The Greens have closed their nominations for male co-leader, and are running a number of provincial meetings. I went to the second one in the data starved bowels of the OGGB4 at Auckland Uni.
|
Province |
Date |
Time |
Venue |
|
Top of the South – Nelson |
18 April |
1.30pm |
Victory Community Centre, Totara St, Nelson |
|
Auckland |
19 April |
1.30pm |
Owen Glenn Building, OGGB4, University of Auckland, Auckland |
|
Waikato – Hamilton |
21 April |
7pm |
The Meteor Theatre, 1 Victoria St, Hamilton |
|
North-East – Tauranga |
22 April |
7.30pm |
Wesley Centre, 100 13th Avenue, Tauranga |
|
Central |
23 April |
7.30pm |
Teleconference meeting |
|
Wellington |
26 April |
2pm |
Shed 6, Queens Wharf, Jervois Quay, Wellington |
|
Deep South – Dunedin |
2 May |
1pm |
Bart Winters Room, St Patrick’s Community Centre, 32 MacAndrew Rd, South Dunedin |
|
Aoraki – Christchurch |
3 May |
2pm |
The Oak Room, The Atrium (Netball Centre), Hagley Avenue, Christchurch |
|
Northern – Whangarei |
9 May |
10.30 |
Northland Youth Centre, Bank Street, Whangarei |
The male candidates are (in alphabetical last name order1) :-
Metiria Turei is the sole nomination to be re-elected as female Co-leader.
I don’t get to many Green meetings. They are usually either members only or full blown public events done cooperatively in conjunction with parties and organisations and targeted to a cause. So they are relatively new to me.
Like the Labour leadership meetings last year, this one had the candidates doing short prepared pitches. The welcome addition of a few selected questions collected earlier. Then the the media were excluded as the candidates answered ad-hoc questions from the floor including ones related to internal organisation of the party.
The Greens have a electoral problem. It is just different from Labours current one. From Wikipedia
| House of Representatives | ||||
| Election year | # of overall votes |
% of overall vote |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 124,915 | 6.9 (#3) | ||
| 1993–1996 | ||||
| 1999 | 106,560 | 5.2 (#5) | ||
| 2002[19] | 142,250 | 7.0 (#5) | ||
| 2005 | 120,521 | 5.3 (#4) | ||
| 2008 | 157,613 | 6.7 (#3) | ||
| 2011 | 247,372 | 11.1 (#3)[31] | ||
| 2014 | 257,356 [32] | 10.70 (#3) | ||
Clearly the Greens have transitioned from the 5-7% band that they (probably) spent from 1990 to 2008 in. However it was a disappointing election for them in 2014 gaining slightly less than the percentage vote from 2011 on less than 10k more votes.
Despite all of the support in polls prior to the election and even after the election. For instance the Roy Morgan poll just before the 2014 election showed them at 13.4% dropping from the 17% earlier in the year. Immediately after the 2014 election Roy Morgan (and other polls) showed them with 17.5% support – nearly 7% above what they actually gained. Clearly the Greens have issues transitioning poll support to actual voting support.
This is my first real look at these candidates. But I’m sure that everyone who reads this site is aware of my biases when it comes to party leadership candidates. I prefer strong parliamentary and party experience. I think that leaders in political parties need to be able to drive and deal with their party and caucus, even if they do it more by a consensus approach than a autocratic one. I like candidates who are not pure animals of the “beltway” coming up through the nepotism of who they know rather than experience grounded in the society of NZ.
Ultimately politics for politicians is about getting people out to vote for their party, then being able to change society. Like it or not, party leaders are critical to the public face of political parties. But they are typically voted on by much smaller microcosms of the fishbowl microcosm of a parliamentary caucus and/or the slightly larger cohort of faithful members.
To a lesser extent they are presented to the public by the remaining journalists and non-journalists like me.
In this case for the Greens, they are elected indirectly by members sending delegates with voting instructions to the Queens birthday conference.
I’ll write my impressions of the candidates later.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress