Be careful James

Jo Moir at Newsroom reports:

But with a caucus that has been overwhelmingly female in the past two Parliaments, MP and former Minister for Women, Julie Anne Genter, points out the model is now almost “limiting’’ women in leadership with a requirement that one be male.

It is. I have pointed this out for many years. Their quotas have actually worked against women and prevented them from having (for example) Sue Bradford as a co-leader years ago.

Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick sees value in change but she hasn’t made her own mind up about what that might look like.

“It could be a Te Tiriti-based model, or non-binary or trans, there’s so many options and some people are driving certain elements of that conversation,’’ she told Newsroom.

Good God. Please on please let the Greens have a leadership model that requires one co-leader to be non-binary!

Davidson is really interested in the upcoming debate about the leadership structure but stresses her comments are personal to her and are not designed to persuade party members in any way.

“The community and membership and supporters are starting to talk about reviewing that and whether it’s up with the times.

“I think there’s an overwhelming interrogation of the gender-stringent part of the leadership.’’

She says the Green Party has a “long-standing legacy of support’’ from people who “operate and want to live well outside the restrictive gender norms.

“My thinking is ‘let’s have a look at that’. Maybe the basis is’ let’s say there’s at least one female, do we need to dictate what the other gender is at all’?

This is what should worry James.

The best model would be of course to simply have no quotas and let the party decide which two individuals would be the best co-leaders. How they complement each other would be part of that.

But what Davidson is pushing is a quota system where there must be a female co-leader but not a male co-leader.

If that change goes, through Shaw should be worried. The quality of Green male MPs is not great, so not even the Greens would replace James with Ricardo. But would James survive a challenge from Chloe Swarbrick? I’m not sure he would.

Chloe can’t challenge Marama Davidson for the female co-leadership as a “white girl” trying to knock off a “Maori women” would be toxic to the Greens’ political correctness. But challenging Shaw is a very different matter, especially as large segments remain distrustful of him.

So the outcome of their constitutional discussions could be very significant.