Pete skewers the Greens

Dunedin-based blogger and United Future candidate in 2011 Pete George raises an interesting question or two about the Greens' latest fundraising campaign; he blogs:

The Green Party have launched a ‘poverty’ fundraising campaign via email, calling it a(nother) crisis.

Here is your opportunity to help the Green Party create practical and effective solutions to New Zealand’s Child Poverty crisis.
Child poverty in New Zealand has 270,000 young faces.
That’s the official figure of those growing up in poverty. It’s a quarter of our nation’s children.
These are the kids with no school lunch, too hungry to learn. The kids struggling with asthma from living in cold, damp homes. The kids turning up at A&E suffering from Rheumatic Fever and other entirely preventable diseases.
It’s a national scandal, and it needn’t be so.

The Green Party has driven the so called ‘poverty’ debate, and have tried to redefine the word poverty in a modern New Zealand setting. Lifting 100,000 kids out of poverty was one of their three main election policies last year.
Since the election they have promoted the number of 270,000 being in poverty in New Zealand.

Every child deserves a good life and a fair future. That’s why the Green Party has launched the Take the Step Campaign with the aim of radically reducing child poverty in New Zealand, and we need your donation to help make it a success.
Click here to make a donation now.

Raising money for people in poverty may seem like a worthy cause. But further reading suggests none of the money raised will go to poor people.

We know that this is a Campaign where success will take a long period of concerted and committed effort.
It demands that the Government takes action now to effectively tackle child poverty. The first step is to win support for our Member’s Bill to create a child payment for all low income families, whether in work or not. In doing we will have begun the process of ensuring that New Zealand can become a great place to grow up for every child.
This is just the start. We need your support to run a strong campaign that will radically reduce child poverty in New Zealand.
Click here to make a donation now.

Money raised will fund Green party political campaigning. There is no indication that any money will go to poor people.
And this is likely to be unnecessary and probably futile.

Pete George is quite right. Surely if the Greens were committed to ending child poverty (whatever "child poverty" is defined as being, given that it means different things to different people), surely they would be raising money to give to deserving charities, not to line their own war-chest and indulge in political posturing.

And Pete George makes it plain that there is a solution for the Greens that won't cost a red cent; read on:

If the Green Party wants to win support for their Member’s Bill they don’t need to raise money and they don’t need to run a party promotion campaign. All they need to do is convince one of two MPs to vote for their bill. The vote of either Peter Dunne or John Banks is all the support they need. All it would cost would be somne time and a convincing argument.

Pete is spot on. MMP politics is all about negotiation and compromise. Metiria Turei would be far better holding her nose and making an appointment with either or both Messrs Banks and Dunne, and going and stating her case.

By all means can the Greens solicit donations to help to eliminate poverty. But they would garner far more credibility if that money was spent on directly trying to help people in unfortunate circumstances rather than just indulging in more politicking. Pete George is dead right to call the Greens on this disconnect.