AGM 2018 Minutes - Young Greens

AGM 2018 Minutes
Opened: 0919

Present: Elliot Crossan, Tom Carlyle, Meg Williams, Chloe Swarbrick, Tim Onnes,
Leighton Thompson, Ricardo Menendez March, Robert Moore, Daisy Hsu, Ethan Kirk,
Yasmin Prendergast, Cat Croft, Ari Lewis, Danielle Marks, Max Tweedie, Ethan Herbert,
Lachlan Patterson, Zach Rose, Shanti Ahluwalia, Ingrid Jones, Matthew Lillis, Theo
Rosenberg, Louise Hutt, Bert Holmes, Eliana Darroch, Jesse Dromgool, Sam Taylor, Kate
Day, Jana Walsh, Hazel Anson, Jess Earnshaw, Amanda Chapman, Ben Peterson, Scout
Barbour-Evans, Will Dreyer, Mark Metcalfe, Marnie Hubmann, Ben Ogilvy, Emma-Leigh
Hodge, Mona Oliver, Rowena Hay, Aaron Wong, James Golding, Andrew Grey, Scott
Summerfield, Charlotte Holzke, Gwen Shaw. Damon Rusden, Mike Brambleby-Shelford
(late, in time for election item on agenda).

Apologies: Finn Jackson, James Caldwell, Yasmin Mahagna, Christian Merten, Stacey Rose,
and Adam Currie.

Meeting Chair: Gwen Shaw.

Minute taker: Rowena Hay, permission granted from the AGM attendees.

Returning Officer: Aaron Wong. Permission granted by AGM.

Scrutineers: Gwen Shaw, Will Dreyer, Hazel Anson. Agreed to by consensus.

Co-convenor and other exec member Reports:

Co-convenor (female):
In the year I’ve been Co-convenor, I still haven’t learnt whether “convenor” is spelt with “er” or “or”
at the end.
Here are some things I have learnt, though:
1. Don’t overcommit yourself! You don’t have to be spending all your free time volunteering to be an
amazing person.
2. Delegate and trust your peers.
3. Be angry and challenge the wider Party. We Young Greens are uniquely placed to be angry and
crass and we shouldn’t be ashamed or afraid to piss off the Party establishment. I know for a fact that
Gwen Shaw and Sarah Helm were smiling inside when I tweeted “Fuck Kennedy Graham and David
Clendon”.
4. Be kind and forgiving – we all make mistakes, but transformative justice is the key to making sure
we’re truly remedying our mistakes from a place of love.
5. Be thankful, and show others you are thankful. I’m particularly thankful to Tom, who has organised
our meals for the weekend. I’m also thankful to Christian, who can’t be here this weekend
unfortunately, for all of the blood, sweat, tears and whiskey that he put into this constitution. And
Mostly I’m thankful to Rowena, who put by far the most work into the Young Greens Exec this past
year. I probably wouldn’t still be here (as in, in exec, at camp) without her. Thank you Rowena.

Co-convenor (male):

When I became Young Greens Co-Convenor at the beginning of last year, it took me a while to work
out something pretty important… the Young Greens network doesn’t really exist. Which sounds
weird, but it’s true. Being “Young Greens Co-Convenor” appears to involve organising a camp,
replying to emails, and… not much else.

That is not to say that the exec did not achieve anything in 2017, far from it—because I quickly
realised that actually, the Young Greens is whatever you make of it. Meg and I lead the creation of a
questionnaire to all candidates during the list ranking process, which had many of them taken aback,
people remarking to us “goodness, I didn’t expect that to be so thorough.” I imagine these people had
made the mistake of expecting a fluffy little piece about “what’s your favourite colour? (Green!)” or
something of that sort from us young people, and instead they had to answer the most politicised
document they received throughout the entire list ranking. We greatly increased the level of political
scrutiny involved in the choosing of which candidates would get into parliament for our party.

