The Greens Are Governing a Dysfunctional Discord Server

Another Green Party scandal, another round of blame-shifting. When does the pattern become the problem?

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has had a shocker. Over the past year, they’ve racked up more political own-goals than most parties manage in a decade — and the hits just keep coming. 

The latest? Benjamin Doyle, the party’s spokesperson for early childhood education, was recently thrust into the spotlight for using a private Instagram handle: BibleBeltBussy. Yes, really. from the resume of someone shaping policy for tamariki. 

Let’s be clear: no one is defending the abuse Doyle has received — online threats are completely unacceptable. But that doesn’t mean the party’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimate optics issue gets a pass. When you're responsible for children’s education, and your online alias is sexual slang, you can’t just roll your eyes and pretend people are overreacting. 

Voters will Google. Voters will ask: “Is this person for real?” 

Instead of front-footing it with a bit of accountability or even a mild, “yeah, fair play, that was dumb,” the Greens doubled down. They framed the whole thing as a morality play about queer identity and societal intolerance — completely missing the wider point. This wasn’t a homophobia problem. It was a judgment problem. And more to the point: a pattern. 

Let’s take a quick look at the Greatest Hits of recent Green disasters: 

Ghahraman – shoplifting 

Tana – migrant exploitation 

Kerekere – bullying 

Genter – contempt of Parliament 

Doyle – BibleBeltBussy, as spokesperson for early childhood education 

That’s not a blip. That’s a cultural issue. 

This is a party that constantly demands society understand them — but shows almost no interest in understanding the society they hope to govern. They want to be radical and respectable, edgy and electable, all at the same time. And they haven’t figured out that you can’t do both unless you know when to log off. 

The internet is part of public life now. Posting is politics. If you’re going to be weird online, you’d better also be competent and professional. Because otherwise, you're just another shitpost with a salary. 

The Greens have become a meme of themselves. And if they don’t course-correct soon, the only thing they’ll be governing is a Discord server.