Greens plot swift election facelift
Desperate pitch to get stricken campaign back on track, as Bill and Jacinda face off.
James Shaw will re-launch the Greens campaign today as its solo leader after a tumultuous week in which his coleader and two other sitting MPs resigned.
Shaw, below right, will unveil a new slogan to replace the awkwardly redundant one of “Great Together!” and will play the party’s new TV ad, which was hastily re-edited after Turei’s resignation on Wednesday.
He will be joined by the new top 20 today, in the same order as the old list but without the three missing names: former co-leader Metiria Turei, Kennedy Graham and David Clendon.
Clendon and Graham resigned in the fallout from Turei’s admission of lying to social welfare in the 1990s to get more money on the DPB.
The party executive yesterday rejected a bid by Graham, an international law specialist and climate change expert, to be reconsidered for the list after Turei’s resignation.
The plan to get back into the election race came as National and Labour went on the campaign trail.
Prime Minister Bill English, in Wellington, announced that one in three cars in the Government fleet will be electric or hybrid by 2021.
Transport Minister Simon Bridges said New Zealand already had an ambitious target of having 64,000 electric vehicles in New Zealand by 2021. But he wanted the public sector to lead by example.
There are about 15,500 vehicles in the Government fleet.
Bridges said the Government would use its buying power to achieve the target and increase the number of electric vehicles in New Zealand.
Labour leader Jacinda Ardern was also in campaign mode yesterday. She told a rally in central Auckland that “Labour will not rest until we have pay equity in New Zealand”.
More than 100 people, representing
more than 19 groups and organisations, turned up for a rally fighting for equal pay at the Suffrage Memorial in Khartoum Place.
Ardern said political unity was needed on the equal pay issue.
“In 2017 there should be no such thing as a gender pay gap in New Zealand.”
Labour would make sure the country’s mental health workers were a priority when it came to pay equity negotiations, Ardern said.
“The Pay Equity legislation the Government introduced this week will also be scrapped and redrafted when we are in office.
“The current legislation means we will never again see a settlement like
the TerraNova settlement, or genuine pay equity achieved for our sisters, mothers, daughters and granddaughters. That’s just not right in 2017.” Meanwhile, a poll this morning is expected to show the veteran MP Peter Dunne in trouble in his Wellington electorate.
The Ohariu MP is understood to be trailling Labour candidate Greg O’Connor in the snap Q+A show (TV1 9am) poll. Dunne said the so-called “Jacinda effect” had cost him support. “The question is, and it is something everyone is trying to figure out at the moment, is how deep-seated that factor is,” Dunne told the Herald on Sunday.
“Is it a phenomenon that will pass by as quickly as it arose or is it something more substantial?” Transgender model Manahou Mackay has stepped out for a shot of runway glory at New Zealand Fashion Week .
The Mt Albert 18-year-old was among 400 hopefuls auditioning at Auckland’s Aotea Centre yesterday.
Mackay recently joined
62 Models &
Talent, and
Andrea
Plowright from the agency expected Fashion
Week to be the teen’s “moment to break into the industry big time”.
Mackay wanted to use modelling to help public perception of transgender people.
“Just because you’re trans, doesn’t mean you’re one type of way — you can be whatever you want.”
Mackay was encouraged after meeting New Yorkbased Australian transgender supermodel Andreja Pejic.
“She was a really lovely person,” Mackay said. “Really showed you the opportunities out there.”
NZ Fashion Week runs from August 28-31 for trade before the public gets to see the latest styles during Fashion Weekend, from September 1-3.