Red Green Turns Yellow

According to the Dom Post of March 25th, West Coast Greenie, Peter Lusk is chucking in his spokesmanship of two groups because of threats and intimidation.

Lusk has been the high profile spokesman of the Buller Conservation Group and the West Coast branch of Forest and Bird. He has also been active in the occupation of Happy Valley, designed to stop Solid Energy, coal mining in the area.

According to Lusk the last straw was a letter to the editor of the Wesport News, suggesting he was a terrorist. “Its legal to shoot terrorists” said Lusk.

Lusk has alwas been a bit “on the edge“. in the late ’60s he was active in the Save Manapouri Campaign and in the early ’70s was a founder of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of NZ (now Aotearoa).

In 1975 Lusk was a candidate for the Values Party but by the mid ’80s, was a Communist Party member, living in Westport.

In the late ’80s Lusk was living in Auckland and had become editor of the Communist Party’s “People’s Voice”.

In 1992 Lusk wrote two articles in the Green Party’s official journal, Greenweb, one called “The View from the Left“, and other “The New Structure“.

In the mid ’90s, Lusk left the Communist Party and after a brief flirtatation with Trotskyism, stood as a candidate for the Alliance Party in 1995 in Mangere.

He returned to the Coast in 1997 where he became active in the radical Native Forest Action group and was later appointed to the West Coast Conservation Board.

I don’t condone threats in any way. I can however understand how Lusk might get the odd one.

After all he will be seen by many Coasters as threatening their prosperity, property rights, livelihoods, children’s futures, independence, self reliance and liberty.

Do that to Coasters and some of the sensitive wee souls might get a a little angry.

So harden up Pete! Would Lenin have chickened out like that?