New Zealanders are in a restive mood. Across the country, there’s a growing sense that the system is broken. From outrageous supermarket prices to eye-watering power prices and rents. People are fed up with corporate profiteering and “broken markets” that seem rigged against the ordinary consumer. Surveys show trust in institutions plunging and a majority believing the economy is “rigged to advantage the rich”. Anger at crony capitalism and an arrogant ruling elite has become a defining feature of our politics.
This public frustration, a zeitgeist of discontent with what some call “Broken New Zealand”, is a powerful force. It’s the same anti-Establishment energy fuelling left and right populist movements abroad. In the US and UK, leftwing figures like Bernie Sanders and new UK Green leader Zack Polanski have tapped into anger at inequality and corporate power, rallying voters around bold economic reform. Voters are hungry for politicians who side with ordinary people over corporations.
Here in New Zealand, who will channel that anger? The Green Party, with its roots in social justice and anti-corporate activism, should be a natural vehicle for this popular mood. The Greens often decry inequality and climate destruction by big business. But are they really willing and able to harness Kiwi outrage at “Broken New Zealand”? Or are they missing the moment?
This is the ninth column in the series on “Broken New Zealand” and what might fix it. So far, I’ve documented how crony capitalism and oversized corporate power have hollowed out our political economy, examined the failures of our business leaders, and analysed why National, NZ First and Act have refused to take on the monopolies strangling ordinary Kiwis. A subsequent column looked at Labour’s timid capitulation to the status quo. This particular column is the last one looking at the potential political parties that could be part of the solution but are currently failing to step up.
Greens and economic populism – Dabbling, not driving
The Greens do occasionally dabble in economic populism. Their manifesto is full of radical-sounding ideas: a Wealth Tax on millionaires, a windfall profits tax on banks and power companies, breaking up corporate monopolies, and sweeping state investment in housing and services. Green MPs like Chlöe Swarbrick have railed against “trickle-down economics” and spoken about “uprooting the nightmare” of neoliberal policy.
At times, the party’s rhetoric hits the right notes. In 2022, as prices for essentials soared, Green finance spokesperson Julie Anne Genter blasted the “excess profits” of supermarkets, banks and energy companies, calling for a special windfall tax on the biggest corporations. She pointed out that supermarkets were making a million dollars a day in excess profit even as families struggled to afford groceries. The Greens have also long pushed for a wealth tax on the richest 2-3% to fund poverty reduction. This is an idea consistently popular with the public. (A Newshub poll in 2023 showed around 53% of Kiwis support a wealth tax.)
These are classic left-populist positions, painting the ultra-rich and corporate lobbyists as the “enemy” of ordinary people. And indeed, overseas leaders like Sanders or Zohran Mamdani (the newly elected socialist mayor of New York) have won by unapologetically naming and shaming the profiteers (landlords, bankers, monopolists) and promising to take them on. Such an approach clearly resonates in an age of stagnant wages and record corporate profits.
Yet for the NZ Greens, economic populism has never been front and centre. Yes, the party includes those policies in its platform, but they often feel buried – given lip service rather than loudly championed. The Greens are still widely seen first and foremost as an environmental party, and second as a voice on progressive social issues like Te Tiriti and LGBTQ+ rights. Fighting “the big end of town” has not been the core of their brand in the way it was for, say, NZ First or even Labour in bygone eras.
In practice, Green leaders have only sporadically made corporate power their main target. They’ll talk about supermarket duopolies one week, but by the next week the headlines are about their stance on cycleways or co-governance or some niche Member’s Bill. The consistency and fire needed to surf the current wave of economic discontent just hasn’t been there.
Even Chlöe Swarbrick, the Greens’ charismatic young co-leader who often critiques the status quo, has balanced her economic messaging with a range of other issues. Swarbrick gained fame confronting the “OK Boomer” generation gap and campaigning on things like cannabis reform and mental health. She has certainly spoken about inequality, and championed tax reform and calling out a “rigged” system, but she is also deeply engaged in battles like alcohol harm reduction and rainbow youth issues. Those are important causes, yet they don’t directly capitalise on anger at corporate elites or “broken markets” in housing and food.
Swarbrick herself acknowledges this shortfall. In an interview earlier this year, she admitted the Greens “have work to do to be more present with marginalised New Zealanders.” She noted that lower-income Kiwis often don’t vote at all, for lack of trust, and that the left hasn’t always earned that trust. Her telling comment: “Anything other than material redistribution is tokenism.” In other words, all the symbolic representation in the world means little if you’re not putting money in people’s pockets and holding exploiters to account. Swarbrick is dead right. But can she and her party live up to those words?
The Chloe Swarbrick paradox
On paper, Chloe Swarbrick should be New Zealand’s answer to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Zohran Mamdani. She’s young, articulate, a gifted communicator who can explain complex policy in accessible language. She occasionally even uses the rhetoric of economic populism, talking about broken markets and the need to challenge corporate power.
