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James Shaw will need to re-stand for the co-leadership after more than 25% of delegates voted to reopen nominations. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
James Shaw will need to re-stand for the co-leadership after more than 25% of delegates voted to reopen nominations. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

PoliticsJuly 24, 2022

James Shaw and the Green ejection seat

James Shaw will need to re-stand for the co-leadership after more than 25% of delegates voted to reopen nominations. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
James Shaw will need to re-stand for the co-leadership after more than 25% of delegates voted to reopen nominations. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

With an election fast approaching, the Green Party has told its co-leader to reapply for his job. What’s going on, asks Toby Manhire.

At the end of the sleepiest political week of the winter parliamentary recess, just as the party-political pieces had begun moving into a coherent pre-election shape, lands a big surprise, out of the green. At the annual general meeting of the Green Party yesterday, 32 of 107 delegates voted to reopen nominations for James Shaw’s co-leader position. He hadn’t been challenged by anyone at all, but more than 25% of delegates said, in effect, that they do not have confidence in his co-leadership – or at least that they need to be persuaded why they should. The party rule book accordingly dictated that he vacate the role, leaving Marama Davidson with the oxymoronic job title that Shaw held for eight months from August 2017: solo co-leader. 

When Davidson and Shaw removed their masks at a hastily arranged press conference early yesterday evening there was obvious surprise on their faces. Like a man with a ghost dancing on his eyelid, Shaw said he was “still processing” what had happened. “It’s not great,” he said. Shaw is almost certain to put his name forward and seek a fresh mandate, but he wants first to take soundings from members. Davidson’s response? “Shocked.” “Saddened.” She could not be so candid about the vote ahead, she said, because she needed to respect the party process, but the clues were clear enough. He’d “slogged his guts out behind the scenes”. And she reminded reporters of the wholehearted endorsements she’d given her friend in the lead-up to the AGM, issued in an effort to forestall the mutterings of discontent among parts of the membership. 

At the very least, Shaw and other senior party figures have failed to take those mutterings sufficiently seriously. When members of the Greens’ youth wing were reported by Salient magazine to be agitating for a nomination-reopening vote, and saying things like “it’s about time we organise and kōrero to change our co-leadership”, they were brushed off by party spokespeople, with Shaw saying it was no different to any other year. The Greens are blessed and cursed by a ravenously democratic constitution. (Gareth Hughes relates in his recent biography of Jeanette Fitzsimons how a member once proposed that the party should have as many as 1,200 co-leaders.) That Shaw and Davidson were so blindsided suggests they need to do better at keeping their ears to the ground. 

If the vote sends a message, however, it’s hardly a roar. Seventy per cent backed Shaw to remain co-leader. And the turnout among delegates was low, presumably because of the relatively late decision to shift the AGM from an in-person gathering in Christchurch to online. In 2021, 140 of the total 150 delegates voted; this year it was just 107. And while the result last year was initially announced as 116 votes for Shaw with four to his challenger, in fact there were 20 delegates who sought the reopening of nominations. If, say, 30 delegates who didn’t take part yesterday do so in the vote in the next four weeks, and if they don’t tick “reopen”, then Shaw (assuming he gets the most votes) is back in the job. 

James Shaw and Marama Davidson arrive at the Green Party election night event. Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images

So much for the back of the envelope. How did it get to the point where more than 25% of voting Green delegates – who are tasked, remember, with representing electorates across the country – became so disenchanted with the guy? In part, it’s a perception that Shaw is insufficiently radical. His time, for example, working at consultant behemoth PWC for some marks him out as our version of a teal independent, or New Zealand’s answer to David Cameron hugging a husky. That overlooks, however, the fact that he is no Johnny-come-lately, having first stood for the Greens in local elections three decades ago, while his parliamentary speeches evince a commitment to social justice issues formed from his early years.

It is certainly true that Shaw’s overwhelming preoccupation in politics is climate change. Fair enough, say his critics, but why does he settle for such meagre progress? His answer: we can only achieve as much as our influence in parliament, measured in seats and governments’ dependence on us. For some he is seen as embodying the compromise that saw the Greens sign a “cooperation agreement” in 2020 rather than choosing full-throated opposition. (A deal that delegates backed, by the way, by 114 to 17.)

