Greens leadership plots a future political blueprint
The Green Party is vowing to keep its ties with Labour and has no plans to dramatically change tack by aligning with National or returning to its roots as primarily an environmental party.
After winning 10 per cent of the party vote the Greens were likely to return to Parliament with 13 MPs — one less than in 2011.
Co-leader Metiria Turei said yesterday the party had not yet determined its future strategy, but would not distance itself from Labour or become a Blue-Green party.
Labour leader David Cunliffe conceded yesterday that he regretted not campaigning alongside the Greens, who had sought a joint agreement.
He did not believe the parties should merge “but I do think there is potential for us to operate in a more cohesive way”.
Ms Turei said Greens and National had worked together before, such as on legalising gay marriage, but the parties had little in common. She reiterated the Greens’ wish to sign a cross-party agreement with National on child poverty, despite National’s rejection of the proposal during the campaign.
The Greens also had no plans to narrow the party’s platform to improve its chances of forming a coalition with centre-right parties.
Under Russel Norman and Ms Turei’s co-leadership it has increasingly focused on economic and social justice issues.
Ms Turei said the Greens had always had a wider vision and “will never step back from that”.
The party would approach this term as it did the last — with a goal to be the leading Opposition party.
Co-leader Russel Norman said that with National in a position to govern alone and Labour facing a leadership contest, the Greens’ role in Opposition was more important than ever. The two leaders said they were not disheartened by the Greens’ slight slip in support, but they were clearly a little disappointed yesterday.
The Greens had performed strongly on the cross-benches for three years, and followed that up with a highly organised election campaign with specialised digital and youth strategies, and regular, widely publicised policy launches.
The party attracted some large donations and raised more money than ever before, believed to be well over $1 million.
But after National’s win on Saturday, its MPs face another three years outside government and 18 years in total in the wilderness.
Ms Turei said: “This is the nature of elections. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen. Frankly, it could have been much worse for us this time if we had not run such a good campaign.
“It’s a good result in the circumstances where there’s been a shift to the right and there’s been all this chaos from the Internet Mana and mass surveillance.”
The party would bring in one new face into Parliament, Wellingtonbased James Shaw, and was likely to lose a sitting MP Steffan Browning when the final results came in. Green MP-in-waiting James Shaw admits he didn’t appeal to the protester-activist core of the party when he showed up to meetings in a suit and a CV that included global firms HSBC and PwC.
“Fair and valid scepticism,” he says, for those who were unaware he was trying to set corporations on a sustainable, socially responsible path. Mr Shaw set about earning respect, but was still relatively unknown when he beat MP Gareth Hughes for the 2011 Wellington Central selection, swaying the crowd with talk of shedding the protest image and boosting economic credentials.
Mr Shaw’s high list placing means he will now fulfil a 10-year dream as the Greens’ only new MP.
Wellington born and bred, Mr Shaw was raised by a solo mother, a teacher, who managed to send him to prestigious Scots College.
At 18 he stood on a Green ticket for Wellington City Council.
In the late 1990s Mr Shaw, by then London-based, was part of a team of bold PwC interns who pestered their bosses about sustainability. Today, PwC is one of the world’s leading consultants on sustainability. — Derek Cheng