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Kate Hawkesby: Politicians should be worried about lack of visibility

Author
Kate Hawkesby,
Publish Date
Tue, 17 Apr 2018, 6:00AM
Marama Davidson won the Greens co-leader vote, but since then only Juile Ann Genter has been making herself heard. (Photo / NZ Herald)
Marama Davidson won the Greens co-leader vote, but since then only Juile Ann Genter has been making herself heard. (Photo / NZ Herald)

Kate Hawkesby: Politicians should be worried about lack of visibility

Author
Kate Hawkesby,
Publish Date
Tue, 17 Apr 2018, 6:00AM

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. 

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

We’re the same age, she has 6 kids, we have 5, 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? 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. 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’m not suggesting all leaders should be as visible as 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 Little and Shearer and Cunliffe did, and look where they all ended up. 

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