I got a bunch of young people involved in my local branch and campus group. Several of those
people now sit on branch exec and are convening Greens at Vic. Facilitating local involvement is a
crucial skill that any convenor must have.

But as I say, the Young Greens network is whatever we make of it, and I believe that, rather than
being a shell of an organisation which mainly just seems to chat on Facebook and go camping once a
year, we can become what a youth wing is supposed to be—political players, with radical and
idealistic ideas about how to change the world. Youth wings should be about challenging power, not
merely representing the status quo of whatever older and more conservative party members have
come up with—especially this year, the lull in the electoral cycle, where there are no local body or
national elections for us to be involved in. This year is our best time to turn the focus away from
campaigning and instead build the kind of vision and platform the party will campaign on in 2020.

I believe the network needs to start properly organising, politicising, and playing the role in the party
it should be playing—that of agitating for the party to fight harder for the radical change our
generation needs. I have come up with four proposals to bring this structure:

    1. Create a website for the Young Greens
We need a place to centre the Young Greens as an organisation—a website. On this website we can
have a blog where exec members and guest writers can share opinion and analysis on political events,
and a form for people to fill in to “join” the Young Greens, so we can create our own database of who
exactly are members of the network and where in the country they are based, and to channel people
who like the site into joining the party. This will allow us to build an external presence as a network
and recruit/consolidate members into a coherent group.

2.     Start holding monthly political meetings

There is a lot of energy in the Young Greens. There are a lot of good ideas and there is so much
enthusiasm. Right now it gets lost, either channelled fairly unproductively in the Facebook groups, or
lost in boring branch meetings dominated by older and more conservative members. If we had proper
meetings of our own, where instead of talking about admin we discussed political events in a
constructive way, we could truly start building communities of activists across the country with
political analysis which we can try use to influence the rest of the party. These meetings could be
regional and then linked up with monthly Zoom calls with the whole of the network in a sort of
branch/province structure.

We could then… Start formulating our own political positions as a network Some of you may have
read the Spinoff article a few months ago which talked about the hidden power of youth wings to
influence the wider party. The Young Nats and Young Labour do this through being highly

organised—we need to do the same! Look what we achieved on the immigration debate without this
organisation, and think what we can achieve with it. We need to start channelling what comes out of
our political meetings into proper positions to be published on the website and then agitated for in
internal party processes such as policy network. This way the views of the Young Greens can finally
have as much an impact on the wider party as they deserve.

Membership Secretary:
The Young Greens Membership Secretary is a role with a considerable opportunity for meaningful
impact on the network. Despite repeated conversations with the party over the past two years, there
remains a number of problems within the party's database which severely limit the network's growth.
Chief among these being the lack of a date-of-birth field for registered members. This has made it
near impossible to filter through the database for party members under-35, which has stunted the
potential for greater connectivity between Young Greens

For this reason, the network has been forced to increase it's reliance on campus-groups as the primary
point of contact for new members. In doing so, the network has oriented itself towards
disproportionately representing those privileged enough to attend university. The challenge for the
next Membership Secretary then, is how to expand the network's horizons to be more encompassing
of working greens, unrepresented Māori/Pasifika Greens and politically-keen high-school students.

Progress in achieving this over the past year is to the credit of Co-Conveners Elliot Crossan and Meg
Williams, who have worked tirelessly to achieve this by championing an approach which is accessible
to those we have failed to be inclusive of in the past. As Membership Secretary I worked with Elliot
to expand our influence within Unions and other working-class political organisations, which I
believe is crucial in building a Green Party capable and confident in pursuing radical economic
reform.
Financial Report (we have no Treasurer, report kindly done by Party Administrator, Mona
Oliver)

Secretary:
2017 has been my second year on the YG executive and my first year as secretary. This is the first
(known) year we have had a secretary. Prior to that I believe it was the Membership secretary only. I
have mainly focused on the administrative side of keeping things running by organizing meetings,
liaising with Party staff/Gwen about camp organisation.

