Introduction:

One of the
brightest stars
We will fight them on the sea.1
— Jeanette Fitzsimons, blog post, 26 November 2013.

Is it ethical to have children in the twenty-first century? This

was the topic of conversation between three women aboard
the sailing vessel Vega in the Tasman Sea west of Raglan in
2013. Jeanette Fitzsimons, veteran Greenpeace leader Bunny
McDiarmid and young Dunedin activist Niamh O’Flynn were
aboard the historic wooden yacht 100 nautical miles off the
coast of New Zealand.
Braving wind, waves and fatigue, they were part of a small
flotilla of boats protesting against deep-sea oil drilling. They
had a lot of time to talk as they kept guard over the proposed
oil drilling site. The three women talked about love, politics,
the environment and whether the battle against climate
change was winnable. After a lifetime of watching greenhouse
gas emissions increase, species succumb to extinction and
glaciers and forest boundaries retreat, Jeanette was not
sure that she would again choose to have children if given
the chance. O’Flynn, aged only 24, was struck by Jeanette’s
words. ‘She was so straight up — how big and bad the whole

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 A Gentle Radical

thing is that we are facing,’ she remembers.2 Jeanette was a

realist; she was not about to mollycoddle the young activist.
She was far from convinced that the world would do what was
necessary to stop the worst of a rapidly warming climate,
but she was also a passionate believer that a better world
was possible. We had to give it our best shot.
An imposing grey shape loomed on the horizon. Through
binoculars they could make out the hull of a huge ship —
longer than two football fields. The incredibly tall latticework
tower, the maze of pipes and series of blue cranes marked
out the Noble Bob Douglas, a Liberian-flagged deep-sea oil-
drilling ship. The Vega’s mission was to stand in the way of
this 100,000-tonne behemoth and stop it from doing its job.
As the Vega approached, the captain of the ship called over
the radio instructing the flotilla to exit the drilling zone. The
rest of the activist fleet backed away but McDiarmid, sitting
next to Jeanette, responded over VHF: ‘Thank you, Bob
Douglas. This is the sailing vessel Vega. We will not be moving.
We are here in defence of our ocean, future generations, our
climate and our coastlines.’3
For the next week the three women tacked back and
forth to keep position in the notoriously rough waters of the
Tasman Sea. It took about eight minutes to cross from one
end of the zone to the other; then they turned back around.
Back and forth, over and over. The monotonous occupation of
this small patch of water ensured that the Texan oil company
Anadarko could not start the process of drilling an exploratory
well 1500 metres under the surface. The mere presence of the
12.5-metre yacht within the drilling exclusion zone kept the
229-metre drilling ship inactive. They just had to keep up.

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 One of the brightest stars

The Vega, with rainbow peace flags flying off the stays,
had been built on a Northland beach from kauri logs and
launched in 1949. It was named after one of the brightest
stars in the night sky. With a prodigious protest history, the
Vega had sailed multiple times to Mururoa to protest against
French nuclear testing, and to ‘greet’ US warships visiting
New Zealand ports that would not confirm or deny that they
were carrying nuclear weapons.
Now the aged vessel had once again been drafted into
service to protect the environment. Aboard the cramped
boat the crew rotated four–hour shifts as they rode up and
down the waves, their track leaving a thick spider web image
across the chart plotter as they squared off against one of the
largest oil companies in the world. Anadarko was seeking oil,
gas and profit: Vega’s mission was to keep the fossil fuels
out of the rapidly warming atmosphere.
For Jeanette, white-haired, nearing 70 years old, this was
something of a lifelong dream come true. Years earlier she
had confessed to Sue Bradford that she had always wanted
to be a ‘monkeywrencher’ — someone who did not just talk
or read about an environmental crime but took non-violent
direct action to stop it.4 She was finally putting her body
on the line for her beliefs. Gandhi was someone whom she
singled out as influencing her.5
Jeanette had not hesitated when Greenpeace’s Bunny
McDiarmid had called her a few weeks earlier to ask if she
would join her on this mission. It was a brave decision. Earlier
in the year, under parliamentary urgency, the National-
led government had passed harsh new provisions to limit
anti-oil protest activity at sea. Under the new law someone

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 A Gentle Radical

convicted of interfering with an oil rig could face up to 12

months in jail or a fine of up to $50,000.
Jeanette was quite prepared to be arrested because the
cause was so important, the stakes so high. She actually
welcomed the prospect of arrest and the chance for her
public profile to raise awareness of the cause. She told
numerous people she had only accepted the New Zealand
Order of Merit in 2010 because it would make a bigger splash
when she was arrested for environmental activism.
For Jeanette Fitzsimons, climate change was the single most
important issue facing the world: a symptom of humanity’s
asininity in chasing infinite economic growth on a finite planet.
She founded the country’s first climate campaign in the late
1980s, unceasingly raised global warming as a critical issue
since entering parliament in 1996, and after her retirement
focused her last years on fighting the extraction of fossil fuel,
especially coal. Aboard the Vega she explained:
We also sail on behalf of all our grandchildren —
the generations already born and still to come
who will have to live with extreme weather
events, food and water shortages, constantly
rising sea level and new pests and diseases if we
go on burning the fossil fuels that are changing
our climate. 6
Over her lifetime Jeanette witnessed humans fundamentally
alter the planet. The atmosphere grew alarmingly warmer;
the oceans became more acidic; ocean life choked on plastic;
a full 75 percent of the planet’s land surface was modified
by deforestation and resource extraction. By weight, in
2020 humans made up only 0.01 percent of the natural

