The Greens have expressed their desire to lead the next Government, with the political party’s co-leaders this weekend calling for “transformational change” and a future driven by Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
The party’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Wellington this weekend included speeches from Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick, both of whom implored members to take action and make change.
Davidson on Saturday spoke of the importance of Te Tiriti to the party and how it was a “blueprint for bringing us together”.
“We have seen this play out on the ground in real ways. We can see it in the multi generations that have carried the growing movement for Tiriti justice,” she said.
Davidson said New Zealanders had the ability to “take back control” and build “the most progressive Government Aotearoa has ever seen”.
“We’re not here to just lead the Opposition, we are here because we want to lead the next Government,” she said.
That followed comments Swarbrick made to the Herald this week, in which she suggested the Greens were leading the Opposition.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins responded to that on Sunday morning, saying he was more interested in what the Government was doing than “arguing with the Greens”.
“They’re hardly going to show up and say, look we’re just a junior version of Labour, are they? I mean, they’re gonna want to differentiate themselves. That’s what political parties do in election campaigns.
“But I think we need some fresh thinking. We can’t just reheat things that Labour and the Greens were doing when we were in Government last time. We’ve actually got to have some new ideas.”
In her speech on Sunday afternoon, Swarbrick repeatedly reminded those in attendance to “take a breath”, acknowledging people are “angry”.
“There’s a lot going on in our world. Genocide. Exploitation. Harm and hurt and pain. There’s a lot going on at home.” she said.
“But every breath can remind us that all human beings, ultimately, are built of the same stuff. We all come from the same planet, and to that planet we will ultimately return.”
She said it’s common for people to accuse “the other side and people who vote for the other side” of being “idiots”, and “we can’t blame regular people for switching off from that”.
“If we can’t understand why people do the things that they do, then the logic tends to flow [that] they’re wrong and they just don’t get it. That’s clearly not a winning formula.
“For most people, forced to fight for daily survival – for a spot on the GP waitlist, for a decent job and a faint hope that one day you might be able to take the kids on holiday – where’s the energy left for the whole politics thing?
“Most New Zealanders lament politics. They straight-up hate it.”
Swarbrick said politics was “designed to outrage” and if “regular people are fighting each other, it’s propping up this system”.
“The Green Party is a vehicle for political change – the big ideas factory – inside of our current electoral system. We don’t pretend to be entitled to anything. We invite people into this movement because we want them to own it as much as we do.”
She asked people to consider where to “invest your valuable energy and focus”.
“On winning debates or changing our world? On being right, or building relationships? On being comfortable, or growing?
“How do we get a mass of exhausted regular people, fed up with politics, to engage and organise with a bunch of earnest nerds – that’s us, guys – to win power against some of the most well-funded and unscrupulous industries and political actors?”
By practicing “our values, every day, in ways big and small”, Swarbrick said people can help “create the most progressive Government Aotearoa has ever seen”.
If the Greens want to lead the next left-leaning Government, they will have to make up ground against Labour, which is by far the biggest party on the left.
The July Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll showed Labour was on 31.6%, compared to the Greens 9.4%. On that poll, the centre-right parties could still govern.
However, despite that polling chasm, Swarbrick told the Herald this week that the Greens were leading the Opposition in driving the political agenda.
The party has recently produced an alternative Budget, a fiscal strategy, identified a “hole” in the Government’s books and commissioned legal advice finding that gas field contingency funding could breach an international trade agreement (the latter two have both been disputed by ministers).
“I’m stoked with the mahi [work] that we have done to show people the issues that this Government is creating for us, but also how we would solve those issues,” Swarbrick said.
“I’m proud of the work that we’ve done. That can only be a positive thing. We are setting the agenda, we are contributing positively to the debate, and that is exciting people. That’s a good thing.”
She said the Greens had held a consistent position on tax, pointing to its wealth-tax proposal at the 2020 and 2023 election, which is also in its alternative Budget.
Hipkins on Sunday, however, spoke of the importance of “fresh ideas”.
Labour is mostly keeping tight-lipped on any policy proposals, wanting to leave that to closer to the election to ensure its ideas reflect the latest circumstances.
A tax policy is expected sometime nearer the end of the year, but Hipkins said that’s just one part of the picture.
“We’ve actually got to look at the broader picture of how do we make sure that New Zealanders who go out and work hard every day can actually get ahead and create a better life for themselves,” he said.
“I think there’s a lot of Kiwis out there working really hard, flogging their guts out of the moment to feel like they’re going backwards all of the time. That is what motivates me to get out of bed every morning. I think we can do better.”
Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. In 2025, he was a finalist for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.