The Green Party’s AGM is on today, and delegates will be voting to elect a new male co-leader in accordance with the wishes of their branches.
At the time of writing this post (about 8:45 on Friday) iPredict has James Shaw at 57%, and Kevin Hague at 43% – but you can take that with as large a grain of salt you like, taking into account the utter un-scientific-ness of iPredict and all the conspiracy theories about whether certain rightwingers’ over-enthusiastic endorsement of Shaw is a double-triple-reverse-psychology bluff or not.
I’m not a Green Party member so I’ve avoided forming a preference myself – much less commenting on what the Greens should or shouldn’t do. It’s their party, and they get to make the decision about who they want leading them.
Hague and Shaw seem from the outside to represent slightly different directions for the party to take, but we have to keep in mind that whichever wins, he’ll be a co leader to the very capable and experienced and awesome Metiria Turei, so it’s not quite so decisive as some commentators have made out.
But in any case, the Greens are the third largest party in New Zealand and will be a key part of any future Labour-led government. So I have a passing interest in the result and will be very interested to see how the new male co-leader marks his territory over the next couple of weeks.
The announcement should be livestreamed at https://livestream.com/nzgreens.
Stephanie Rodgers 