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.
But co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has also acknowledged the party has “work to do”, with polling currently showing the Greens sitting just under 10% compared to Labour in the early 30s.
Should the Greens lead the next Government, Swarbrick said the party’s membership would explore options for what the co-leaders’ roles could be. She said she’s “really interested in holding the finance portfolio, clearly”.
The party’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Wellington this weekend included speeches from Swarbrick and co-leader Marama Davidson, 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 with its policy offerings.
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.”
Swarbrick on Sunday afternoon said that the Greens had a “great respectful working relationship” with Labour and she believes her party is putting forward fresh ideas.
She pointed to the party’s industrial strategy, which includes the likes of having a Ministry of Green Works to back the rollout of green infrastructure projects and establishing an agency to plan for future workforce needs.
“We haven’t had meaningful industrial policy in this country for the last 40 years ... that is fresh thinking from the Green Party that sets the agenda.”
So is continuing to back a wealth tax – which the party supported at the 2020 and 2023 elections and in its recent alternative Budget – a fresh idea? Swarbrick responded: “We can walk and chew gum.”
The Herald asked whether Swarbrick would foresee her and Davidson being co-Prime Ministers should the Greens lead a Government.
“It’s really interesting that it always really whittles down seemingly to who’s gonna occupy the top,” she said. “We current have a term of Government which has shown that we can have co-deputy Prime Ministers.”
Would she go for that?
“Our membership will explore those options. But again, what we’re asking New Zealanders to reflect on is the fact that we don’t operate inside a presidentialised political system. There are far bigger questions than which Chris you’re more interested in.”
But 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.
Swarbrick said the party was interested in continuing to grow, build new alliances, put ideas on the table, and look outside of the “traditional circles that we typically run in”.
“We’re realistic that these changes don’t happen overnight,” she said. “We have a huge amount of work to do and we’re not pretending that we don’t.”
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”.
“There is a reason social media algorithms are designed to outrage. It gets our attention. It gets our focus. It sucks up a lot of our time and engagement. It benefits the billionaires”
Asked afterwards whether she believed the Greens’ social media channels contributed to that outrage, Swarbrick said: “That’s not something that we’re intending to do, no”.
She said her party was interested in talking about “solutions and the kind of country that we want to build”.
In her speech, Swarbrick 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”.
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.