Challenges have included finding times for meetings that everyone is available. Quite frequently
meetings had to be rescheduled at late notice. As usual we have experienced a drop off in meeting

attendance and participation as per the attached attendance spreadsheet. As we didn’t have any
thorough systems in place to begin with (e.g. no constitution), our processes of how meetings were
run were fairly informal.

Last year a list was made at camp of people interested being on the constitution sub-committee,
however it appears this list was never received by the new exec. I tried to chase this up and find it
earlier last year to no avail hence why we called for interest again later in the year to contribute to the
constitution working-group.

Camp organisation: This year one goal of mine was to ensure AGM ran more smoothly and followed
correct process better than last year. Last year we had issues such as missing reports and a messy
voting process, among other things. Last year I believe nominations for exec were only open for 3
days prior to camp, and closed the night before. This year we allowed nominations to be open for one
month, which is closer to being in line with what the Party does. Ideally I would have liked
nominations open for two months and to close two weeks prior to camp as per the draft constitution,
but as I ran into some challenges. Next year I would recommend giving Raisers Edge access to
whoever is looking after camp registrations, so they can monitor numbers and requirements etc.

Recommendations:

For the next secretary I would recommend setting some structure around meetings and minute taking,
including a system of distributing minutes to wider membership. I started with the intention of
minutes just being taken for the readership of exec, hence my minutes are fairly informal. Towards
the end of the year there has been some interest shown in distributing these minutes, so it would be
good if the new exec could implement this. In the past couple of weeks I have also been helping to
moderate Good Young Greens Conversation. This has definitely been a challenge and I would
recommend developing some specific moderating guidelines for the page.

Of course I would also recommend establishing a process for online voting for future AGMs and from
an organisation and fairer system perspective, it may be best to hold AGM online and separate from
camp. Continue to work on the Constitution situation, perhaps a Rules of Operation, rather than a
constitution.

Social Media Representative:

Social Media Coordinator Report The social media work undertaken this year was mostly on
Facebook and Twitter. While the number of likes on Facebook increased by 50% compared to last
year, the lack of a dedicated content creator with the appropriate design skills was a barrier in making
the most of the types of posts that help maximize engagement and following. The top 3 Facebook
Posts before the election were: - A graphic and text supporting Metiria Turei and condemning the
resignation of Kennedy Graham and David Clendon. (20K people reached, 513 reactions) - A graphic
and text with our announcement of support of the Zero Carbon Act (11K people reached, 509
reactions) - A graphic and text comparing Marama Davidson with Bernie Sanders (25K reached, 36
reactions) The top 3 Facebook Posts after the election were: - A link and text introducing Golriz
Ghahraman as our newest Green Party MP (25K people reached, 421 reactions) - A graphic and text
made by a Young Green member containing a quote card from Golriz Ghahraman where she spoke
out against the TPP (11.7K people reached, 888 reactions) - A photo and text welcoming Chlöe
Swarbrick into the Green Party Caucus (9.9K people reached, 109 reactions) Politicized, topical
issues and people based content was the most effective at garnering reach. I recommend a strong
focus on network created content, that follows similar styling to that of the main Party but with its

own political voice to make it distinct enough. While some of the politicized posts were met with
debate within the Party, they were well received by the following of the Young Greens Facebook
page. I recommend having clearer guidelines next year where the wider exec is involved and a
process to green-light politicized content so that it carries a consistent tone and messaging. Regarding
Twitter—while capacity was an issue it was useful having dedicated Young Greens members who had
access to the twitter to create content at big Party events. More work is needed to help grow the
presence on Twitter but I recommend focusing on Facebook for the year ahead.

Te Tiriti O Waitangi Representative:

2017 was my first full year on the Young Greens executive, but in a sense my second term. I had been
appointed to the 2016 executive to replace Jack McDonald, to be the liaison point between Te Rōpū
Pounamu and the Young Greens. In 2017 I chose to stand for the newly created Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Representative role, and I was very proud to be elected at our network AGM.

