Swarbrick confirmed Green Party co-leader
Chlöe Swarbrick has promised to make the Green Party the “leading voice of the Left”, after she was confirmed as the new party co-leader to replace James Shaw.
Swarbrick, 29, was broadly expected to replace Shaw as co-leader after he announced his impending resignation from politics in January. She was confirmed as the new co-leader when her competitor, Alex Foulkes, announced he had conceded yesterday morning.
The party, already planning to announce the new co-leader later in the morning, confirmed Swarbrick was replacing Shaw immediately after Foulkes conceded.
Speaking at a media conference, Swarbrick thanked party members for electing her to lead the party alongside co-leader Marama Davidson. She also paid tribute to Shaw.
“The Greens care a lot about whakapapa. We know that we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us. We know, as the late great green Efeso Collins said, no-one stands alone, no one succeeds alone, and no-one suffers alone. “James Shaw is one of those giants who has contributed decades to our movement.”
She condemned the “stitch-up” that was legacy politics represented by the Labour and National parties that “limits the oxygen and the options that people need to imagine and, in turn, limiting real-world results”.
The country voted for the MMP electoral system, in the 1990s, to “break” a duopoly political system, she said.
And she attacked the “bully-boy behaviour” of the National-coalition Government. Watching the Government’s lawmaking in Parliament in recent weeks had been a “gaslighting” experience, she said, as it pursued an agenda "simply because it says that it will, despite actual evidence that says that it is going to make the country a worse place".
"Now, more than ever, Green Party values and our evidence-based policy positions are fundamentally critical.“
She reiterated a commitment to making the Green Party the "leading voice on the Left" – meaning, superseding the Labour Party – and the Green Party's number of MPs should reflect that.
Her job in the coming weeks, months, and years, she said, was to find “local champions” across the country to run campaigns for the party's broader movement.
Green Party members resoundingly voted for Swarbrick.
The party said Swarbrick won 169 votes, while zero were cast for her competitor, and two votes were cast to reopen nominations for the position.
Swarbrick would become co-leader alongside Davidson effective immediately. Shaw remains in Parliament for the time being, to support a Bill of Rights amendment bill through the parliamentary process.
Shaw said there was “no-one I would rather take my place”, and Davidson said it would be “fantastic” to have Swarbrick at her side “in the fight against this Government’s cold, cynical and cruel agenda”.
Swarbrick’s only competitor was an outsider candidate.
Foulkes, a party member who has not been elected to Parliament, announced in February he would run for co-leader to ensure there was a “contest of ideas”, and pitched a more radical eco-socialist policy platform for the party.
“In standing, it was never my expectation that I was going to win against one of the most talented politicians in Aotearoa New Zealand,” Foulkes said in a statement, conceding defeat.
“Indeed, someone suggested to me that I had more chance of spotting the fabled South Island kokako than winning this election.”