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The co-leaders of the Green Party would become ministers outside the Cabinet in a deal offered to them by the Labor Party.
This cooperation agreement could still be rejected by members of the Green Party who will meet on Saturday to ratify the agreement.
James Shaw would remain as climate change minister and be associate minister for the environment, while Marama Davidson would be minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, a new role and associate minister for Housing with a focus on homelessness.
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* Election 2020: Crunch time as referendum results roll in and Labor concludes talks with Greens
* Election 2020: Talks on the Labor-Green government will conclude on Friday, but the outcome will not be known until Sunday.
There are few policy details in the proposed cooperation agreement, other than a blanket agreement to work together on child poverty, climate change and the environment.
The co-leaders would be ministers outside the Cabinet, bound solely by collective responsibility in relation to those portfolios.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the cooperation agreement respected her party’s power to rule only while working with the Green Party on issues that the two sides agreed to.
The Green Party would support Labor on issues of trust and supply as the party does under its current deal.
The agreement was published by the prime minister’s office as members of the Green Party meet to vote on the agreement.
If rejected, Labor will rule without the help of the Green Party.
Ardern said Shaw knew climate change “from the inside out” and portfolio stability would help.
Details of the deal have been kept secret, and the entire Green Party group only learned of the deal at the meeting.
The full text notes that the Labor Party is eager to advance the changes suggested by the 2012 MMP revision of the Election Commission. This would mean the end of the “coat tail” and a lower party vote threshold to enter Parliament.
If 75 percent say yes, the deal will pass.
ROBERT KITCHEN / Things
Delegates from the Green Party are meeting at Zoom.
Delegates are organized at the geographic branch level, which could dilute some of the power of the party’s most left-wing urban wing.
If delegates say no, Labor will still be able to form a government on its own, as it won 64 seats in the elections. There will be no more negotiations.
The negotiations are in stark contrast to those held after the 2017 elections, when the Labor Party needed the support of both NZ First and the Green Party to govern.
After a landslide result in the 2020 election, Labor does not need any other party to rule, a first for the MMP.
In the 2020 elections, the Green Party campaigned for a much bolder leftist policy than Labor, committing to introduce a guaranteed minimum income paid by a new wealth tax.
Labor has ruled out implementing such a wealth tax in any form and is instead opting to raise income taxes for those who earn more than $ 180,000.
More to come …