In my capacity as Young Greens Te Tiriti o Waitangi representative, I attended the Waitangi
celebrations, as I intend to do again in 2018. Representing the Young Greens alongside caucus was a
lot of fun, but more importantly we displayed our network's and party's values and our respect for Te
Tiriti o Waitangi and it's principles. Through the rest of 2017 I kept a watchful eye over the party,
spoke internally when members Young Green or otherwise acted in contradiction to Te Tiriti, a core
part of the Green Party charter, and I have been a point person for Māori members of the Young
Greens. In addition to these responsibilities as Te Tiriti representative I have also taken on general
responsibilities in the executive - attending meetings and voting to make decisions, organizing camp,
and I've taken on some pastoral care responsibilities such as mediation and providing counsel to
members.

I have really enjoyed my mahi in the 2017 YGX, and I hope to be able to continue it to make good,
Green change. In 2018 I would like to work more on providing Te Tiriti competency training in our
party and making it accessible for all, and I think it is imperative that we have rangatahi Māori
pushing for this change.
Scout Barbour-Evans

Co-convenor, Rainbow Greens of Aotearoa New Zealand,
Te Tiriti o Waitangi Representative, Young Greens of Aotearoa New Zealand

Kia ora tatou,

So, throughout 2017, I represented the Young Greens at multitudes of events, ranging from protests,
visits with MP's and researching for my role as a shadow in the Te tiriti o Waitangi coordinator role.

I have had a blast and it's been great to be able to get out there and represent a great bunch of young
people!

Ngā mihi
Stacey Rose

General Exec Member (Auckland/Northland) Clyde

Not received.

General Exec Member (Waikato/Central North Island) Rowena

Other than as described above in the Secretary report, this year I have updated the local branch on
where we were at with Young Greens Exec planning, although other than summer camp there hasn’t
been too much to report. Our Young Greens members have mostly been led in the Waikato by our
fantastic campus group (although not officially associated with the Party), who did a great job with
the election campaign and coordinating social events throughout the year. We have been fortunate to
have significant young representation in branch and province office holder positions. The local branch
and province have also been supportive with travel assistance for delegates to attend AGM/candidates
conference. I attended Candidate conference in 2017 as a delegate for our branch, Along with Mike,
Ingrid, Ree, Robert and Aaron. Having good youth representation has been valuable to our branch and
ensured our voices are heard more by the Party.

General Exec Member (Wellington) Jessie

Last year was a very busy time with the election. So that was a main focus of mine to help volunteer
in my local area. I attended fortnightly meetings and contributed when I could. As stressful as last
year was the young greens exec was very supporting. Although I did not follow through with my
ideas, I hope this year’s Wellington Exec can go through with their own ideas. My recommendations
for this year’s Wellington exec is to possibly create events to foster a sense of community.

General Exec Member (Top of the South/Wellington) Alex

Not received.

General Exec Member (Otago/Deep South) Christian
Over the past year I have had two main focuses, especially with it being an election year. The first
was to advocate for the Deep South whom I represent. Being at the bottom of the country it can
difficult to attend AGM or any other party event. So in terms of Summer Camp I wanted to make sure
there would be some assistance for those of us that were able to attend. My second challenge of the
year has been working on the constitution. While what ends up being put forward may not be to the
liking of everyone out there, the Young Greens certainly need to begin the process of debating a
document until it takes a shape that can be agreed upon. Hopefully I have done this to some extent.
Working on this document has taken the majority of my time as to Exec related duties. Being in
Dunedin, most of the campus engagement (O-week etc) was done through the Otago Campus Greens,
which is not affiliated with the YGs

Minutes of the previous AGM

Minutes from the 2017 YG AGM have been circulated among attendees.

