John Armstrong: Greens lose credibility with the voters

Ignore the predictable claptrap about Labour being "embarrassed" by its surprise defeat on the microchipping of working farm dogs.

It is annoyed. It will be perturbed - if only slightly - at losing a vote. It is not embarrassed.

When it comes to embarrassment over what happened in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon, the Greens are swimming in the stuff, such was this triumph of political mismanagement which has done nothing for their credibility.

By backing National's amendment exempting working farm dogs, four of the party's MPs - Sue Bradford, Sue Kedgley, Keith Locke and Nandor Tanczos - compromised the two other MPs, co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons and caucus whip Metiria Turei.

They risked muddying the Greens' trademark consistency by doing exactly what the party had been stressing it would not do - vote in favour of exemptions.

They flouted the "no surprises" clause in the Greens' co-operation agreement with Labour. They forgot they are supposed to be the party which does not play "political games" in Parliament.

Matters would have been different for Labour had the 61-60 defeat been on legislation central to Labour ideology and the party's manifesto - something like the KiwiSaver scheme or the abolition of interest charges on student loans.

Then Labour would have been truly embarrassed.

No longer able to get core Labour policy through Parliament, the minority Government would have looked all the weaker and all the wonkier.

The microchipping of dogs is not core policy, however. Labour had to stick with it simply to be able to say that as the Government, it had done everything conceivable to improve dog control in readiness for the next time a child is savaged. Now, it can point the finger at those parties that didn't.

For all that, Labour was never going to die in a ditch over microchipping. But it is angry - and with reason.

Not only did the Green MPs change sides, the switch came to Labour's attention only half an hour before the vote when the Prime Minister checked her cellphone and found Fitzsimons had left a message.

The short notice was in part because Fitzsimons had discovered late in the piece that Tanczos would join the other three, giving National a majority on its amendment to the Local Government Reform Bill.

In defence, Fitzsimons argues that the Greens' co-operation agreement with Labour does not require them doing Labour any favours when they disagree over something. She says no promises were made on which way the Greens would vote.

But Labour is adamant that ministers sought and obtained assurances from Fitzsimons about which way the Greens would go. Those assurances turned out to be empty.

Regardless, the co-operation agreement specifically states that the relationship between the Greens and the Labour-led Government will be based on "good faith and no surprises".

Well, Labour got one heck of a surprise on Wednesday afternoon. Senior MPs have been muttering about the unreliability of the Greens ever since.

The episode is seen as justifying the Prime Minister's refusal to contemplate a Labour-Greens-Maori Party coalition after the election.

Inside the Greens, the last-minute switch in votes has quickly been painted as a warning to Labour that it cannot always take it for granted that it will get what it wants, especially by playing the smaller parties off against one another.

The bolshiness will be interpreted as an early sign of the party carving out a more independent niche, as indicated in speeches by Fitzsimons and new co-leader Russel Norman at the party's Queen's Birthday weekend conference.

However, the "warning shot to Labour" talk is also a convenient way of covering up the havoc within the Greens wreaked by the four MPs voting with National.

They may have done so out of principle, believing that when push came to shove, it was worth inserting anomalies in the new law to try to destroy it.

But they made a mockery of Fitzsimons' insistence that when it came to microchipping, it had to be all dogs or no dogs.

Turei was still lecturing other parties on Wednesday about how the Greens were taking that "principled" position.

But how principled was that? By then, Fitzsimons knew at least two colleagues would go down the exemption route. The Greens were telling the public one thing and planning to do another.

This deception is being justified on the grounds that siding with National was a fallback position which had to be kept secret.

The Greens tried to pressure United Future into opposing all microchipping, rather than just farm dogs. That would have swung the vote. United Future refused to budge.

The fallback was to vote for National's amendment to make the law so anomalous and unfair that it will be unworkable and will have to be repealed.

That will not happen. Instead, the Greens have risked undermining one of their biggest strengths - being principled and consistent - on a piece of legislation of little relevance to fundamental Green concerns.

Instead of getting United Future to bend, they helped to get United Future's position adopted as law - somewhat ironic given the bad history between the two parties.

More serious was the predicament in which Fitzsimons was placed by the vote.

While National was positively fizzing following its victory, Fitzsimons sounded as flat as a week-old glass of organic beer when she spoke in Parliament late on Wednesday night.

To her credit, she has been upfront about her unhappiness, especially with Tanczos, whose last-minute change of mind will inevitably be interpreted as revenge for Fitzsimons' securing Norman's election ahead of him.

Outside Parliament and out in the provinces - the territory which Norman sees as an untapped catchment of potential Green voters - the party may win plaudits for backing National, given the prevailing view that microchipping will do nothing to stop dogs biting people.

Inside Parliament, however, the split voting is indicative of a huge lapse in discipline within the Greens' camp.

It remains to be seen whether Wednesday marks the advent of a more hard-nosed stance in the Greens' dealings with Labour.

But if they were pulling a swifty on Labour, Fitzsimons' colleagues pulled the rug from under her.

The co-leader's authority was undermined. She looked weak and not in control of her caucus.

The Greens may well say that words like "control" and "authority" are anathema to them.

But one thing is for sure - and they know it. This shambles would never have happened under Rod Donald's watch.