Do we like Chlöe Swarbrick?
Our score: 8 out of 10. On the right side for people and the planet, held back by one contested Gaza slogan and a stoush-prone style.
Swarbrick doesn't do the slow burn. At 22 she ran for Auckland mayor with no party behind her, finished third on just over 7 per cent, and had already started a fashion label, a magazine and a café, alongside law and arts degrees. Then she picked the Greens after coffees with a few of their heavyweights.
She entered Parliament in 2017 at 23, the youngest MP in more than 40 years, and went global with an “OK, boomer” retort in 2019. In 2020 she won Auckland Central, only the second Green ever to take an electorate seat. In 2024 she became co-leader with Marama Davidson, the first all-women Green leadership.
The stoushes are the other half of the story. In August 2025, during a Gaza debate, Speaker Gerry Brownlee called one of her remarks “completely unacceptable”, she answered “no” when told to withdraw it, and she was sent out for the week. She was ejected again, and again in August 2026 after telling the Speaker the problem was his double standards, a spat The Spinoff's column read as Winston Peters getting a free pass.
Now the harm check. Nothing hateful turned up in her own words or acts. The contested bit is a 2023 rally speech where she used “from the river to the sea”; the NZ Jewish Council said the vast majority of the Jewish community find that phrase offensive. She said she took her lead from Jewish and Palestinian activists, and she didn't apologise then. Where you land depends on whether you hear a call for Palestinian freedom or a threat.
Her policies are bold and will split a dinner table. The Greens' June 2026 plan taxes net assets over $10 million at 2.5 per cent and puts a 33 per cent tax on inheritances over $1 million, with the family home exempt. Pressed on cash-poor heirs, she said they'd be “incredibly lucky” and waved off hypotheticals. Her helmet-law stance also copped backlash.
As for how she treats people, colleagues often call her intense and critics see the Greens as angry. She says that misses her constructive cross-party work, and she runs a K Road electorate office called Chlöe's Clubhouse to make the party less stiff. She inherited a turbulent caucus and has pushed on regardless. Fair call: she's a fighter, not a bully.