Former Green MP Catherine Delahunty was one who opposed that 2020 agreement, and last night she gave voice to the dissatisfaction with Shaw on social media. “I reckon that Shaw makes the white middle class who don’t want system change feel safe,” she said. “He does not like radical challenge politics, he is dedicated to incremental tiny climate steps. We need more from Greens.”

Whether a different climate change minister or a differently led Green Party could achieve more is impossible to say. It may well be that Shaw would win over more Green members if he was less diplomatic in some of his criticisms of the status quo. But as detailed in Andrea Vance’s book Blue Blood, his efforts to make the Zero Carbon Act happen at all were punishing. This is, I’m guessing, the “slogging his guts out behind the scenes” that Marama Davidson describes. 

Will Shaw face a challenge? The most, probably only plausible threat would be Chlöe Swarbrick, who became the Greens’ sole constituency MP in 2020 after achieving a dazzling, historic upset victory in Auckland Central. A change in party rules earlier this year removed the requirement for a male leader and introduced a new requirement that at least one co-leader be Māori. Swarbrick has dismissed suggestions that she was as a result keen on leading in tandem with Davidson, but, as with the rest of the Green caucus, had not as of last night made any comment about the forthcoming process. 

Shaw’s greatest vulnerability may be not so much a challenge, but a repeat of what happened yesterday. “Reopen nominations” will be an option on the voting form again when it is presented to delegates, whoever else may or may not be there. Were more than 25% to seek a reopening of nominations for a second time, Shaw’s position would be untenable. The options would be (a) resign, or (b) be condemned to a Sisyphean hell of nominations reopening within reopened nominations within – and so on. 

Were Shaw to stand down in such circumstances, someone like Swarbrick could conceivably emerge asserting reluctance, dragged to the task, cometh the hour, cometh the co-leader. That in itself could invite its own trickles of, in the idiom of the moment, green blood. Another thing: it’s not guaranteed that Swarbrick would satisfy the left of the party. A couple of years ago, the Green Left Network produced an alternative list that would have relegated her, alongside Shaw and Eugenie Sage, outside the top 12. 

Protest runs deep and proud in the Greens, and yesterday that was directed at Shaw. Whether the sentiment is proportionately shared by the wider party membership is difficult to say. But a record of pushing through historic climate change legislation, and collecting cross-party support that substantially boosts its chances of survival under future governments, is remarkable. 

Equally remarkable is the Green Party’s polling, which under Davidson and Shaw has never come close to dipping under the 5% threshold. For a small party in its second term of participation in a New Zealand MMP government, that is extraordinary. Though it is wishful thinking for Shaw to call what happened yesterday a “temporary blip”, he will very likely be re-elected as co-leader. It might suck to do politics imperfectly from within the tent while half your limbs dangle furiously out in the rain. But the alternative brings a different sort of risk. “Sometimes not being in power or even parliament makes a party brave and they regroup positively,” said Delahunty last night. Whether that is how members on the whole see it is another matter. And draw a heavy circle around the word sometimes.  


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Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

BooksJuly 22, 2022

Revealed: the books most borrowed from New Zealand’s parliamentary library

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

And why there are no novels on the list.

China and the Pacific. Te tiriti and Aotearoa. Covid. Disinformation. Gangs. And workplace bullying. The weighty issues of our time are reflected in the weighty tomes loaned out by the parliamentary library. Information provided to The Spinoff by the parliamentary library reveals that Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won’t Map the Future, was the most borrowed book in the first half of 2022. By Rory Medcalf, an Australian diplomat turned academic, it was published in March 2020, but shot to the top of the parliamentary library charts this year as the issues it traverses shot to the top of the news.

Second on the 2022 list of books most borrowed by library users – whose number include MPs, their staff, and staff of the Parliamentary Service and Office of the Clerk – is former National minister Chris Finlayson’s He Kupu Taurangi: Treaty settlements and the future of Aotearoa New Zealand. Fifth is another topic of the moment, in the form of Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation & What We Can Do About It by a former high-ranking US government official, Richard Stengel.

