It’s been a tough year for the opposition party. Now, it has its sights set on 2025 and beyond, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund for The Bulletin.
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An alternative emissions reduction plan
We’ve talked a bit lately about what the two major parties have been up to, so this morning let’s turn our attention to the Greens. Yesterday, the party unveiled a new alternative emissions reduction plan it claims would more than double climate change efforts through until 2030. As Stuff’s Glenn McConnell reported, the He Ara Anamata proposal would achieve a 35% reduction in net emissions by 2030 and a 47% reduction by 2035, exceeding the plans outlined by the coalition. Agriculture would be brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme earlier, after the government announced this would be delayed until at least the end of the decade. The Spinoff’s Shanti Mathias looked at the implications of keeping agriculture out of the ETS in this piece earlier in the year, noting that experts said this would impact New Zealand’s climate commitments – especially those under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The Greens have also proposed a new Ministry of Green Works to create thousands of new jobs, upgrades to the Auckland to Wellington train line and the return of the former government’s clean car discount (the so-called “ute tax”) that was scrapped by the coalition.
Comfortable territory for the Greens
It’s refreshing to see the Greens back in green mode after what has been an admittedly tough year for the party, not always through any fault of its own. In October, Toby Manhire listed the Greens as one of the many “losers” from the first year post-election 2023 arguing they had failed to capitalise on the many anti-green actions taken by the coalition. “The government is unabashedly cutting taxes and public sector jobs, embracing roads, oil and gas, targeting blind frogs called Freddy and flirting with culture wars. It’s hard to imagine a more fertile territory for the Greens, especially when you chuck a pedestrian Labour Party into the mix.”
Speaking to RNZ’s Giles Dexter, Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick reflected on the many challenges the party has faced in 2024 – from scandals involving Golriz Ghahraman and Darleen Tana, through to tragedies like the death of Efeso Collins and Marama Davidson’s cancer diagnosis. “What’s happened has happened. We can’t change the past, and I’m not really one for regrets,” Swarbrick said. “I’m obviously one for looking back and understanding what’s happened, reflecting and seeing what we can do to move forward constructively and productively and everything else.”
Swarbrick, in an interview with Bridie Witton for Stuff, wouldn’t commit to sticking around in politics beyond 2026.
The Greens in 2025
Since becoming co-leader in March, Swarbrick has pledged to turn the Greens into the largest political force on the left, overtaking Labour. Polling would suggest this remains an ambitious goal, though Swarbrick told the Herald’s Adam Pearse that polls aren’t everything. “Look, there’s a reason that whenever I’m asked about polls, I say that it feels like reading the tea leaves,” Swarbrick said. “I think what you’ll see in 2025 is a Green Party that is actively working with and building trust in communities, including those that are historically, potentially those that people might not assume that we would have those relationships with and you will see us slowly start to build power.” As an aside, we’re due a new TVNZ poll tonight.
In an opinion piece for The Spinoff after last year’s election, contributor Ollie Neas suggested that the Greens have a “Labour problem” – namely, that unless Labour veers further to the left, “the Greens have little hope of winning the radical changes that are central to their vision”. Under Chris Hipkins as opposition leader, it appears the party could be moving away from the centre more than in recent years. The party has on a few occasions now joined forces with both the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to issue a unified opposition perspective, pitting the left bloc against the current government’s trio of right-leaning parties. Hipkins, however, told the Herald’s Audrey Young late last year (paywalled) that he didn’t believe his party would be forced to shift further to the left. “I find that kind of idea that people vote on a left-right spectrum a bit frustrating because they don’t,” he said.
A strong platform
The backdrop for the Greens’ new emissions plan is a series of decisions by the coalition that the opposition views as damaging for our climate commitments. Just last week, RNZ’s Eloise Gibson reported that the oil and gas lobby had asked the government to underwrite the risk of fossil fuel exploration, with the government considering its options. Gibson also reported that the government was mulling whether to lower the country’s 2050 methane emissions target (while the independent Climate Change Commission argued it should be strengthened even further). It has given the Greens, in particular, a strong platform to campaign on over the next couple of years. In a piece this morning, Newsroom Pro’s Marc Daalder (paywalled) argues that the Greens’ alternative emissions plan could serve as a way for a substantive debate on climate that “focuses on policies and impacts, rather than targets or the necessity of action” and could encourage other parties to also issue their own plans. Watch this space.