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Then that’s it.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw, who six weeks ago was rolled in a contest against no one, has been re-elected co-leader – winning 97 per cent of delegate votes in
He had a fight with anyone again.

What does victory over anyone teach the party? It’s the kind of political philosophy question that a PhD-heavy member of the Green Party might be happy to answer.

Despite the party’s shaky leadership, its polls remain remarkably stable, hovering in the high single digits – an improvement from the last election result, but not enough to make up for Labour’s relative collapse.

The Greens were lucky with the timing of the vote. It was quickly superseded by National’s Sam Ufindel scandal, Labour’s Gaurav Sharma scandal, and then an unexpected change of head of state that swept the game from the headlines.

It was easy to think then that Shaw’s co-lead carousel was utterly futile. The process the Greens describe with the verb “to RON” (after “reopening the nominations – the process that triggered Shaw’s ouster”) has more or less unchanged.

For Shaw, it solved some problems.

Since the Greens entered government in 2017, the party has been plagued by questions about whether its members have been disenfranchised by the government’s necessary compromises.

The issue wasn’t put to a vote until this week, when members seemed pretty happy with the party’s direction.

While members may not be happy with the compromises made, they believe they are reasonable in the circumstances.

The question of whether this is different today than it was six weeks ago is difficult to answer conclusively. They are two different votes, conducted in different situations using different rules.

Six weeks ago, it was questioned whether Shaw himself needed to make a further left turn to satisfy his membership requirements – presumably Shaw’s ouster was his own fault. The theory is that Shaw disengaged from membership politics and members voted to get rid of him (a majority of members – 70% – voted for him in the first vote, but votes against him were enough to trigger the RON process).

There is another theory to the contrary, which suggests that a small group of anti-Shaw representatives used their power to remove him from office against the wishes of the member.

Speaking to the media on Saturday, Shaw appeared to think it was a communication issue rather than a policy issue. When Davidson and Shaw took over the joint leadership pairing in 2018, Davidson looked after the party outside of government while Shaw served as minister.

Shaw said the system worked well but was not adjusted when Davidson joined the government after the 2020 election. Since both co-leaders are ministers, there is no dedicated leader to take care of the members. The problem is compounded by the fact that Covid-19 has made it impossible to meet many members in person.

Shaw said the campaign over the past few weeks has involved “in-depth conversations” with members.

“I don’t want today to end like this,” he said.

But it seems that the main concern is not one of the policies, but one of the issues of communicating that policy to members.

The only real debate is “about what your theory of change is,” he said.

“That’s a good question”—a question he should have been asking all the time, Shaw said.

As it turns out, Shaw appears to be right, and he is more popular with members than representatives.

The rules for the second ballot are slightly different from the first.

The first vote was a true secret ballot. Delegates are obliged to vote as their branch members want, but it’s impossible to say whether they actually did.

The second vote requires that each vote be witnessed by multiple branch members, which means it is impossible to vote against the will of the branch. This means that the 97% support registered in the second ballot arguably expresses the will of the members reasonably in a way that the first ballot may not have.

It’s also possible that delegates who voted against Shaw in the first round voted for him in the second round after no other candidate emerged, or because they were impressed with his listening practice.

New rules agreed at the party’s annual general meeting also came into effect, changing the distribution of delegates.

Generally, pro-Shaw areas like Wellington get more delegate votes, possibly at the expense of the anti-Shaw segment.

Turnout was also much higher, with only eight delegates not voting.

Voting does what it needs to do.

After an embarrassing few weeks, first for Shaw, then the party at large, he was re-elected with an overwhelming mandate – one that should be enough to dispel any fears of another contest at next year’s pre-election AGM, or worse-still For the Greens, it would allow National and Bill to cast doubt on the party’s ability to stay united in the next parliamentary term.

Those were six weeks of avoidable and embarrassing, but Shaw and Dang wisely chose to learn from it.

They should be comforted. In terms of instability – it could be worse.