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Home / New Zealand

Kate Hawkesby: New Greens co-leader Marama Davidson is missing in action

Kate  Hawkesby
By Kate Hawkesby
NZ Herald·
16 Apr, 2018 06:12 PM3 mins to read

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Marama Davidson at the moment she took the role of the Green Party Co-Leader.
Kate  Hawkesby
Opinion by Kate Hawkesby
Kate Hawkesby is the host of Early Edition on Newstalk ZB, Monday to Friday from 5am – 6am.
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Last night's political poll threw up some interesting numbers - one of which showed a slight bump for the Greens. They're doing slightly better, but that's attributable to points off Labour.

It did make me ponder though their recent co-leadership vote, and I wondered - where's Marama Davidson? I ask because, perhaps wrongly, I expected her to come out guns blazing when she won the Green Party co-leadership. She presented with such passion and purpose, I thought it would be mere days before we saw that in action. I was hoping for fireworks. But so far... none.

I watched Davidson in the lead-up to the leadership vote. Where Julie Anne Genter seemed edgy and angsty, Davidson seemed calm, confident and assured. She had reason to be of course: she had the leadership in the bag, while Genter was still fighting for it.

READ MORE:
• Honeymoon over? Labour drops below National in latest poll

Marama Davidson and I, the more I thought about it, also have a lot in common.

We're the same age, she has six kids, we have five, she has a Dad with a recognisable face, I have a Dad with one of those too, my Mum votes Green, her Mum probably votes Green too, we both have dogs.

But here's what I like about her: she's straight up. She's done the work at grassroots level, you can't criticise her for not knowing her social justice stuff.

But since her sparkly foray onto the leadership stage after the vote, all I've pretty much heard... is Julie Anne Genter. Cars this, trains that. Yes she's a minister and therefore by default more omnipresent in the media, but I bet if you asked a handful of randoms in the street to name some Greens, Genter would score higher on name recognition.

Which again begs the question whether a co-leader is necessary if the job doesn't come with a lot of visibility.

You can forgive people not knowing who a deputy leader of a party might be, but leaders should be known, we should hear them, we should see them.

Which leads me to Winston Peters - where's he?

I mean that guy could not get his face on enough buses during the campaign, he held media to ransom constantly on a knife edge with his every next move.

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On election night itself, and in the ensuing weeks, he kept the entire country on tenterhooks, until he uttered his final choice - not without a few choice words for National along the way.

But where is he now? Did he go fishing? Is he still out there somewhere in the sea off the Bay of Islands?

I mean I'm not suggesting all leaders should be as visible as Act leader David Seymour - his visibility relative to the size of his party is scary, and we don't want any more politicians in leotards, but if I'd worked as hard as Davidson to get the co-leadership, I'd start justifying it.

But none of those people are vying to be the next prime minister.

The person most worried about visibility today off the back of last night's poll, should be Simon Bridges. At 10 per cent popularity he is polling around the same place Andrew Little and David Shearer and David Cunliffe did - and look where they all ended up.

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Labour should be doing better in polls

18 Apr 05:00 PM
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