Win for Shaw on Greens' constitution debate

James Shaw. Photo: Linda Robertson
James Shaw. Photo: Linda Robertson
The Green Party has voted down a major constitutional change that would give party delegates more power over choosing how the party goes into government.

The vote will be seen as a boost to James Shaw, the former Green Party co-leader who was ousted from his job on Saturday after failing to get a 75 per cent majority to renew his co-leadership for another year. Shaw is likely to recontest the leadership.

The Greens will spend the next week considering whether to throw their support behind Shaw or whether it is time to give the co-leadership to someone new, possibly Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick - Swarbrick has so far not returned any requests to clarify whether she is or is not contesting the leadership.

Sunday's vote was over the amount of time to give the party's delegates to approve or vote down any post-election government deal.

Currently, 150 Green Party delegates, representing Green Party members, have to vote in favour of any deal the party signs with another party (likely Labour) when it goes into government.

The catch is that these deals are often highly secret and party delegates are often not given much time to read them. In 2017, delegates were not given the full governing agreement before voting, and in 2020 they were only given about 15 minutes to see the agreement before voting.

This remit would have changed the party constitution to give delegates a minimum of 10 days to look over an agreement before voting on it.

The fact the vote failed is an implicit vote of confidence in Shaw, who was opposed to it.

However the vote still managed to win the support of a majority of Green delegates - it only failed because it did not win the 75 per cent majority necessary to pass.

It was supported by 64 delegates with 33 opposed and seven abstaining.

Instead, a compromise working group will be established, which will propose remits for a future SGM [Special General Meeting] or AGM on better ways to get members involved in negotiations after an election and to work out the best way to get members to provide input into any decision.

This means that some change is likely and that change could come in next year's AGM which would fall right before the likely date of the 2023 general election.

Shaw had argued it would make entering into governing agreements far more difficult and would weaken the party's hand when negotiating with its likely governing partner, Labour.

The fact this vote has gone his way bodes well for Shaw as he weighs up having another tilt at the co-leadership.

On Saturday, the party voted to reopen nominations in his role after Shaw only got the support of 75 delegates in a vote - 32 voted to reopen nominations, meaning Shaw's leadership was not confirmed with a required 75 per cent majority.

This means Shaw was ousted from the job and has one week to decide whether he wants to reapply. Other party members also have one week to decide whether they want to contest the job.

Shaw said he was "inclined" to put his name forward again, and suggested he believed he was ousted because the views of the party's voting delegates had drifted from those of party members.

"It's not immediately clear the extent to which the delegates who cast their votes that way represent the broader membership of their branches," Shaw said on Saturday.

He was also concerned that only 107 of the 150 voting delegates had showed up to vote on Saturday.

"There were substantially fewer votes cast here," Shaw said, comparing the vote to previous years.

 

- by Thomas Coughlan, senior political reporter, The New Zealand Herald