Is Chlöe Swarbrick the new face of the Green Party’s green wing?

Analysis: Chlöe Swarbrick announced on Friday that she’s seeking the vacant co-leader position given up by James Shaw, but there’s another of Shaw’s roles that she’s positioning for as well.

For nearly as long as he’s been the co-leader of the Green Party, Shaw has been its climate spokesperson as well. That included for two years before the 2017 election, across six years as Climate Change Minister and then again after October’s election.

With Shaw exiting Parliament in a matter of months, as soon as the fate of his Member’s Bill to add a right to a sustainable environment to the Bill of Rights Act is known, that climate portfolio will also be up for grabs.

When asked whether the role should rest with a co-leader (as it has since 2014) and whether she’d like it, Swarbrick declined to put her hand up explicitly – before going on to make the case for why she should have it.

“It’s pretty clear, based on the work that I’ve done over the past few years, for example on the Environment Select Committee, I’m a nerd and a policy wonk when it comes to the detail of this stuff,” she said.

“I’m really really passionate about it, but those conversations are for the caucus.”

Shaw has been the face of the party’s environmentalist wing since he became co-leader. His work as minister, in particular, has been a useful foil to criticism that the Greens have become simply a party focused on social justice and economic inequality.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has enjoyed deploying the line, in recent days, that Shaw was the last environmentalist in the Greens. It’s not an unfamiliar talking point – during the John Key years, the government would regularly hit out at the party’s supposed lack of green focus. In 2016, Key joked in Parliament that he hadn’t been asked about the environment by a Green Party MP since 2008.

It is, of course, just a talking point. Julie Anne Genter has been outspoken about transport issues, from both a climate and an air pollution perspective, for years. Two new MPs, Steve Abel and Scott Willis, have strong climate backgrounds as an activist and an energy analyst, respectively. While the Greens may have a wider focus now than in the early days, Labour too has retreated from the strong focus on climate the party had under Jacinda Ardern, ceding ground back to the Greens.

Swarbrick’s announcement speech on Friday made a strong case that she, too, has kept the climate flame lit for the Greens even while Shaw as minister was limited in his advocacy. While she’s more well-known for her outspoken views on mental health, drug and alcohol law reform and tax reform, it is true that she has also had a hand in climate policymaking.

She was the Greens’ representative on the Environment Select Committee when the Zero Carbon Bill went through and wrote an impassioned defence of Shaw’s idea of a “Reserve Bank model” for the Climate Change Commission. Similarly, she worked on the Emissions Trading Scheme reforms in 2020, attempted to pass a motion declaring a climate emergency in the House in 2019 and successfully pushed the Labour government to reduce the emissions from Crown financial institution investments.

The Auckland anniversary floods and Cyclone Gabrielle also kickstarted a new wave of advocacy for Swarbrick over climate adaptation and recovery in the past year. That came from her role as the MP for Auckland Central, but in the Greens’ post-election reshuffle she was made the spokesperson for climate adaptation.

If Swarbrick is elected co-leader by the party membership, it’s hard to imagine the climate portfolio going to anyone else. It is too important to the Green Party’s identity, particularly as it works to reach out to new constituencies, for a non-co-leader to hold the job. Of course, co-leader Marama Davidson could pick it up, but Swarbrick has demonstrated she has the chops to do it justice while Davidson has relatively little experience in the climate space.

A Swarbrick co-leadership would look very different from Shaw’s time. She is more vocal about inequality than he was and can tap in much better to young people and communities outside the boardroom.

On climate, her knowledge of the detail of the famously complex area isn’t a world apart from Shaw’s and she has a similar knack for breaking down that complexity for the wider public.

While none of this will end the ceaseless speculation that the Greens have left their green roots behind, or that there’s room for a new, non-Green environmental party, the truth is that the party’s focus on climate and nature isn’t likely to change drastically with Shaw’s departure.