The GREEN ENIGMA
It is no use asking James Shaw, the co-leader of the Green Party and the Minister of Climate Change, what he thinks his public profile is. Interviewing him is an attempt to find out, but there is no use asking me, either. I liked him at the time.
He seemed a decent geezer. He wants, when “this place is done with me”, to be forgotten, which is an interesting, if not unique, ambition for a politician. He is, he says, seldom recognised. The answer to the question about his profile: “It’s a good question. Yeah, I don’t think most politicians and most ministers outside the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and, right now, Chris Hipkins, because of the work he’s done on MIQ – most people don’t recognise us necessarily and won’t remember us when we’re gone. Which is a great relief to me!”
That might be his epitaph. “Yeah, it is. But I think for the people who do know who I am – well, it depends whether you’re a farmer or a Green, ha, ha – we’re sort of known in different communities and our profile probably varies quite dramatically based on who those communities are.”
See what he does there? He slides a question about his own profile into a more general answer about the profile of his party. Which is
