Greens hold a secret conference

Jane Patterson at Radio NZ reports:

For a party which espouses open and transparent democracy, the secretive nature of the Greens’ annual conference is a poor showing.

The Greens only believe in openness and transparency for other people – not for themselves.

But a hyper-sensitivity about their media image has led to them holding the most closed-down annual conference in recent memory – for any political party. Only two speeches will be open to the media, along with a ‘World Cafe’ – ‘speed dating but for ideas’ according to James Shaw.
Even then reporters have been told this is an ‘off-the-record’ event with no cameras or photos, and any members having to give explicit permission before being interviewed.

Yep they are having the most secretive annual conference of any political party in recent history.

Mr Shaw defends the shut down nature of this AGM, and previous ones, due to “a bit of a caricature” of the party and some media looking for “hooks and angles to reinforce that stereotype” and so the reaction was to allow media into big set piece events but keep “private” conversations, private.

Translation: We don’t like how the media cover our conference, so we’re banning them. It’s a more polite version of Donald Trumpism.