Some people in the anarchist movement have criticised you for entering parliament. Do you think being an MP is compatible with anarchist politics?
Nandor: I think the anarchist movement is quite right to criticise me for going into the Parliamentary arena. I thought long and hard about standing before I did, because I saw that it might be seen as incompatible both with my anarchist philosophies and with my Rasta identity. Both of which traditions have very deep opposition to entering Parliamentary politics. It is interesting that the Rasta community has been very supportive of me internationally because they are pleased to see a Rasta entering into a national house of representatives and representing there.
But from an anarchist point of view, they are quite right to criticise me because the anarchist critique of parliament is quite correct. There are some who have criticised me personally for having a lack of integrity and I think those people miss the point. What I understand the critique to be is... there are two valid points.
One is that by entering the Parliamentary arena, you legitimise parliamentary processes. And I think that's true, it's certainly one of the results of I think, me entering the parliamentary arena, and the Green Party, is that we've actually got more people voting. So we've increased participation in the electoral system and you could say that in some way that legitimises it.
The other one is that by being involved in parliament that the nature of the system itself is such that you become further and further removed from the people you purport to represent and it becomes more and more difficult to do so because your sources of information are so limited. And even if you strive to maintain good communication links with grass roots movements and NGOs and people on the outside, the predominant source of information is still official advice, briefing papers, discussion documents. And the weight of it, the mass of it, is really overwhelming. So to avoid being co-opted just by the nature of the information coming your way is very difficult.
And I think one of the challenges facing Green Parties around the world has got to look at how do keep our elected representatives real? How do we stop them from becoming just another career politician so in 20 years they're just like the Labour Party or whatever your local social democratic party is, who've sold out, gone along with the privatisation agenda, gone along with militarisation and all that stuff that they said they were against when they first started up. That's the real challenge.
So yeah, the anarchists are quite right to critique because what they would say is that you can't do that, history would show that you can't do that, and you're better to organise and organise for the reorganisation of society. Whereas I guess what I and other people are saying is that while we wait for that day and support the anarchist in what they're doing, we think it's also important to get in and represent those voices that aren't represented generally in parliamentary politics.
Because the thing is, we've got to make changes now. Because of the ecological situation that we face, we can't afford to wait for some future day when the State's going to break down and people are going to self-organise along mutually agreed lines. We just don't have time. So we're going to get in and we're going to make changes now and yes that's reformist, yes those changes might be small, they might be large but we think it's vital that we get in there and make them. And at the same time we have to make sure that in our messages that we don't legitimise an illegitimate system. We have to make sure we don't say, "Vote for us, cause the Greens are going to sort everything out so you can go back to sleep and be good consumers" or "yes this is the only way to make change". We have to ensure that we don't ever do that that we continue even from the middle of parliament to critique and criticise and challenge its role and it's legitimacy.
And it's one thing we're doing here; we've got the 150th anniversary of the New Zealand parliament. We're organising a forum where anarchists and people from the Maori Sovereignty movement and radical feminists and the like can come and critique parliament and present alternatives to it. Because I think that's our role in parliament as Greens: to keep challenging.
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