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 One of the brightest stars

biomass of Earth, yet man-made materials — concrete,

aggregates, metals and plastics — weighed more than all the
plants, animals and natural life on the planet put together.7
Geologists have a name for our era — the Anthropocene
— and the fossil record will stand as a marker of a human-
caused mass extinction event.
Perhaps more than any other New Zealander, Jeanette
Fitzsimons campaigned for people to think of Earth as a
fragile, finite body; yet across her lifetime things became so
much worse. It was as if humanity was floating in the middle
of the open ocean poking holes in the life-raft.
Throughout, Jeanette was in the front line — and as a
relatively lonely voice in the beginning until mainstream
society caught up. For 40 years as a politician, campaigner
and academic she had worked through ‘legitimate’ channels
— researching and lecturing on sustainability at university;
publishing countless newsletters, reports and studies;
participating in working groups, ministerial advisory groups,
select committees, boards and trusts. She organised
municipal recycling, opposed toxic agricultural chemicals
and nuclear power, and encouraged public transport.
But in her mid-sixties she left politics disillusioned.
‘Governments, I have given up on,’ she would write in 2016,
‘ever since the debacle of the 2009 Copenhagen climate
conference. I will not sign another petition to government —
it makes no difference.’8 For decades she had tried collecting
signatures, convening and addressing royal commissions,
leading campaigns, speaking to public groups — but still
things were getting worse.
This is why this white-haired grandmother, a universally

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 A Gentle Radical

respected parliamentarian — once voted the most-trusted

politician of her time — was 100 nautical miles off the coast of
New Zealand staring down a giant deep-sea oil-drilling ship.
She was standing between an oil company and its quarry and
she was willing to be arrested to stop their relentless pursuit
of fossil fuels because it was fuel the human race could not
afford to burn. It was a radical step, but she had poured her
considerable intellect, her Stakhanovic work ethic, heart
and soul into saving the environment. Now she would also
put her body on the line.
She was knocked about and bruised by the constant
heaving motion aboard Vega. Sleeping was difficult in the
cramped quarter-berth. Her crewmates worried that she
did not have the physical strength to manage the heavy
tiller, especially on solo night watches, and they gingerly
tried to talk her out of it but she stubbornly persisted. Days
blurred into one another. Not only were they trying to stop
the drilling; they were also trying to stop the Bob Douglas’
supply vessels from unloading materials onto the larger ship.
After a few days the crew of one of the supply vessels
became more aggressive. ‘They were real bullies,’ McDiarmid
recalls. ‘They really played cat and mouse with us.’9 Early in
the evening of 20 November, a little after 6 p.m. and without
any notice, the Bailey Tide, an 87-metre supply ship, started
moving closer to the Vega, which was sitting to the side of
the Bob Douglas — effectively sandwiching the Vega between
the two larger vessels. At one point it came in so close that if
they had let a ladder down over the side you could have leapt
onto it.
The Bailey Tide’s thrusters created a powerful wash that

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 One of the brightest stars

churned the water, and the small ketch could easily have
been swamped or had a mast caught and snapped on one of
the larger vessels. Stuck in a floating metal canyon, the Vega
could not use its sails to escape the closing vice. It bobbed
about helplessly on high waves, the crew fearing that at any
moment the Vega’s stays or spreaders would get caught in
the metal railings of one of the larger vessels.
‘It felt very scary, because we couldn’t manoeuvre very
quickly to get out of position,’ Jeanette’s young crewmate
O’Flynn recalled. ‘It felt like we were going to be crushed.’ 10
They frantically called a number of times on the radio but
they had no response from either vessel. Decades earlier,
the Vega had been damaged in a similar aggressively close
approach by a French minesweeper near Mururoa.
With the boats close to collision, the Vega pulled its engine
into full power and motored out of the dangerous situation.
Listed as co-skipper, Jeanette later complained to Maritime
New Zealand over the deliberately intimidatory tactic, but
to no avail.
During this encounter McDiarmid remembers that
Jeanette remained totally calm.11 It was a trait she exhibited
throughout her career — staying unflappable under pressure.
Over the course of her life she had been in many stressful
situations but had never lost her cool, said something hasty
in the heat of the moment or melted down under the glare
of television cameras. As a young woman starting out she
had to conquer her fear of public speaking and deal with
multiple occurrences of blatant sexism. In politics she had
been surrounded by large press packs — their cameras and
microphones disconcertingly close and hungry to pounce on

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 A Gentle Radical

any slip of the tongue. As leader she would be ambushed by

the media with allegations of supporting terrorism, and with
the country’s eyes on her she would have to grieve in public
for the tragic loss of her political soulmate. She would face
high-stakes meetings where the viability of a government
would hang in the balance.
But throughout her life Jeanette remained steely calm
under pressure. It was one of the admirable things about this
extraordinary woman.

