James Shaw urges Greens to 'calm down'

Green Party leader James Shaw says it's time for his MPs and supporters to "calm down" and "focus on steadying the ship".

It comes after Green MP Julie Anne Genter lashed out at journalists on Thursday when asked if she'd be the party's next woman co-leader.

"Don't even think about asking me that question until after the election," she responded.

Mr Shaw said Ms Genter was "just responding to the situation".

"In what's been a very difficult week for all of us, people have started to say 'Will you be the next leader of the Green Party' and so on, and she simply was just responding to that and saying we've just got to deal with what's in front of us and let's deal with [the leadership] after the election."

It's been a chaotic week for the Green party with co-leader Metiria Turei's resignation on Wednesday, which followed two MPs quitting on Monday evening in protest over Ms Turei's benefit fraud admission.

"It's been a really tough week for everybody," Mr Shaw said. "Passions are running pretty high; my advice to everybody is to just breathe through your noses and focus on steadying the ship."

He said that it's been tough on people outside Parliament as well, but people need to take a breather. 

"For people who've spent months and months on an election campaign, when something like this happens they get emotional and upset. We just need to kind of calm down, pull together, steady the ship and focus on winning the election."

After Ms Turei's resignation the party is now "resetting the campaign", Mr Shaw said.

"We're making some adjustments; we're going to have some news in the next few days about what we intend to do. But the primary thing is we've just got to let New Zealanders know what we stand for, which is making New Zealand a world leader in the fight against climate change, cleaning up all of our rivers and ending poverty in New Zealand."

Newshub.