What is the Green Party for? It’s a question the Greens themselves disagree on. National exists to govern the country; Labour used to be the party of radical reform but now occupies a similar space to National, albeit with higher minimum wages and more te reo in its press releases. Act is meant be the party of liberalism and free markets but it is currently working on laws to introduce more regulation to the housing market, reflecting the reality that it is mostly just the party of existing property owners. New Zealand First delivers subsidies to the racing industry and grants its leader a platform to bellow at journalists and build lavish new embassies across Europe for his beloved Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All these parties have strategic coherence, but what is the purpose of the Greens?
Its now-departing co-leader James Shaw would say that the party is about environmental and social justice: it’s there to pass legislation and implement policy to advance those causes.
But many Green activists, and some of the party’s former MPs, would disagree, arguing that it should be an anti-establishment movement devoted to the destruction of capitalism and the settler-colonial state – the true causes of inequality and climate change.
This is the tension that led to Shaw being briefly de-selected as co-leader in mid-2022: he was working within the system rather than against it, striking bargains with the enemies of humanity: farmers, businesses, right-wing politicians, centrists, left-wing politicians who were insufficiently left.
But, just as the precise nature of the glorious utopia beyond capitalism remains vague, the activists who overthrew him lacked an alternative co-leader, so Shaw was reinstated.
Now, he has officially announced his retirement. He will stay in Parliament to see through his private member’s bill, the Bill of Rights (Right to Sustainable Environment) Amendment Bill, which was pulled from the ballot just before the Christmas break, but has triggered a leadership contest to be decided by March 10.
The Green constitution stipulates at least one female and one Māori co-leader, opening up the possibility of two female co-leaders, and the overwhelming favourite to replace Shaw is Chlöe Swarbrick.
The MP for Auckland Central routinely outperforms the current co-leaders in the preferred prime minister polls, and she has built up her own internal support: many of the Green MPs entering Parliament in the 2023 intake are Team Swarbrick. The position is hers if she wants it, and even if she didn’t, her high public profile imposed an enormous expectation on her to stand.
Foregone conclusion
There are usually rival contenders in Green leadership contests but the outcome is such a foregone conclusion she may find herself running alone.
Both Shaw and Davidson are prone to stumble when they switch between technocracy and radicalism. Swarbrick can move from Parliament’s finance and expenditure select committee to street protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza without missing a step. Instead of worrying about the purpose of the Greens, her followers are more focused on Labour.
From their perspective, the six years of Labour in government were mostly dismal: no tax or welfare reform, a deepening housing crisis; Jacinda Ardern failed to support the cannabis referendum, which then failed by a narrow margin. They see Labour as a centrist party marketing itself as left-wing, taking up the space that another party – a certain environmental and social justice party, say – might profitably occupy.
Swarbrick was the first Green MP to win an electorate since Jeanette Fitzsimons won Coromandel in 1999. She did so after winning a bitter internal battle against the consensus view that winning electorates was not part of the Green kaupapa. Fitzsimons won her seat off a National Party MP; Swarbrick and her fellow electorate Greens Tamatha Paul and Julie Anne Genter have all taken once-safe Labour seats.
Green strategists have learnt that while Labour’s campaign machine is formidable, its candidates can be weak, often selected because they were part of the right clique at university rather than for any inherent talent. A strong Green candidate with a strong campaign machine can take them.
Alliances matter
Shaw was a relationship-builder: he advanced his policies by building alliances across the political spectrum, and his most valuable friendships were with Grant Robertson and Ardern, who kept him on as climate minister despite Labour’s majority in the House rendering the Green vote irrelevant.
Swarbrick also operates across the aisle – she collaborated with David Seymour on the end-of-life bill and works well with Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. But she is also an empire-builder. She will advance her policies by winning seats in the House – and these will almost invariably come at Labour’s expense.
She may struggle with the radical faction in her party but that group is now diminished. It exhausted the wider membership’s tolerance with the attempt to depose Shaw as co-leader. Instead, Swarbrick may struggle to overcome the party’s basic organisational structure. It is fiercely proud of its internal democracy: the members choose the leaders and select the party list; all significant decisions are made using a consensus-based framework.
Much of the power wielded by the co-leaders is symbolic: other political parties have parliamentary whips empowered by the party leader to keep the MPs in line, the Greens have musterers who merely plead with the MPs to stop playing with their phones during caucus meetings.
This democratic, consensus-based framework works surprisingly well when the party is small and the internal relationships in the caucus remain collegial. But as it scales up, cracks appear and factions form. During the 2017 election campaign, infighting led to the resignation of two Green MPs – Kennedy Graham and David Clendon – followed by the resignation of co-leader Metiria Turei.
These problems will diminish if there’s growth: nothing unites like success. But if it slows or falters, the self-destructive tendencies built into the Green Party will flourish like weeds after a rainstorm – and even a politician as talented as Swarbrick will struggle to uproot them.