I REMEMBER HUGGING Jeanette at the send-off event

in Wellington in 2013 before the Oil Free Seas Flotilla
departed for the Tasman. While she was aboard the Vega
getting physical, I was in parliament challenging Energy
Minister Simon Bridges to end the government’s support of
Anadarko’s drilling.
I had first met Jeanette at a job interview in 2006.
After graduating from university I worked for Greenpeace,
contracted in their action team and for a while living with
my then girlfriend (now wife) Meghan out the back of the
warehouse where they stored boats and climbing gear.
A friend of Jeanette’s told me she was looking for a new
executive assistant and helped secure an interview for me. I
was squeezed into a short diary window while she waited at
the Auckland Koru Lounge to board a flight.
I arrived nervous and sweaty in a new dress shirt. In 1999,
less than a month after my 18th birthday, I had voted Green
in an election where Jeanette led the newly independent
party to an unlikely win. Since then I had been inspired by the
new style of politics the Greens represented in parliament. As

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 One of the brightest stars

a young environmentalist I was in awe of Jeanette Fitzsimons

and left the interview thinking it went okay but I had no idea
what my chances were.
Jeanette rang me soon afterwards to tell me I did not
get the job. She said my strengths were not suited to that
position, but was I interested in working with her as a climate
and youth outreach coordinator? I was over the moon.
I did not realise I was joining the Greens at a low ebb, at
what I know now was the lowest point in Jeanette’s life. In
fact 2005 had been a true annus horribilis, with political
setbacks and losses, followed by a near-disastrous campaign
where she felt she was locked out of a ministerial role by
Winston Peters — only to be capped off by the sudden death
of her political partner, Rod Donald.
I spent the next two years working with Jeanette on
climate change and rebuilding the party’s flagging youth
organisation. I watched her pick herself up off the mat and in
the next few years achieve her greatest policy wins, securing
the Greens an enduring place in New Zealand politics. She
left parliament, in 2010, at the top of her game. Jeanette
encouraged me to stand for the Greens, and it was on the
back of her retirement that I entered parliament, next on the
list.
They say you should not meet your heroes lest you be
disappointed; but I had the great good fortune to work
with mine.
Her death in March 2020 came as a shock. She was 75
and her health had been declining, but only a week before
she died we had stayed up late drinking wine in her eco-
house talking about the environmental priorities for the

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forthcoming 2020 election. Jeanette was still firmly focused

on the future, working hard on a variety of projects and still
trying to get arrested . . .
Her story deserves to be told. Jeanette was a pioneering
politician. The Values Party was the world’s first national
green party and Jeanette Fitzsimons was the first Green
Party MP to speak in our parliament. She was the first Green
anywhere in the world to win an electorate seat and it was on
her shoulders that the Greens were elected in their own right
to parliament in 1999.
As a major political figure in the first decade of MMP she
pioneered a whole new way of practising politics and was
widely respected across all parties as a principled, gracious
and talented MP. Through her example she showed that
you could be scientific and still warm; challenging and still
popular; a politician and still trusted.
In 2007 I started an annual summer camp for young Green
Party members in the chestnut orchard by the river on
Jeanette and Harry’s Coromandel farm — the Young Greens
Summer Camp still continues today. Every year I would hear
her tell the story of the formation of the Greens and the
battle to get into parliament to another wide-eyed cohort
sitting around her under the trees. Aware of her advancing
age and how little of this history was documented, Jeanette
arranged to have some of these talks recorded. This record
has been a key resource for my telling of her story.
She was such a private person that I had to dig hard to
find details of Jeanette’s personal life. In interviewing more
than 50 friends, colleagues and family members, some on
multiple occasions, I slowly built up a picture of the person

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behind the politician. Fortunately I also had access to her

personal archives — a cubic metre of papers — and the
three linear metres of her parliamentary papers stored in
the Alexander Turnbull Library. I made Official Information
Act requests, waded through decades of media stories and
read every single word Jeanette uttered in parliament. In so
doing, I hope I have managed to do justice to my mentor,
colleague and friend.
This is the story of a life, and it is also the story of the rise
of the Green Party in New Zealand in response to the big
question Jeanette Fitzsimons asked throughout her lifetime:
how do we manage growth on a finite planet?
In the 30 years since the party started calling itself Green,
more greenhouse gases have entered the atmosphere than
in the preceding three centuries. Jeanette’s pressing issues
are our urgent dangers.
Her life’s work obliges us to respond to the great chall-
enges of our age.

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