Musician-turned-Greenpeace-guy-turned-politician Steve Abel could’ve had a master’s degree by now.
Slumped in a corner of Pint of Order, Steve Abel sips a Monteith’s cider and sets aside the wide-brimmed felt hat that makes him one of parliament’s most identifiable characters. The first-term Green MP has worn plenty of pōtae in his career as an activist who chained his neck to a logging helicopter and spent 245 days leading a live-in tree protest, the musician who once won Berlin’s saddest song contest and ran an independent record label, and the campaigner who tried to get National MPs interested in the environment over glasses of whisky. But Abel doesn’t mind if you just know him as the stylish and mysterious guy from the Greens.
The 55-year-old thinks of himself as more of a musician than an activist, but he’s not a “musician’s musician – I’m like a songwriter, really”. He plays guitar, his favourite artist is Bowie, he’s still pissed off that Morrissey ruined The Smiths, and when he’s making tunes, that’s when Abel is in his “true happy place”. And some good news for the Abel stans: he’s been writing a new album, a follow-up to 2016’s Luck/Hope, but a release date will probably depend on whether the Greens get into government next year.
But, while music chat is the thing that perks Abel up the most, it’s the political side of his life that brings us here. He credits his interest in politics to his 80s upbringing and the era’s “strong format for political change”, when Auckland boroughs would welcome you to a “nuclear-free Mt Eden” and everyone seemed to have an opinion on politics in sport. “It was all present, Herbs were getting hits on pop radio about nuclear, you couldn’t get away from it,” Abel recalls. “We all saw that effort and activism come to fruition and ended up with positive tangible results.”
Oldheads will remember when Steve Abel only made music.
Abel kept that energy in his over-a-decade stint as a campaigner for Greenpeace, trying to urge politicians to give a shit about the climate. He decided in his 50s that he wanted to be one of those people he had been nagging for years, and ran in the 2020 election but narrowly missed out on a seat – though when it looked like he was going to make it in, he did get through a bit of parliamentary MP training alongside a then largely unknown Christopher Luxon.
So, now that he’s on the other side, can Abel get the job done? “I spent so long trying to convince politicians to stop cutting down trees, stop oil and gas drilling,” Abel says. “Whether I’ll ever have that impact in parliament, I don’t know, but why don’t I see what it’s like to be on the other side of the table?” There’s certainly an air for change, he reckons: “This government has forced tangata Tiriti to come to the fight and say, do we stand for a nation founded in the profound and visionary base upon which to build a country, in the words of Moana Jackson? If we do, we better turn up and say so.”
THE SPINOFF PUB Q+A
How much should a pint cost?
When I was pulling beer in London in 1992, it was a pound for a pint – which is three times the New Zealand dollar, so it was about $6. But I reckon it should cost $9. When it first got to $10, we were like, this is fucking outrageous. $10 for a beer! Outrageous!
Do you have a karaoke go-to?
It used to be ‘Delta Dawn’, which no one knows, but now I do a duet with my partner: ‘Islands in the Stream’.
Favourite place to get a drink in Aotearoa?
It used to be Pickwicks [the old parliament bar], when it was here. I’m going to say a place that’s transformed into another place: the Wine Cellar.
Which three MPs would be on your pub quiz team?
Controversially, I’d maybe have Shane Jones on my team. He’d be a riot, but I’m appalled by his attacks on immigrants, the environment, the retrograde attitude to mining and oil and gas drilling. And someone who knows about sports? I’ll probably go for Chris Bishop on sports.
But actually, as much as I respect elements of their intellect, I keep thinking, more than Jones and Bishop, I’d prefer to be on a quiz team with Arena Williams, Tamatha Paul and Francisco Hernandez.
Which MP from across the aisle would you most like to share a drink with?
[National’s] Barbara Kuriger – I haven’t had a drink with her yet, but we do get on pretty well. We align on a bunch of things, like organic farming, and I co-hosted an animal welfare thing with her last night. But also, she alluded to it in her speech about Jim Bolger, but she’s one of those blue people who gets the Treaty journey. You know what I mean?
The other one who I get along with quite well is [New Zealand First’s] Mark Patterson. Because we’re both into wool. I’m a wool lobbyist behind the scenes, we’ve got a cross-party consensus on wool.
Is there an alcohol-related law you would like to change?
I might get ousted from the Green Party for saying this, but I live in Waitākere, and I think we need to liberalise the laws there sufficiently so that we can have more venues. West Auckland is a bit bereft – we have The Hollywood, but we don’t have much else. I think that licensing laws are part of the problem, because you think of the Wine Cellar and Whammy, and a lot of those places that have become iconic venues.
An attempt at looking suave.
But their bread and butter, even if they’re barely breaking even, is the ability to sell booze. So if you don’t have that, you don’t have the kooky music-loving characters who say, fuck it, I’m going to have a live venue for original New Zealand music.
What’s a policy area we’ve been nursing without finishing the glass?
Animal welfare. Come on, man – if we want to be a farming nation, we need to not have farm animals suffering and living a miserable existence. We just need to get serious about that; get the dairy cows out of the mud, get the mother pigs out of the farrowing crates. Imagine that.
But also, bringing back general tree protection. The loss of our urban forest is definitely a close-to-the-heart issue for me.
What qualities make a good drinking partner?
It’s probably a boring thing to say, but a willingness to discuss contentious issues.
Steve Abel in the House.
Have you ever had a Schnapps election moment where you regretted your political instinct?
My father passed away in 2021, and he left my sister and I a little bit of inheritance. It wasn’t heaps, but I talked to him about standing [for the Greens], and he said yes, you must, you must. I had a conversation with a good friend at his funeral, [and told him] about a creative writing course I started at Auckland University in 2019. I was tossing up between doing my masters or running for the Greens, and he said “you should definitely go back to university”.
Covid hit, I blew the little bit of money that I had as a buffer because I lost my job, and spent that on supporting myself so I could stand as a candidate. And then I didn’t get into parliament and waited another three years. I did think at some points, man, I could have got a master’s degree.
Up next on One MP, One Pint: Labour MP Greg O’Connor. Read more OMPOP interviews here.