New Green MP Holly Walker is either naive or smart. I can't figure out which. Yesterday, in response to the latest poverty inquiry, she was calling for a "co-ordinated child poverty strategy". (My immediate irreverent thought was, there is one. It's called the DPB. It creates plenty of child poverty.)
A lack of ability to find agreed solutions lies at the very heart of politics - what she signed up for. The Greens prescription for solving child poverty is not acceptable to a majority. Until they are in government (or a compelling position of power) what they bring to the table will be rejected. They can talk and they can try to influence but they don't hold the aces. Calling for a co-ordinated approach is typical moral high-ground baloney to force their policies into the mix.
Welfare is the major factor driving child poverty but the Greens are pro-welfare. They would have more of it. Most people have either realised or are beginning to suspect that this would only increase child poverty.
And it's ironic that at the end of her post she gives Business New Zealand's Phil O'Reilly a serve. What's he doing on the panel? So she doesn't really want inclusiveness after all.
(I criticised the line up as well but in the context of criticising the entire pointless project.)
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So your argument is basically "only the party in government gets to 'call for' things, because by definition other parties' prescriptions are 'not acceptable to a majority.'" That sounds like a recipe for vigorous democracy, then.
Don't put quotation marks around things I didn't say.
I make submissions to select committees, inquiries etc but I don't expect they will make much or any difference because my ideas are not acceptable to the majority either. But I understand the political process. That the party in power calls the shots. Doesn't stop me trying to participate. And I don't say, when my submissions or solutions are ignored, that's anti-democratic. And I don't expect that a strategy to reduce child poverty would constitute a mixed bag of cross-parliament solutions.
If Greens want their policies enacted they need to get more votes. That's democracy.
Great post. Looking forward to the one which argues that policies which were championed by Act, like charter schools and TABOR, should be rejected because Act were not "acceptable to a majority."
ACT forms part of the government.
I wrote about the Greens, "Until they are in government (or a compelling position of power) what they bring to the table will be rejected. They can talk and they can try to influence but they don't hold the aces."
Paying the IWTC to beneficiary parents could be a policy the Greens succeed in implementing if they ever attain support/majority party status.
That's politics. The thrust of my argument.
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