The high-profile third-term MP has confirmed she’s running to replace James Shaw, saying she was asked to put herself forward. 

Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick has formally announced her bid to be co-leader of the Green Party, after days of speculation.

The vacancy opened after the announcement on Tuesday that James Shaw would be stepping down as co-leader after eight years, remaining in parliament for the time being to help shepherd a Green-backed member’s bill through the house. 

In a statement this morning, Swarbrick said, “I am a proud member of the Green Party. More than any other party we understand that there is far greater leadership out there in the community than there is in the so-called halls of power. I am here to serve my communities. 

“Over the past three days, they have asked me to stand up and put myself forward for this role. Conventional, incremental politics has failed to rise to the challenges we face – those intertwined climate, inequality, biodiversity and housing crises.”

Under the Green Party constitution, at least one co-leader must be a woman and at least one must be Māori. With Marama Davidson, who is expected to stay on in parliament until the next election, fulfilling both of those requirements, the door was opened to anyone else wishing to put their name forward.

“What is possible in politics is only ever defined by the willingness of those in power. As co-leader, I want to show everyone in this country the power running through their veins to choose our future,” said Swarbrick in today’s statement. “We cannot leave politics to the politicians.”

Speaking at parliament, Swarbrick touted her ability to work with politicians from “across the aisle” and pledged to further build the Green movement, calling her party the “leading voice of the parliamentary left”. She wouldn’t reveal whether she had been endorsed by senior members of her caucus, but said she had spoken to all of them before putting herself forward for the co-leadership.

Swarbrick, who could still face competition from someone else within her caucus or the broader Green membership, was always the obvious frontrunner for the position. A hugely popular figure, Swarbrick has routinely registered on preferred prime minister polls during her six years in parliament.

She first came to public prominence during the 2016 Auckland mayoral election. She ultimately placed third, but amassed significant public backing given her relatively low profile at the time – Swarbrick was a regular on student radio station 95bFM, but was otherwise just an ordinary university student at the time. 

That race saw her go face-to-face with Phil Goff, the former Labour Party leader who became mayor. It catapulted her into the public eye and soon after that, central politics came knocking, with parties across the spectrum attempting to get Swarbrick onboard.

Writing for The Spinoff in 2016, shortly after announcing her candidacy for the Greens but before entering parliament, Swarbrick explained why she had chosen to join the party of which she could soon be co-leader. “The major reason was their commitment to sustainability in all things: our environment, obviously, but also our people, communities, health, housing, and economy,” Swarbrick wrote. 

In 2017, after being confirmed as a Green list candidate for that year’s election, Swarbrick said she had fallen into politics because of a frustration with the “status quo that created a feedback loop for the rich and powerful, treating regular people and their concerns as ‘fringe’.”

She continued: “Literally the only barrier to traditional democratic engagement in New Zealand is an R18 label, but for some reason, we continue to recycle and reinforce tired assumptions about what a politician is and looks like. It’s another terrible irony. Society complains of political stereotypes, but treats with the utmost suspicion the shedding of those stereotypes. Perhaps it’s a case of the devil we know, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result – or being suckers for punishment. I think it’s time to change that.”

In 2020, after just one term in parliament as a list MP, she secured the Auckland Central electorate, only the second time a Green MP had won an electorate seat (and the first without a hand up from a major party). Swarbrick comfortably retained the seat last October, when the Greens added Rongotai and Wellington Central to their electorate wins.

But while Swarbrick has long been touted by pundits as a future Green Party leader, she had always maintained that her time in politics was about the wider public and not herself. In 2017, Swarbrick – still an aspiring MP – joined Jacinda Ardern – then-just a Labour MP – for a school visit, where she admitted she didn’t want to be in politics for ever and hoped she’d have the self-awareness to know when she had stopped being effective.

“I’m hopelessly earnest and idealistic,” Swarbrick told The Spinoff in 2019. “I just think if we could have people all the more engaged in democratic decision making, and aware of what was going on, outcomes would be a whole lot better in general, and there’d be greater levels of accountability. I’m a massive advocate for devolving power, down to local government.”

Last year, in a conversation with Bob Harvey for Metro, Swarbrick was asked whether she had aspirations to one day be prime minister. “I don’t have a 10-year plan, I have a this-year plan. It drives me up the wall when politicians take communities for granted, and I certainly don’t,” she said. “I hate the way we have celebratised and individualised political change and created this environment that surrounds politicians. I have a belief that no one person by themselves can change anything.”

And in 2022, Swarbrick elaborated, speaking candidly about her issues with the parliamentary system during a special episode of The Spinoff’s politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime. “I hate so much of the system and the institution that we’re inside of. In the chamber, climate change doesn’t exist, poverty doesn’t exist,” she said.

“And everyone’s just delivering Shakespearean soliloquies based on how long their whip has told them to talk for. That feels very disenchanting. But then you go out, particularly into the electorate, and you engage with people, and you solve some problems, and you get some proof of concept. And you mobilise people and you give some people some hope, and you can build on that. And that’s the stuff which kind of reenergises me.”

Today, Swarbrick reiterated she had no interest in positions of power, but was stepping up after being asked by the wider community.

Chlöe Swarbrick joined Kiri Allan and Erica Stanford for a candidate diary reunion podcast in 2022. Subscribe to Gone By Lunchtime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

While Swarbrick has put herself forward for the top job, there’s still a long way to go before a new co-leader is announced. Candidates have until February 14 to come forward and the next co-leader won’t be announced until March 10, given the lengthy process the Greens follow to determine leadership positions. Swarbrick would not speculate on whether she was expecting a challenger from within the Green caucus.

“I will be spending the next few weeks talking to members of the Green Party about my vision for the future of our movement and to ask their trust in me,” said Swarbrick. “If I am elected to work alongside Marama Davidson, I will grow the Green movement to achieve tangible, real-world, people-powered change – as I have since I first signed up – but now, at even greater scale.”