Green candidates rally in Auckland to support James Shaw going solo

James Shaw will re-launch the Greens campaign today as solo leader after a tumultuous week in which his co-leader and two other sitting MPs resigned.

He will be joined by the new top 20 today, which will be in the same order as the old list but without the three missing names: former co-leader Metiria Turei, who was No 1, Kennedy Graham who was at No 8, and David Clendon who was at No 16.

Shaw will be at No 1, Marama Davidson will be at No2 and Julie Anne Genter will be at No 3.

Shaw will unveil a new slogan to replace the awkwardly redundant one of "Great Together!" and will play the party's new television ad which was hastily re-edited after Turei's resignation on Tuesday.

The contest to replace Turei as woman co-leader will not be held until after the election but Davidson is likely to be the front runner, on the basis of what happened in the original list selection.

Party delegates placed Julie Anne Genter at No 3 and Davidson at No 4 in the provisional list, behind Turei and Shaw, but after the whole Green Party membership had voted, Davidson was placed ahead of Genter.

Davidson is from the social justice wing of the party and Genter is from the environmental wing.

The resignations occurred in the fallout from Turei's admission of telling lies to social welfare in the 199s in order to get more money on the dpb.

The party executive yesterday rejected a bid by Kennedy Graham, an international law specialist and climate change expert, to be reconsidered for the list after the resignation of Turei.

Shaw, who is a first-term MP and a former business consultant on sustainability with Pricewaterhouse Coopers in London before returning to New Zealand in 2010.