pp.13-25.
Bellamy Foster, J. B. Clark and R. York, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010, pp. 121-153.
Klein, N. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Environment, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2014.
Neale, J. (2008). “Part Two: Solutions That Could Work Now” in Stop Global Warming: Change the World, Bookmarks, London, 2008, pp.49-57.
Ware, M. (2014). “Toward an anti-capitalist climate change movement.” In International Socialist Review, Issue 94, 2014, pp. 21-26.
Their, H. (2014) “Marxism and Eco-socialism.” In International Socialist Review, Issue 94, 2014, pp. 27-40.
General Introductions to the Science and Political Economy of Climate Change
Bellamy Foster, J. (1999). The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment, Monthly Review Press, 1999.
Clapp, J. and P. Dauvergne, (2011). Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment, 2nd edn., The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London.
Dessler, A and E. Parson, (2010). The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate, 2nd edn., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Dow, K. and T. Downing, (2011). The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge, 3rd edn., University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2011.
Hardy, J. (2003) Climate Change: Causes, Effects, and Solutions, Wiley, Chichester.
Henson, R. (2011) The Rough Guide to Climate Change, 3rd edn., Rough Guides, London.
Kumar, L. (2020). Climate Change and Impacts in the Pacific. Springer Climate.
Kunzig, R. and W. S. Broecker (2008). Fixing climate: the story of climate science - and how to stop global warming. London, Green Profile/Sort Of Books.
Lovejoy, T, et al. (eds). (2019). Biodiversity and Climate Change.New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mathez, E. (2009). Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future, Columbia University Press, New York.
Ohara, K. (2022). Climate Change in the Anthropocene. Elsevier.
Parr, A. (2013). The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013.
Saunier, R. (2007). and R. Meganck, Dictionary and Introduction to Global Environmental Governance, Earth Scan, 2007.
Shideler, J. and J. Hetzel (2021). Introduction to Climate Change Management: Transitioning to a Low-Carbon Economy. Springer Climate.
Eco-Socialism and Ecological Marxism
Angus, I. (2016). Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Angus, I. (2017) A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Aronoff, K., Battistoni, A., et al. (2019) A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal. New York: Verso.
Bellamy Foster, B. Clark, and R. York, (2010) The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Planet, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Bellamy Foster, J. (2000) Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York, Monthly Review Press.
Bellamy Foster, J. (2009) The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, Monthly Review Press, New York,.
Bellamy-Foster, J. (2018) ‘Making War on the Planet: Geoengineering and Capitalism’s Creative Destruction of the Earth.’ In Monthly Review Vol. 70, Issue 4.
Bellamy-Foster, J. and Clark, B. (2020) The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Burkett, P. (2006). Marxism and Ecological Economics, Brill.
D’Amato, P. (2014) The Meaning of Marxism, Updated (Second) Edition, Haymarket Books, Chicago, pp.237-257.
Empson, M. (2014). Land and Labour: Marxism, Ecology and Human History. London: Bookmarks.
Empson, M., Angus, I. and S. Ensor (2019) System Change Not Climate Change: A Revolutionary Response to Climate Change. London: Bookmarks.
Gonzalez, M. and Yanes, M. (2015) The Last Drop: The Politics of Water. London: Pluto Press.
Hughes, J. (2000). Ecology and Historical Materialism. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Klein, N. (2015) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Klein, N. (2019) On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. London: Allen Lane.
Kovel, J. (2007). The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Zed Books, London.
Malm, A. (2016). Fossil Capitalism: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. London: Verso.
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Pro-capitalist environmentalist economics.
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A good introduction to neoclassical economic concepts used in environmental economics is provided by:
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Social Democratic interpretations of the causes of global warming and how to stop it.
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[1] I discuss all of these historical developments at length in Roper (2005), especially chapters 3, 4-5.
[2] To achieve brevity, many of the references to primary sources and the secondary literature focused on the Green Party of NZ are listed in the bibliography to these notes rather than in the published article.
[3] As Ryall and Blumenfeld (2018: 1) observe, ‘the plunge in union membership and density experienced in New Zealand in the first few years of the ECA 1991 was far more pronounced than in virtually any other OECD member country.’ Available at: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1814588/new-zealand-union-membership-survey-report-2017.pdf
[4] In this regard, the crisis and decline of the NZ Labour Party has paralleled the decline of traditional social democracy in Australia, Britain, Germany and Sweden (see Lavelle, 2008).
[5] These sources all adopt a Weberian categorisation of these occupations, thus concluding that the Green Party is largely middle class. The most reliable statistical data that we have on the social bases of voting behaviour is the NZ Election Study. The 2014 election survey results are presented with commentary in the book by Vowles et al. entitled: A Bark but No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 New Zealand General Election. The book can be downloaded from: https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/bark-no-bite
[6] The Agreement can be downloaded from: https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/NZLP percent20 percent26 percent20GP percent20C percent26S percent20Agreement percent20FINAL.PDF
[7] See the Agreement for a full list of ministerial positions.
[8] Available at: https://www.parliament.nz/media/7554/labour_greens_cooperation_agreement-1.pdf
[9] See, for example, ‘Green Party discontent: Members walk, ex-MPs criticise leadership.’ Available at: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/459250/green-party-discontent-members-walk-ex-mps-criticise-leadership
[10] Green Party (2014a, 12). Economic Policy - Smart, Resilient and Fair at https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/economic_20140811_1.pdf
[11] Green Party and Labour Party (2017a). Budget Responsibility Rules at https://www.greens.org.nz/policy/smarter-economy/budget-responsibility-rules.
[12] New Zealand Herald, 24-3-2017. Accessed 15-5-2017. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11823356.
[13] Green Party (2010, 2). Mind the Gap – Combating Inequality in New Zealand at https://home.greens.org.nz/mindthegap.
[14] As above.
[15] Green Party (2014b, 4). Industrial Relations Policy at https://home.greens.org.nz/policy/industrial-relations-policy-sustainable-working-life.
[16] Green Party (2017b, 8) Mending the Safety Net
[17] See the Green Party’s policy releases on agriculture, conservation, energy, environmental protection, forestry, housing, mining, and transport. Availabe at: https://www.greens.org.nz/policy_election_initiatives_2020
[18] Green Party (2020), ‘Foresty Policy’, available at: https://www.greens.org.nz/forestry_policy
[19] The speech is available at: https://www.greens.org.nz/news/speech/acceptance-speech-election-female-co-leader. Accessed 3-5-2018.
[20] Green Party (2017b, 2) Mending the Safety Net – For A Fairer Society at https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/Mending percent20the percent20Safety percent20Net percent20policy percent20paper percent20FINAL_0.pdf
[21] See Clarke (1998) who provides an overview of the state development and subsequent privatisation of NZ’s commercial forests. Available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/x3030e/x3030e0a.htm. Accessed 7-5-2018.
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