Green shoots ahead for party: Swarbrick

Otago Daily Times

5 days ago

After a turbulent beginning to this Parliament, Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick tells ODT political editor Mike Houlahan it is only up from here.
"Forged in fire, mate," a chipper Chloe Swarbrick says as she summarises the first half of the parliamentary term from a Green Party perspective.
And then some.
For a start, she is sitting in the ODT offices speaking as her party's co-leader — a role she did not have at the start of the current Parliament, although many expected she would eventually rise to it.
However, Ms Swarbrick replacing the now retired James Shaw was the least troublesome of the many travails which have beset the Greens.
The sudden death of Fa'anānā Efeso Collins last February was followed soon after by the prolonged and messy expulsion of former MP Darleen Tana. Then her replacement, Benjamin Doyle, was placed under the blowtorch by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
And last but not least, for much of this Ms Swarbrick was the solo leader of her party; Marama Davidson requiring time off for breast cancer treatment.
"That, unfortunately, is part of being in such a snow globe of public pressure, with the spotlights on. It's not unusual to have circumstances in workplaces where things go awry, but you add to that the level of public scrutiny, which is absolutely due," Ms Swarbrick said.
"I knew that, sitting around the caucus table, we had a group of people who were dedicated to a cause that was bigger than something that any one of us could create by ourselves, so I always felt like the team was working together and prioritising that bigger picture.
"But in terms of the personal reflections on it all, I mean, like, I didn't really intend to be a politician, I protested so hard, I raged against the machine so hard, but I got inside the machine somehow, right?
"What I take from that is, yeah, the way that we tend to conceptualise of leadership is, you know, putting somebody at the top of the pecking order and going, 'That person's going to make all the decisions and have all the glory and all the other things', and the responsibility, obviously, is on the flip side of that coin.
"But I've always felt really grounded in a team that I know has my back."
It is not unusual for the Green Party to feel out of step with its parliamentary colleagues — an accusation the governing parties are happy to widen out to include the entire country.
It has felt more stark than usual this term though, as its MPs have been assailed as being luddite opponents of progress for questioning the need for economic growth and the requirement for natural resources to be dug up to fuel it.
While many of those attacks have come from National, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's gentle urging that the Greens back the fast-track legislation are nowhere near as stinging as Mr Peters adorning the Greens' recently released alternative budget with a Soviet-era hammer and sickle or his NZ First colleague Shane Jones' exhortations to the Greens to not worry about moths or Freddy the Frog and push ahead with mining.
If there is such a thing as a philosophic debate in the New Zealand Parliament, these two parties are having it. It can even be intellectual listening once the sloganeering is stripped away from it.
"What they are saying is pretty boring, and it misses the mark in terms of the real debate that New Zealanders expect of the people who occupy positions of power to be having," Ms Swarbrick said.
"That's part of the reason that we are currently all across the country touring the Green budget and talking to people directly about the things that matter to them, as opposed to waiting for it to be mediated, whether that be through the headlines that we manage to grab or otherwise.
"Honestly, the experience of sitting in our chamber of Parliament, particularly under the tenor of toxicity that this government is ushered in, is so far removed from the reality that you experience and you talk to with New Zealanders up and down this country when you're actually on the ground and outside of those walls."
The building blocks at the foundation of what will be the Green policy platform for the 2026 election are contained within that alternative budget.
It is a beguiling document, opening with pledges of free community healthcare and dental treatment, full funding a new Dunedin hospital, publicly funded early childhood education, free school lunches, a guaranteed income for all, climate action, healthy oceans, a resurgent Jobs for Nature scheme, and a green jobs industrial strategy.
But then comes the method of paying for it all — essentially making corporations, and those individuals at the apex of the existing progressive tax system, pay more through introducing a wealth tax (a long-standing Greens policy), an extra tax band at the top end, and hiking business tax.
Despite Ms Swarbrick's immediate assertion that 91% of New Zealanders would pay less income tax under her party's plan, it is these revenue-gathering methods that stand her party accused of promoting communism.
"Yes, the top 3%, the wealthiest 3% in this country, will pay the wealth tax," she said.
"But in doing so, that unlocks the resources which are currently being bound up in unproductive uses, i.e., the likes of property speculation. It also addresses some of the unfairness in our tax system, which the 2023 IRD High Wealth Individuals Report showcased, where the wealthiest 311 households pay an effective tax rate less than half of the average New Zealander.
"We currently have a situation where half a million New Zealanders are using food banks every single month; 191 New Zealanders, the majority of them of working age, are leaving the country every single day.
"We do not arrest that issue with half measures."
The next election is about a year away and, unlike some previous electoral cycles, the Greens have cause to be optimistic.
The Greens' polling has held relatively steady — from a record election result high of 11.6%, its current average rating across all public polls is 10.4% — and its caucus now has a more settled look about it.
Its southern rookie MPs, Scott Willis and Francisco Hernandez, have performed well and are helping to give the Greens a wider geographic representation than in recent years.
It is also doing well in the House, thanks in no small part to the work of the impressively forensic Lawrence Xu-Nan.
With three electorate seats and 15 MPs, Ms Swarbrick is adamant the Greens have great potential to grow that vote still further.
"I think you're seeing the rise of meaningful progressive platforms like, for example, Zohran Mamdani in New York, who has unified people on the basis of material needs being met," she said.
"That stuff is winning. That is a winning formula. And that is the formula that we are going to consistently keep rolling out.
"We are talking to people about what really matters, not just poking holes and critiquing, but putting forward those productive solutions, but also mobilising people.
"We do things a little bit differently and we are a little bit different, and we try and reflect what modern Aotearoa New Zealand looks like.
"Hopefully that means that more people can see themselves in that so-called House of Representatives by virtue of us being there."
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