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Toby Manhire
— Editor-at-large

Disappointingly, the parliamentary library no longer stacks novels on its shelves. When I last undertook this exercise, nine years ago, for the Listener, the top 10 for the eight years to 2013 included titles by Marian Keyes, Lee Child and Alexander McCall Smith (Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men was number one).

“The Library stopped collecting and loaning fiction in 2014,” a library spokesperson told me, with – I am choosing to imagine – a wistful sigh. “As the collection exists to support the work of parliament the library decided that fiction was outside our scope. We closed the fiction collection in 2014 and offered the items to New Zealand libraries.”

As all library lovers know, poets – Lee Child among them – are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Just as there’s a parliamentary gym, there should be the material to exercise parliamentarians’ – and staffers’ – imaginations. The evacuation of the fiction collection is accordingly a terrible idea which can only impoverish our democracy and should be reversed immediately. 


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Memoir features highly across the annual top 10 lists, with Marilyn Waring topping the pops in 2019 and Holly Walker in 2017. Judith Collins makes fourth on 2020, but there’s no sign of Simon Bridges, who will have to convince himself that his colleagues simply had to buy a copy. 

In 2020, parliamentary readers looked to history to understand what was going on, with the story of the 1918 pandemic and “New Zealand’s worst public health disaster” the most loaned book. In 2017, a collection of “great speeches in history” makes the list – reflecting, perhaps, the oratorical ambitions of the new intake. In 2018, Michael Wolff’s jaw-dropping Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was first, ahead of Jonathan Boston’s study of social investment.

A couple of other titles that stick out: Workplace Bullying in 2017 and Beyond Burnout in 2020. 

And a bouquet to everyone who put Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy in the top 10 three years in a row. 

2022 

(1/01/2022-07/06/2022)

  1. Contest for the Indo-Pacific: why China won’t map the future – Rory Medcalf
  2. He kupu taurangi: treaty settlements and the future of Aotearoa New Zealand – Christopher Finlayson and James Christmas
  3. Aging in a changing world: older New Zealanders and contemporary multiculturalism – Molly George
  4. The political economy of public administration: institutional choice in the public sector – Murray J Horn
  5. Information wars: how we lost the global battle against disinformation & what we can do about it – Richard Stengel
  6. Towards democratic renewal: ideas for constitutional change in New Zealand – Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler, with assistance from Scarlet Roberts
  7. The little blue book: the essential guide to thinking and talking Democratic – George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling
  8. Members and ministers in the New Zealand Parliament – compiled by Bernadette Thakur
  9. Housing allowances in comparative perspective – edited by Peter A Kemp
  10. The first 50 years: a history of the New Zealand National Party – Barry Gustafson

2021

  1. Women in the House: members of parliament in New Zealand – Janet McCallum
  2. Gangland – Jared Savage
  3. Lonely Century: how to restore human connection in a world that’s pulling apart – Noreena Hertz
  4. The Covid Chronicles: lessons from New Zealand – Paul Little
  5. Beyond Burnout: a New Zealand guide: how to spot it, stop it and stamp it out – Suzi McAlpine
  6. In Search of Consensus: New Zealand’s Electoral Act 1956 and its constitutional legacy – Elizabeth McLeay
  7. Māori Made Easy: for everyday learners of the Māori language – Scotty Morrison
  8. National at 80: the story of the New Zealand National Party – by Colin James
  9. The Procedure of the House of Commons: a study of its history and present form by Josef Redlich; translated from the German by A Ernest Steinthal; with an introduction and a supplementary chapter by Sir Courtenay Ilbert
  10. Politics and the Media – edited by Geoff Kemp, Babak Bahador, Kate McMillan and Chris Rudd

2020

  1. Black Flu 1918: the story of New Zealand’s worst public health disaster – Geoffrey W Rice
  2. Māori made easy: for everyday learners of the Māori language – Scotty Morrison
  3. Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist – Kate Raworth
  4. Pull No Punches: memoir of a political survivor – Judith Collins
  5. The Political Years – Marilyn Waring
  6. The Business of People: leadership for the changing world – Iain Fraser, Madeleine Taylor
  7. How to Escape from Prison – Dr Paul Wood
  8. Erskine May’s treatise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament – Erskine May
  9. New Zealand Government and Politics – Janine Hayward
  10. = Promises, promises: 80 years of wooing New Zealand voters – Claire Robinson; 10.= Antisocial media: how Facebook disconnects us and undermines democracy – Siva Vaidhyanathan

