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Act’s David Seymour (Image: Getty Images, additional design Tina Tiller)
Act’s David Seymour (Image: Getty Images, additional design Tina Tiller)

PoliticsJuly 25, 2022

Act unveils its three-C plan for election success in 2023

Act’s David Seymour (Image: Getty Images, additional design Tina Tiller)
Act’s David Seymour (Image: Getty Images, additional design Tina Tiller)

The Act Party’s been filling venues as part of a cross-country policy tour. At an event yesterday, Stewart Sowman-Lund heard what the party wants on the bargaining table for next year’s election.  

On the same day that the Greens were facing questions over leadership quibbles, Act MPs were addressing a crowd of roughly 600 people, a near-capacity audience at the Waterfront Theatre in downtown Auckland. It was the latest stop in what the party has dubbed the “Real Change” tour, a series of nationwide rallies aimed at putting forward the Act agenda.

According to leader David Seymour, 2,500 people have attended the events and $50,000 of tickets were sold over the past three weeks alone.

With parliament in recess, the party has chosen now as the perfect time to visit as many of its potential voters as possible while rallying the troops more than a year out from polling day. “At each meeting we heard from Kiwis who are being hammered by the cost of living crisis, who see crime getting out of control and who are watching as our democracy is threatened by co-governance,” said Seymour in a press release. 

Those who braved Auckland’s icy weather yesterday appeared to lap up every word from the speakers. Those on stage seemed equally thrilled to be in front of such a large audience. Seymour himself turned around from his front row seat at one point to marvel at the packed stalls. On stage, the speakers were happy to crack jokes and revel in the spontaneous applause breaks.

Largely, the topics traversed in the speeches were those laid out by Act in its recent 100-day plan. Act, it seems, wants the next election to be about three Cs: crime, the cost of living and co-governance. 

Covid, another “C” word, barely got a mention – other than Seymour’s claim New Zealanders were “tired” of hearing about the virus and repeated call for an inquiry into the pandemic response. And in the same week both Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon were caught in gotcha-style “no mask” controversies, Seymour and his team of MPs were largely maskless inside the Waterfront Theatre, despite signs on the doors asking all patrons to be wearing one.

David Seymour addresses the crowd (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

Of the three Cs, co-governance was clearly top of the agenda. It was referenced in practically all the speeches, dominating at least two. The headline speaker at the event wasn’t an MP at all, but Auckland University academic Elizabeth Rata. She’s one of the “Listener seven”, a group of academics who co-signed a letter “In Defence of Science” that was published in The Listener magazine. The letter said that “in the discovery of empirical, universal truths”, mātauranga Māori fell short of “what can be defined as science itself”, prompting widespread condemnation along with a smattering of support.

Rata described her speech as being targeted at New Zealanders of all political persuasions who were “deeply worried about New Zealand’s descent from democracy into ethnonationalism”. To rapturous applause throughout, at one point after nearly every sentence, Rata advocated for removing the Treaty of Waitangi from all legislation and said New Zealand’s education system was indoctrinating children. “This so-called decolonisation, indigenisation of the curriculum… it is a disaster,” she said. 

Rata concluded her speech with this: “To those who will seek to distort my words, I support the activities of those in civil society who value and engage in Māori language and culture… Society is at its most creative when diversity is practised and enjoyed by all.”

Act has proposed a referendum on co-governance, with David Seymour telling the crowd that the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi should be defined by parliament and put to the people. 

Earlier in the event, MP Karen Chhour, who is Māori, expressed concern that a Tiriti-centric society “divides” the country into tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti. “It cannot stand,” she said. In her speech, Chhour said that “the Māori Party’s narrow-minded view that we only exist as Māori and Pākehā in New Zealand is damaging and disappointing.”

She added: “When they stand and claim to speak for all Māori, I can guarantee you it’s not for Māori like me who dare to have a different view. And how do some respond to this Māori lady when she expresses a considered opinion? They resort to personal attacks… I’ve even been called a traitor to my race simply for trying to make a case for equality.”

The two parties have fired repeated salvos at one another, with each ruling out governing alongside the other. Te Pati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi told The Guardian he wouldn’t consider being in government with National and Act “because of the Act part of them, and the rhetoric that’s coming out of Act is emboldening racism across this country,” he said. “They’re not the Act that I remember.”

“All I see is a party that is just actively campaigning against the rights of tangata whenua,” Waititi said.

After co-governance came the second “C” of the day: the issue of crime. Act’s justice spokesperson, former gun lobbyist Nicole McKee, evoked a New Zealand of the past where children could safely play together on the street and crime was “less vicious, less destructive”. 

At number three on the party’s list, McKee has been one of Act’s more visible and vocal parliamentarians during this term. To gain any visibility in a party that is often considered simply a David Seymour vehicle is impressive in itself. 

In her speech, McKee called out the government for not just being “soft on crime” but also “wrong on crime”. 

“This government is… more interested in policing by consent and releasing people from prison than it is in holding criminals to account,” she said. “Gang numbers are out of control and more and more Kiwis are becoming victims of crime. We hear that 10-year-olds are participating in ram raids, almost as keen to win the gangs’ approval as the Labour government is.”

David Seymour and his candidates celebrate on election night in 2020 (Photo: Getty Images)

On the issue of cost of living, C number three and arguably the meatiest and most pressing political issue on Act’s agenda, it was deputy leader Brooke van Velden’s turn to address the crowd. She pointed out that she is one of only two qualified economists in parliament – “and if you think that’s bad, the other one’s Trevor Mallard”.

Van Velden was a familiar face in the Act camp before her meteoric rise into the deputy role, and to a seat in parliament, in the 2020 election, when Act gained nine new MPs. She was effectively Seymour’s right-hand woman during the campaign for the End of Life Choice Bill, helping twist the arms of reluctant MPs.

Her speech reiterated several key Act talking points from recent weeks, such as the need to fast-track the immigration process for overseas nurses, can the Covid-19 isolation requirements and tackle the Gib shortage by bringing in equivalent products. She also repeated Act’s goal to “simplify” the tax system into just two rates – 17% and 28.5% – which van Velden said would make it the “cleanest and most competitive” tax system in the South Pacific.

At the start of yesterday’s event, Act’s president Tim Jago implied the party would be prepared to bypass the “baubles of office” in order to progress its policy plan. With a number of demands, some that National has rejected, that may seem to rule out a functioning coalition. Or, it could mean National making more concessions than it would currently like to should it hold the balance of power in about 15 months’ time. Act has jumped the political gun on agenda-setting for next year, beating National to many of the issues that will inevitably dominate 2023.

And based on the turnout and reception in Auckland yesterday, National may need to up its game if it wants to have a good hold on the negotiating strings.

Clarification: This post has been amended to state that the letter by the “Listener seven” said mātauranga Māori fell short of what can be defined as science itself specifically “in the discovery of empirical, universal truths”.


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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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