New Green MP thinks party's GE stance too rigid

12.45pm

New Green MP Mike Ward has started life as a politician controversially by speaking out against his own party's hardline stance on the genetic engineering (GE) moratorium.

Mr Ward scraped into Parliament on Saturday as the Green's ninth MP on special votes, at the expense of United Future's number 9 Paul Adams.

This morning he said that while he believed in the GE moratorium, his party had been too rigid in its stance.

"I think the moratorium just has to stay in place but I think it would have been smarter to say something like 'if you withdraw it, we'll have to seriously reconsider our support for the Government' or something like that," he told National Radio.

"I think that we left no wriggle room and we're really deeply entrenched. We have to build some bridges there. Entrenched positions don't get us anywhere."

Mr Ward, a teacher, Nelson city councillor and former Values Party co-leader, is the only person to have contested all 20 Coast to Coast multisport events and was the "Man Unleashed" winner at last year's Wearable Art awards in Nelson.

He has tried eight times to get into Parliament and said he contributed a "positive point of view".

"I don't get hugely rattled too easily, I'm not a very angry person and I tend to treat people well," he said.

"I guess, as I used to say to my kids in the class when I was teaching 'I'll be so bloody nice to you, you'll find it difficult to be nasty to me'."

ACT was the only other party to increase its proportion of the vote from election night but did not pick up enough to steal a seat.

The final result now seems likely to stand, as it is unlikely MPs holding small winning margins in their electorates will face recounts.

Labour's Dianne Yates took Hamilton East from National's Tony Steel by 614 votes after specials were counted. On election night her majority was 402.

Mr Steel told NZPA he would not seek a recount unless party scrutineers thought "something untoward" had happened. He would meet them today.

If Mr Steel was to win his way back into Parliament, it would be at the expense of Katherine Rich, the last National MP to win a list seat.

Mrs Rich said she was delighted to have been returned to Parliament for a second term.

National Party leader Bill English said he was very pleased the "up and coming" MP had kept her seat.

- NZPA

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