The Green Party suppression of dissent

The Herald reports:

Would-be Green Party leadership challenger David Hay – whose application to stand as a candidate for the party has been rejected – says he is not finished with the party and will today call on the party’s volunteers and candidates to rally behind him.

At number 16 on the party list, Mr Hay was not far off a seat in Parliament with the Greens at the last election. However, following his threat to challenge Russel Norman for co-leadership last week, the party executive on Saturday said he would not be allowed to stand next year.

That prompted Mr Hay to call for both co-leaders Dr Norman and Metiria Turei to stand down.

Last night he told the Herald he planned to increase the pressure on the two co-leaders today by calling on party volunteers to “go on strike”.

That would involve asking them to cease their work on behalf of the party.

The Greens have for years boasted of how democratic their party is, and how they decide things by consensus etc. And then a party member who almost became an MP announces he will seek the co-leader role at their conference next year, and the party hierarchy ban him from being eligible to even be a candidate, let alone a co-leader.

To ban a member from being a candidate is a drastic step. National’s Board uses it very very rarely, and basically only uses it for people who are “mad” or “bad”.

The Greens could leave it up to individual electorates as to whether or not to have David Hay as a candidate. They could have left it up to their membership where to rank him as a candidate. But the party bosses have struck him down. Never again will Green cries of being different ring true.

“The other candidates and volunteers should be very fearful. If they can do this to me as number 16 on the party list … all bets are off in terms of who’s going to be next.”

He claimed Ms Turei was behind the party executive’s move to prevent him from standing next year. Party insiders had told him “it’s got her fingerprints all over it”.

“If this is the way the leadership is behaving we need to put a stop to that,” he said.

So the Greens are now the party where if you declare you want to stand for the leadership, you get banned from candidacy. Sounds like the current co-leaders are very desperate to avoid a vote. I suspect their concern if not that Norman would beat Hay, but that the size of the protest vote for Hay could show how much discontent there is.