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NZ Greens co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick [Photo: Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand]<\/p>\nNZ Greens co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick [Photo: Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand]<\/p>\n
New Zealand\u2019s Green Party held its Annual General Meeting in Auckland last weekend. It announced a campaign slogan for the November 7 election, \u201cFor all of us,\u201d and released a manifesto outlining various policies.<\/p>\n
The event was held amid widespread hostility toward the major parties. The conservative National Party is polling around 29 percent and is in a coalition with the far-right NZ First and ACT Parties. The main opposition Labour Party is polling around 32 percent. It would need the Greens (currently polling 11 percent) and another party to form a government.<\/p>\n
Both the current government and the 2017\u20132023 Labour-led government, which included the Greens, have imposed a worsening economic crisis on the working class. Real wages in NZ plummeted<\/a> by 6.4 percent in the last five years, while the wealth of the billionaires increased. About 2 percent of people are severely housing deprived and 10 percent are relying on food banks.<\/p>\n Health, education and other public services are being starved of funds in order to keep taxes low for the rich and divert money into the military.<\/p>\n Under these conditions, the Green Party is seeking to contain mounting social anger and anti-capitalist sentiment by peddling the lie that it can pressure Labour to adopt progressive reforms as part of a coalition government. The Greens\u2019 record shows precisely the opposite: it has joined successive right-wing Labour administrations that imposed austerity measures, protected the interests of the financial and corporate elite, and strengthened the military in preparation to join US-led wars.<\/p>\n At the Greens\u2019 AGM, co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick avoided mentioning the party\u2019s participation in the 2017\u20132023 Labour-led governments. Labour lost the 2023 election in a landslide defeat after its policies led to soaring living costs and increased homelessness and child poverty.<\/p>\n The Greens supported all Labour\u2019s budgets, which bailed out corporations with billions of dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic and funnelled billions more to the armed forces, while imposing austerity in hospitals and schools and freezing wages for public sector workers. In April 2020 the Greens\u2019 then-co-leader James Shaw admitted<\/a> that generations of people, meaning workers, \u201care going to be paying back the debt that we\u2019re currently racking up to get through this crisis for many, many decades.\u201d<\/p>\n In a demagogic speech, Davidson focused on denouncing the current government, which \u201cspit on communities like those in South Auckland [a working class area], while they cheerlead for the super rich and big corporates.\u201d The Greens\u2019 policies, she said, would \u201censure people can live affordable lives,\u201d improve the environment and water quality, and \u201cmake the super rich and big corporations pay their fair share of tax.\u201d<\/p>\n As the WSWS noted<\/a>, the Greens\u2019 proposal for a modest increase in tax on major corporations and a 2.5 percent tax on wealth above a $10 million threshold would increase government revenue by only 3.5 percent. This would not be enough to even begin to address the crisis of under-resourced hospitals and decades of cuts to schools, universities and social programs.<\/p>\n Swarbrick\u2019s AGM speech emphasised the Greens\u2019 pro-business credentials by hailing the party\u2019s \u201cBuy Kiwi Made\u201d policy, originally implemented under a 2005 agreement with the then-Labour government. The Greens worked closely with the trade union bureaucracy and the corporate lobby group Business NZ on the scheme, designed to boost the competitiveness of NZ capitalists against imported products.<\/p>\n Swarbrick said the idea was to \u201cbuild support for our own communities, building the jobs, spaces, events and infrastructure that ensure we\u2019re all happier, healthier, safer and having more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Buy Kiwi Made gave free advertising and grants to businesses, including the supermarket duopoly and various manufacturers. These handouts did nothing to prevent the destruction of thousands of jobs when the 2007\u20132008 financial crisis hit, in construction, manufacturing, transport and other industries.<\/p>\n Swarbrick also touted the Greens\u2019 proposal to spend $980 million to establish a government-owned power company, Kiwipower, \u201cto lower bills\u201d by increasing renewable energy generation.<\/p>\n There is no reason to believe that ordinary people would benefit from such a policy. The Greens are not proposing price controls for electricity bills\u2014which surged 12 percent in the past year\u2014or to re-nationalise the existing power companies.<\/p>\n The Kiwipower proposal recalls the creation of the state-owned Kiwibank by a Labour-led government in 2001, enthusiastically supported by the Greens based on the false claim that it would improve affordability. Bank profits continued to soar, underpinned by house price inflation: the four biggest banks increased their annual profits by 80 percent between 2013 and 2022, while household debt nearly doubled in the same period.<\/p>\n The Greens\u2019 AGM ignored the most urgent issue facing the working class: the rapidly expanding world war. Swarbrick and Davidson did not mention the illegal US-Israeli bombing of Iran, the genocide in Gaza, the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine, or US-led preparations for war against China. As an imperialist power allied to the US, New Zealand\u2019s ruling class is supporting all these crimes.<\/p>\n The Greens are silent on the agreement between Labour and National to double military spending from 1 to 2 percent of GDP and rapidly expand recruitment<\/a>. Conscious of widespread opposition to war, the established parties are determined not to discuss this shared militarist agenda during the election campaign, and to keep workers in the dark about the immense dangers they face.<\/p>\n The Green Party manifesto states that the National-led government has \u201cturned a blind eye to atrocities and authoritarians and has deepened our military integration with the United States.\u201d It does not mention that the previous Labour-Greens government pursued the same course.<\/p>\n The manifesto calls for New Zealand to withdraw from the Five Eyes, the US-led intelligence-gathering network, and to decline to join AUKUS, the security pact between the US, Australia and UK aimed at militarising the Pacific for war with China. It also calls for NZ to \u201csanction Israel\u201d and recognise Palestine as a state.<\/p>\n Questions about this article? Ask Socialism AI<\/p>\n None of these are principled positions; they are designed to be discarded as soon as the Greens enter a coalition government with Labour. Davidson downplayed the manifesto\u2019s significance, telling the media that it reflected the Greens\u2019 \u201clonger-term ambitions\u201d rather than immediate election priorities.<\/p>\n The promotion of the Greens as an \u201canti-war\u201d party, including by its pseudo-left cheerleaders the International Socialist Organisation<\/a> and Socialist Aotearoa<\/a>, has always been a fraud.<\/p>\n During the 2000s and 2010s the Greens supported the New Zealand participation in the brutal imperialist war in Afghanistan and the Australian-led military interventions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n In January 2017 the Greens\u2019 then co-leader Metiria Turei told Radio NZ that the party\u2019s supposed opposition to the Five Eyes was no obstacle to working with Labour. \u201cWe disagree, that\u2019s perfectly fine, we can still work together to change the government,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In October that year the Greens entered a coalition government with Labour and the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, which proceeded to strengthen New Zealand\u2019s alliance with Washington. In 2019, Green co-leader James Shaw and NZ First Defence Minister Ron Mark produced a document arguing<\/a> for a stronger military able to deploy rapidly throughout the Pacific.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785340486_681_2ba71a42-f46f-46ff-98ca-5a7bf5c1db09.png\"\/)
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