Chloe Swarbrick has been elected co-leader of the Green Party.
“The Greens care a lot about whakapapa. We know that we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us. We know, as the late great green Efeso Collins said, no one stands alone, no one succeeds alone, and no one suffers alone,” she said.
“James Shaw is one of those giants who have contributed decades to our movement.”
She condemned the “stitch up” that was legacy politics, represented by the Labour and National parties, that “limits the oxygen and the options that people need to imagine and, in turn, limiting real world results”.
The country voted for the MMP electoral system,in the 1990s to “break” a duopoly political system, she said.
And she attacked the “bully boy behaviour” of the National-coalition Government.
Watching the Government’s lawmaking in Parliament in recent weeks had been a “gaslighting” experience, she said, as it pursued an agenda “simply because it says that it will, despite actually evidence that says that it is going to make the country a worse place”.
“Now more than ever, Green Party values and our evidence-based policy positions are fundamentally critical,” she said.
Stuff
ACT leader David Seymour responded:
“A massive salad of soundbites is not going to cut it. She’s going to have to think deeper and harder about what solutions the Green Party’s offering,” he told media.
“I hope they will turn away from fueling envy and saying that there is some well-off people, that if we just took their money that would solve all our problems. That’s not a real solution.
“They’re going to have to start campaigning on solutions that grow the economy and make New Zealand a wealthier place. Otherwise, they’re just playing this zero-sum game, drag them down.
“Sounds really good but it’s not a pathway for a better New Zealand and it won’t stand up to the scrutiny of being a leader.”
Newshub
Read more here (Swarbrick) and here (Seymour). Discuss it on The BFD.