KEY POINTS:
Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons will focus solely on lifting her party's vote across the country next year and will not contest the Coromandel seat that she has sought for the past five elections.
The decision, which comes as the Greens hover dangerously below the crucial 5 per cent threshold in many polls, means the party will put up a fresh face as its candidate for Coromandel.
Asked if the move away from standing for Coromandel reflected any specific concern about the Greens' party vote, Ms Fitzsimons said it did not. "It's not a concern about making the 5 per cent.
"It's just that I think it's sensible to prioritise my efforts. To try to do both jobs possibly would have just run me into the ground."
Coromandel is held by National's Sandra Goudie, who has increased her majority to just over 10,000 since she first took the seat from Ms Fitzsimons in 2002.
But Coromandel remains a seat where the Greens poll well compared with other electorates.
Ms Fitzsimons said she knew how much time was needed to win the seat from her experience in 1999, and she had to make the nationwide vote her priority.
Not attending local candidate meetings just before the election was "bad form", she said, but if she did go it would mean she had very little time in other parts of the country campaigning.
The Greens yesterday called for nominations to be the party's candidate in the seat and Ms Fitzsimons said there were some "very good" people considering putting their names forward - although because nobody had actually done so yet she did not want to name them.
The Greens will kick off election year with the party's annual State of the Planet speech on Waiheke Island in late January.
