…or at least they should be worried. From Chris Trotter at Bowalley:

Labour seeks middle ground on policies

‘We can’t afford the luxury of uncompromising dogma.” The Green Party should write that down. It’s a direct quote from Labour’s deputy leader and environment spokesman, Grant Robertson.

He was speaking alongside – and keeping an eye on, a cynic might suggest – David Cunliffe at a Labour and the Environment forum at the Titirangi Public Library on Saturday, June 23.

And closes:

An alternative government committed to the notion that “business as usual simply cannot continue” would instantly attract the enmity of every entrenched industrial, commercial and financial interest in the land.

It’s leaders would be pilloried, denounced and demonised, and, honestly, Robertson has never struck me as a politician who would voluntarily risk any of those experiences.

That’s the message he’s conveying to his rival for the Labour leadership and, more importantly, it’s what he’s saying to the Greens’ co-leaders, Russel Norman and Metiria Turei.

It’s a simple and brutal warning: there’s a Cabinet seat for you in the next Labour-led Government, but only if you’re willing to leave your radical ideas (“uncompromising dogma”) at the door, only if you accept that it will be business as close to usual as Labour can make it.

And a response to this from a commenter at The Standard:

If Grant Robertson or anyone else currently in the Labour caucus thinks they can cower those in politics who have an ideological spine, they will have this site, and Bowalley Road, and Dimpost, and Ideologically impure, and Bomber, and indeed most of the activist base to contend with. That’s pretty much most of the progressive activists in New Zealand.

The activist base owns these sites, and they are the main political commons of New Zealand now. Increasingly Labour’s old political MP guard will buy a head-on fight with the activist base.

Just in case they learn’t nothing from the 1980s, that will consign them to more party splits, and staying out of power for a few more terms yet.

Labour could do with wasting less time dreaming of a futile petition (that, if it becomes a successful referendum, will be ignored anyway), and should be spending more time on repairing the damage within and protecting their own assets – what loyal support is left.