Green Party co-leaders Chloe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson. Photo / Michael Craig
The Green Party will campaign on mass electrification for the election, saying the sun, wind, water and geothermal energy “don’t come through the Strait of Hormuz”.
Fuel prices have surged amid the ongoing war in Iran, prompted by initial strikes by the United States and Israel. Iran retaliated and essentially closed the strait, a major shipping route for fuel markets globally.
Amid uncertainty over shipping access through the strait, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has warned that it may take time before fuel prices ease in New Zealand.
Speaking at the Green Party’s annual State of the Planet event in Wellington, its co-leaders said New Zealand’s systems had proven to be “fragile” and the country’s cost-of-living crisis should not be “dictated by latest White House war announcement via Truth Social”.
“The solution is so simple. We must electrify everything we can. We need homegrown, sustainable resilience in our energy system, powering everything we do,” co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said.
“We don’t need to depend on expensive fossil fuels hauled from the other side of the planet. We have everything we need here, at home.
“No one is hoarding, attacking, or starting wars over sun, wind, water and geothermal energy. They don’t come through the Strait of Hormuz.”
Swarbrick said the Government needed to create a national electrification plan as the “practical response to the fossil fuel crisis” starting with improving access to “cheap, easy loans for solar panels and batteries” via the Ratepayers’ Assistance Scheme.
Such a plan, Swarbrick said, would electrify homes, transport and industry, “ending New Zealand’s dependence on unpredictable global fossil fuel markets, cutting household power bills, and building real energy security at home”.
“We don’t have control over what other countries do. But we can, immediately and urgently, take control of our country’s own needs by powering ourselves, with every renewable resource available in abundance around us.”
Swarbrick criticised the coalition Government for not doing more to prevent the recent closure of Wattie’s, and pulp and paper mills’ soaring costs, saying those workers were “thrown to the scrapheap.”
The party has since called for a select committee inquiry into the Wattie’s closure to investigate if the regulatory environment, energy costs, “foreign-owner indifference to New Zealand interests” or anti-competitive behaviour from supermarkets contributed.
“The Prime Minister tells us it’s all about ‘growth’, as he cheerleads offshore ownership of our country’s key assets,” Swarbrick said.
“Think about Wattie’s. The pulp and paper mills. They were sold offshore, and when the balance sheet stopped producing easy profit for distant shareholders, the New Zealanders who had dedicated their lives to the companies’ production line were thrown on the scrapheap.
“A country is not a corporation. A Prime Minister is not a CEO.”
Co-leader Marama Davidson spoke more broadly, claiming the coalition Government “think attacking Māori is a political win for them”, an apparent reference to policies some see as anti-Māori like the controversial Treaty Principles Bill. This is a charge the Government has staunchly rejected.
“It’s as plain as it has ever been for the Green Party that upholding Te Tiriti justice is the pathway to social justice, climate justice, environmental justice and economic justice.
“All of it is connected. But this Government hopes you can’t connect the dots. They think attacking Māori is a political win for them.”
On the conflict in Iran, Davidson said it was first and foremost a human catastrophe where civilians are being killed and injured, livelihoods are being destroyed and international law is being broken.
“A war launched not to protect people but to project power. And ordinary people, in every country, are the ones paying for it. But it also reveals how fragile the systems are that we have built our lives around.
“How dependent we have allowed ourselves to become on systems outside of our control. And who is benefiting from this dependence. The military industrial complex, the warmongers and those who want to profit by exploiting people and the planet.”
Davidson described New Zealand as “a country that has lost its footing”.
“A country that once knew what it stood for, that was proud of its independence, its willingness to say no when no was the right answer, and that has, slowly, quietly, been talked out of that position.
“Here is the uncomfortable truth. This did not start with any one government. Successive governments have slowly walked New Zealand away from the independent and principled foreign policy that once defined us. They sent troops to Afghanistan. They deployed to Iraq. They strengthened military ties with the United States.”
Davidson said that had culminated “in a moment where our Prime Minister cannot even say plainly whether a war is legal or have the courage to condemn the killing of children.”
Luxon has refused on several occasions to take a direct position on the war, including on reports of a bombing of a primary school in Iran.
“What we are calling for is we need to make sure international law and international humanitarian law is upheld and when we see strikes on civilian infrastructure and on civilians, that is unacceptable,” Luxon said at a recent press conference.
Asked if he had a view on the school bombing, Luxon said: “we don’t ... as we have said before that is an issue for the Americans to explain”.
In response to the fuel crisis in New Zealand, the Government expanded the In-Work Tax Credit to give an extra $50 per week to around 140,000 families with children.
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.