    Matters Arising

    - The minutes from last year have some discrepancies in them, for example who was present and
    absent, that are hard to correct at this stage. An edited version including the results and some
    corrections has been circulated among attendees, along with the original minutes.

    - Apology received from Gwen, last years minutes discussed the need for constitution. Gwen
    recommends what we actually need are a set of Rules of Operation. Advice has been given to the
    executive on this.

    - In the minutes last year, it says anyone can run for either co-co role. This year we have followed
    recommendations of Rainbow Greens.

    - No other objections/corrections received for the minutes of the 2017 YG AGM.

    Constitution

    Meg: The list of constitution working group members from last year was lost.
    We put up an informal request for working group on Facebook. Because we don’t have a list of
    Young Greens members, we did it through Facebook. 30 people said they were keen to be involved.
    Christian and Meg worked on a skeleton draft of constitution, 4 responses were received. Christian
    then worked very hard to flesh out the draft.

    Party exec has said the young greens should not technically have a constitution, but a Rules of
    Operation. The rest can come from the Party constitution, which applies to us.

    If we were to have a constitution, would have to stand for many years. Standing orders are for voting
    purposes. We have a different interest in how we are working than the Green Party. Legally, the
    Greens operate as an incorporated society, which have to have one constitution. No other networks
    have a constitution, which we were unaware of until recently.

    Question: If not a constitution, can we still have a document with our Kaupapa?

    - Gwen has given us a list of headings from the constitution to use for a Rule of Operation document,
    which could incorporate this. These rules could also include how we want to run the AGM e.g. at
    Summer Camp or alternatives such as online on Zoom. Likewise gender requirements for roles. Gwen
    Shaw and Julian Maize have contributed advice on constitution. We have to be very careful about the
    wording and that it is interpreted the same way it was meant to be. Current draft can be edited and
    used to extract relevant parts for the Rules of Operation.

    Plan: it was discussed to now split into groups for about ten minutes to discuss the most important
    things we would need to put into the Rules of Operation (Headings only), to use as a framework going
    forward for writing this document.

    Headings brainstormed from this session:

    Group 1:
-   AGM rules, when it is held etc

-   -Executive (what form of evolution /representation shapes how we appoint people to the exec)
-   Howe those people are elected
-   Membership criteria
-   Removal of office holders (How to manage this)
-   Policy influence (What we think we want to push the party to do)

-   Potential for online voting for AGM, make AGM an equitable process.
-   Age (?difference in voting and membership age?)
-   General exec roles are compromised

    Group 2:

    - Voting practices
    - Fair democratic AGM
    - Role of executive (representation)
    - Age for list (31? As if you are a candidate, so candidates are under 35 for their first term if elected,
    rather than potentially 39)

    Group 3:

-   Kaupapa and what we stand for as a network
-   How to make a stand on issues
-   Age/voting process
-   Process to decide on networks priorities each year
-   YG putting forward policy
-   Voting rights ending at 30, membership 35.
-   Province representation
-   Representation on YG exec and list ranking process needs to include age.

-   location and means in which we communicate at AGM, e.g fully accessible.

    Discussion:

-   Scott: Motion to thank and acknowledge Christian for all his work on the constitution so far. Seconded
    by Mona. Passed by consensus.

-   (The exec are buying Christian a gift to deliver as he was unable to be here today).

-   Scott: Need to bear in mind charter principles while making this document, which should be a
    thorough conversation taking most of the year, not a two week job.

-   Meg: Motion for the new exec to appoint a small working group to develop the Rules of Operation.

-   Ben: Proposed amendment to above motion. Often sub-committees end up spending a lot of time
    talking about things but not much getting done.

-   Ben: Motion (amended): For the new exec to appoint a project manager to manage the facilitation of
    an engagement process with the Network to establish a Rules of Operation Document, within two
    months. Seconded by: Max Tweedie. Passed by consensus.