2019

  1. The political years – Marilyn Waring
  2. Marijuana legalization: what everyone needs to know – Jonathan P Caulkins, Beau Kilmer, and Mark AR Kleiman
  3. Government for the public good: the surprising science of large-scale collective action – Max Rashbrooke
  4. How to be a parliamentary researcher – Robert Dale
  5. Building the New Zealand dream – Gael Ferguson
  6. Public policy in New Zealand: institutions, processes and outcomes – Richard Shaw and Chris Eichbaum
  7. How to escape from prison – Dr Paul Wood
  8. Māori made easy: for everyday learners of the Māori language – Scotty Morrison.
  9. Promises, promises: 80 years of wooing New Zealand voters – by Claire Robinson
  10. Parliamentary practice in New Zealand – editors Mary Harris, David Wilson; assistant editors David Bagnall, Pavan Sharman

2018

  1. Fire and Fury: inside the Trump White House – by Michael Wolff
  2. Social Investment: a New Zealand policy experiment – by Jonathan Boston
  3. Which Two Heads Are Better than One?: how diverse teams create breakthrough ideas and make smarter decisions – by Juliet Bourke
  4. The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives, 1854-2004 – by John E Martin
  5. The Whole Intimate Mess: motherhood, politics, and women’s writing – Holly Walker
  6. The Write style guide
  7. Post-truth – Lee McIntyre
  8. By Design: a brief history of the Public Works Department, Ministry of Works, 1870-1970 – Rosslyn J Noonan
  9. Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, conflict and peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814-1945 – edited by Geoffrey Troughton
  10. Reform: a memoir – Geoffrey Palmer

2017

  1. The Whole Intimate Mess: motherhood, politics, and women’s writing – Holly Walker
  2. Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the fight to save New Zealand’s wildlife – Dave Hansford
  3. Lean In: women, work, and the will to lead – Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell
  4. Lend Me Your Ears: great speeches in history – selected and introduced by William Safire
  5. Workplace Bullying – Frank Darby, Andrew Scott-Howman
  6. Child poverty in New Zealand – Jonathan Boston & Simon Chapple
  7. John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister – John Roughan
  8. Democracy in New Zealand – Raymond Miller
  9. New Zealand Government and Politics – Janine Hayward
  10. Bridled Power: New Zealand’s constitution and government – Geoffrey Palmer and Matthew Palmer

2016

  1. Moments of Truth: the New Zealand general election of 2014 – edited by Jon Johansson and Stephen Levine
  2. The Girl with Seven Names: a North Korean defector’s story – Hyeonseo Lee with David John
  3. Parliamentarians’ Professional Development: the need for reform – Colleen Lewis, Ken Coghill, editors
  4. The Advantage: why organizational health trumps everything else in business – Patrick Lencioni
  5. Richard Seddon: King of God’s own: the life and times of New Zealand’s longest-serving Prime Minister – Tom Brooking
  6. New Zealand Government and Politics – edited by Raymond Miller
  7. Constitutional Conventions in Westminster systems: controversies, changes and challenges – edited by Brian Galligan and Scott Brenton
  8. The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives, 1854-2004 – John E. Martin
  9. Helen Clark: inside stories – Claudia Pond Eyley and Dan Salmon
  10. Māori and Parliament: diverse strategies and compromises – edited by Maria Bargh

20052013

  1. The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception – Nicky Hager
  2. Bridled Power: New Zealand’s Constitution and Government – Geoffrey Palmer
  3. One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery – Kate Atkinson
  4. The Hour Game – David Baldacci
  5. My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
  6. Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand – David McGee
  7. The Other Side of the Story – Marian Keyes
  8. Persuader – Lee Child
  9. Tears of the Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith
  10. Political Animals: Confessions of a Parliamentary Zoologist – Jane Clifton
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