Greens swipe on the warpaint at conference

ANALYSIS: Her party has spent a week baiting NZ First, but don’t think Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei’s lobbing of the word ‘‘racism’’ to Winston Peters wasn’t deliberate.

As the Greens gather for their election-year annual conference in Auckland this weekend, rank and file will be keen to dispel the ghosts of 2014.

It was the one party to keep above the fray in a campaign that saw the introduction of the term ‘‘dirty politics’’, but has barely a boost to its vote-share to show for it.

Co-leaders Turei and James Shaw will be determined not to let the same thing happen again.

To that end, the party’s annual conference is like to be a tubthumping affair, and may even call to traditional Green roots that in recent years have been actively played down.

It’s understood key policy announcements will be made both today and tomorrow at the conference. And, with a resurgent Winston Peters, it may doubledown on Turei’s comments a week before that NZ First’s policies were ‘‘racist’’.

Peters was understandably rankled, threatening unnamed ‘‘consequences’’. It doesn’t take much to recall the post-election events of 2005 when Labour shunned the Greens at Peters’ demand to form a third-term government.

It might appear a foolhardy move on Turei’s part, but the benefits could outweigh those risks. Just so long as the party doesn’t replicate 2005, when mudslinging reached such vicious tones that there was no way Peters and the Greens’ leadership could sit at the same table.

Why? It appeals to a quiet, but not insignificant, core of Labour supporters who are not at ease with NZ First’s whistling on issues to do with immigration.

There’s also a chance both the Greens and NZ First could end up entertaining similar post-election negotiations with Labour. And, if the Greens do get passed over, they need to make it known early they won’t stand for it.

That way, if the worst in their

If the Greens do get passed over, they need to make it known they won't stand for it.

mind happens – that Peters props up a fourth-term National government because the Greens refused to sit outside and agree to back them on confidence and supply – then Labour can’t feign surprise and shift blame.

When leader Andrew Little and deputy Jacinda Ardern are sitting across the table from Turei and Shaw, saying: ‘‘Are you happy now? Are you happy that National is back in power, because you refused to co-operate?

‘‘Are you happy that inequality will worsen, that families will continue to struggle and that we’ll spend another three years heckling on the Opposition benches because you couldn’t play ball with Winston?’’

If the worst for them eventuates, then at the very least the Greens can say ‘‘we still have our dignity - what did you expect’’?