-   Meg: Motion: The YG Network asks the Green Party Executive to ensure that the date of birth of
    people joining the Green Party is recorded so that they may be invited to join the YG network through
    an automatically generated list. (And include a tick box for the YG Network.). Seconded by Ingrid,
    passed by consensus. Mona: Also to look in to recording birth date through renewals to capture the
    data we have lost, as well as also asking about Māori identity.

-   Meg: Motion: That the next AGM be held on Zoom at another date after the Summer Camp.

-   Louise: Travel equalisation needs to be considered.

-   Live stream for people who cannot be present for AGM.

-   Ben: Even If we move AGM to online, still excludes people from the social element, which is camp.
    Need to prioritise travel equalisation to all YG/Greens events.

-   Kate: Accessibility of events in general, conferences cost hundreds of dollars.

-   Shanti: Voting process needs to be accessible, social element needs to be accessible. Other access
    barriers other than finance.

-   Matt: project manager is going to need a really clear mandate/instructions from the new exec.

-   Meg: Amended Motion: The new exec will write out a mandate for the project to the project manager
    to make the AGM more accessible. Seconded by: Scott. Passed by consensus.

Election

    People speak to roles.

    Co-convenors:

    - Daisy Hsu spoke to her nomination
    - Mona Oliver spoke to her nomination

    - Scout Barbour-Evans spoke to their nomination.
    - Elliot Crossan spoke to his nomination.
    - Ari Lewis spoke to his nomination.
    - Max Tweedie spoke to his nomination.

    Questions to candidates:

    -Candidates answered questions about their involvement in environmental action.
    -What facilitation skills of basic everyday running of exec they have (and ensuring day to day running
    doesn’t fall to women).
    - Pākehā candidates answered about how they are more appropriate to stand for co-convenor.
    - Non-rainbow candidate on any gender position. How will you represent YG/rainbow Greens?
    - All candidates answered about their capacity and ability to commit to the position and engage with
    others.

- Candidates answered question about one policy other than BRR that they would prioritise and try to
present to the Greens to caucus.
- Candidates answered how they would get rural youth involved.

Ask permission of AGM to appoint membership secretary. Two expressions of interest after
nominations closed. –Plan: come back to this after lunch.

The non-coco candidates spoke to their nominations:

Scout spoke to their nomination
Rowena spoke to Stacey’s nomination by reading out statement
Marnie spoke to their nomination
Will spoke to Christian’s nomination by reading out statement
Rowena spoke to Adam’s statement by reading out statement.
Yasmin spoke to their nomination
Danielle spoke to her nomination
Leighton spoke to his nomination
Elliot spoke to Fynn’s statement by reading out statement
Rowena spoke to Finn’s nomination by reading out statement.

Caucusing time begins (20 minutes given prior to ballots being issued)

Ballots issued: Numbered ballots were issued to members from an electoral roll that had been
checked against membership data.

Voting closed
Results: 44 ballots received, Results announced after Lunch

Co-convenor (Woman): Mona Oliver
Co-convenor (any gender): Max Tweedie
Te Tiriti O Waitangi Representative: Scout Barbour Evans
Secretary: Jana Walsh
Membership secretary- see below
Global Greens Representative (Woman): Marnie Hubmann
Global Greens Representative (any gender): Christian Merten
Gen Exec (Auckland/Northern): Yasmin Prendergast
Gen Exec (Waikato/ North East): Danielle Marks
Gen Exec (Central/Wellington): Stacey Rose
Gen Exec (Top of the South/Aoraki): Fynn Sawyer
Gen Exec (Deep South): Christian Merten
Social Media Representative (two positions): Finn Jackson and Tim Onnes

Closed: 1400

Membership Secretary

With regards to the membership Secretary position. There was nor formal motion passed at AGM, as
the AGM ran over an hour overtime and it was missed. Decision made was for the new Executive to
facilitate a process to appoint a new membership secretary. It was already announced prior to AGM

that the Treasurer will be appointment by the Exec due to specialist skills involved and that being
standard practice.