Shaw nearly resigned earlier

Departing Green Party co-leader James Shaw said he “drafted his resignation letter” during his ministerial terms over a lack of progress on climate goals and indigenous biodiversity.

In an interview on Q+A with Jack Tame yesterday, Shaw said he was “really close” to resigning from his ministerial stint with the previous Labour government. “There were a few times – the two most significant ones would have been when we were debating increasing our Paris [2030] target, prior to the Glasgow conference.

“New Zealand’s [interim] target had been set by the previous National government. It really, you know, wasn’t equal to our kind of position. That was a really hard-fought battle.”

Shaw said there were days when he wasn’t sure he could represent the country as climate change minister. “If we don’t have a target that is, at least on average, the equivalent of other OECD countries. That was one. The other one was the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity, which is currently getting unwound. But that got really difficult, and I ended up storming out of the Cabinet meeting that decided it. Three minutes later, [then-environment minister] David Parker materialised in my office to say ‘Look, we're gonna work out a way to get this done’.

“I remember that morning, talking to Megan Woods, and I said, ‘Well, I’ve drafted my resignation letter – if this doesn’t go, then it's been nice working with you’ . ... “I was trying to land something that Nick Smith had started under John Key. The fact that it was so torturous … I’m like, ‘If the National Party could find themselves to fix this problem, surely we can, right?’. It just kind of outraged me, that it was that hard.”

Shaw has ruled out a return to politics, saying he had “done his time”, and revealing that he was often “angry” with the slow-moving nature of government. He was climate change minister for six years under the previous government. In Labour’s second term he served as associate environment minister with responsibility for biodiversity.

Wellington-based Shaw, 50, is due to give his valedictory speech in Parliament on Wednesday, after announcing his resignation in January.