Green Party co-leadership issue
July 25, 2022
Members vote to re-open nominations
Over the weekend, the Green Party held its AGM, and delegates voted to re-open nominations for James Shaw’s position as Co-Leader.
This follows ongoing rumblings that groups within the party are not happy with what they perceive as a lack of action on climate change and core Green priorities from the Government.
Under the Green’s constitution, Shaw needed the support of 75% of voting delegates at the AGM to avoid nominations being reopened. He won 75 of the 107 delegates, meaning he just missed the threshold to prevent nominations being reopened.
Other MPs and members can now put themselves forward for the leadership. A contest would take five weeks and be decided at a Special General Meeting.
The question will now be if a challenger to Shaw emerges. Chloe Swarbrick is viewed as the most credible alternative for the role – she consistently outpolls Shaw as Preferred Prime Minister and arguably has a higher public profile. Swarbrick has yet to comment.
Shaw’s response
James Shaw has announced this morning he will contest the role again. He says he is confident he has support amongst the wider party membership and has pointed to a range of successes in government including establishing the bipartisan Zero Carbon Act, reforming the Emissions Trading Scheme and establishing the Green Investment Fund.
In his media comments on Saturday night after the membership vote, Shaw acknowledged that a group of Green members had opposed his leadership for some time. Despite this, Shaw was overwhelmingly re-elected last year as Co-Leader.
Prime Minister’s response
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has expressed her confidence in Shaw to continue as Minister for Climate Change regardless of whether he is Co-Leader or not.
Next steps
From here, we wait to see if a challenger will emerge. If one does, there will be an internal campaign within the Green Party, with the race decided at a SGM in a few weeks.
However, even if Shaw can beat another candidate, he will again need to face a vote of the membership delegates whether to re-open nominations again.
Shaw will take some comfort that low turnout amongst delegates at the weekend appears to have been a factor in his failure to reach the 75% threshold.
In 2021, around 140 delegates attended and voted – this year the AGM was moved online due to COVID.
It is likely to be a highly disruptive few weeks for the Green Party.
The irony is that as well as substantive policy wins, the Greens have been enjoying strong political support recently – their polling is currently higher than it was on election night 2020.
It’s uncommon for parties to experience leadership trouble when getting policy wins in government and enjoying strong polling. That points to these issues being more ideological and about the future direction of the Greens.