In 2022, she wrote: “Do we want to keep tinkering, or do we want a brand new deal? Are we willing to reset the rules?” It sounded promising. But here’s the problem: there’s a yawning gap between what’s in the policy documents that Swarbrick has put forward and what she actually campaigns on.
Instead, we get Gaza activism. We get rainbow politics. We get plenty of moral righteousness about various identity-based grievances, but precious little fire directed at the people who are actually making ordinary Kiwis poorer: the bank executives, the supermarket barons, the electricity company boards milking captive consumers.
Missed opportunities in government
The Greens have recently come out of a term in Government (2017-2023, supporting Labour) where public concern about cost of living and corporate profiteering skyrocketed. This was the moment to prove the Greens could walk the talk on economic reform. Unfortunately, by and large, it was a missed opportunity.
During the Ardern-Hipkins Government, many of the most glaring market failures were belatedly acknowledged but barely acted on. For example, the Commerce Commission was tasked to investigate the supermarket duopoly and the lack of competition in banking and building supplies. These inquiries confirmed what every shopper and home-builder knew: consumers were being fleeced by oligopolies. And yet the Government’s response was timid: politely asking supermarkets to draft a code of conduct, nudging banks to play nice, and ruling out any drastic interventions. No break-up of the duopoly, no excess profit taxes, no state retail bank to undercut the big four Aussies. Basically, Labour and the Greens wanted nothing that would truly upset the corporate players.
The Greens failed to force the issue. They did not make any such reforms a do-or-die priority. Green ministers held portfolios in climate change and social development; they achieved incremental wins (like cleaner car subsidies and community initiatives) but on the great question of reining in capitalism’s worst abuses, they largely acquiesced to Labour’s caution.
One can argue that the Greens had limited leverage. After 2020, Labour didn’t even need their votes to govern. But that makes it all the more important how the Greens use their voice in public, but they didn’t. Rather than rock the boat, the Green leadership largely chose to emphasise its cooperative relationship with Labour. That meant toning down criticism of government economic management. It’s telling that Winston Peters was often louder about supermarket greed and bank profits than the Greens were in that period.
By the 2023 election, many disillusioned left voters felt that the Labour-Green government had “managed a broken system” rather than fixed it. Housing was still unaffordable, child poverty progress had stalled, and wealth inequality was worse than ever. Yet the transformative policies the Greens claimed to champion were nowhere to be seen.
In hindsight, this was a historic missed chance. A government with a public mandate for change (and initially sky-high goodwill post-Covid) could have tackled the “rigged” economy head-on. Instead, it mostly tinkered, and voters noticed. Labour paid the price by losing power, and the Greens, despite increasing their vote share slightly, failed to reap a wave of enthusiasm either.
Radical policies, timid priorities
Green supporters will rightly point out that the party does have some bold policies on paper. The Greens campaigned on making the wealthy pay a little more tax, on building more state homes, and on regulating rents and breaking up monopolies. They have policy documents about corporate lobbying reform and public ownership. So is it fair to say they aren’t prioritising economic justice? Yes, because having a policy is not the same as leading with it.
In practice, the Greens often put far more political capital into issues like social policy reforms and indigenous rights. Again, these are core Green issues, and that’s their prerogative, but the result is that their headline messaging seldom frames corporate power as the big bad. The average member of the public wouldn’t think of the Green Party as being angry with the CEOs of banks making billions in profit from Kiwi families, in the same way that Americans think of Bernie Sanders or Zohran Mamdani as taking the fight to oligarchy. For the Greens, the anti-elite, anti-corporate narrative tends to surface mainly just at their annual conference or in an alternative budget document. It’s not day in, day out in the media.
Compare this with how Sanders bangs on about “million-aahs and billion-aahs” every single day. Consistent messaging matters. By not relentlessly focusing on economic inequality and naming villains, the Greens have not shifted public perceptions of them as much as they could. Many struggling New Zealanders just don’t think the Green Party is for “people like me”. Instead, they often look like middle class campus radicals.
That’s a devastating gap, and even Chlöe Swarbrick recognises it. She noted that the left must “build rapport with communities who don’t engage with politics at all” – and that means showing you’re fighting for their material interests, not just abstract ideals.
A telling anecdote: earlier this year, the Greens launched their 2025 political agenda with a State of the Planet speech that, for once, centred on the economy. Co-leader Swarbrick declared “2025 must be the year of organising… to uproot the trickle-down nightmare and build an economy that supports life.” At that event, observers noticed something symbolic: none of the Green MPs were wearing their usual Palestinian solidarity keffiyehs scarves. It seems the party deliberately chose to put aside a foreign policy/identity symbol, at least for that day, in order to project a bread-and-butter focus. The messaging on stage was all about fixing inequality, “putting people and planet at the heart” of a new economic model, and ending the concentration of wealth.
It was an interesting sign, and a glimpse of the Greens trying to rebrand as champions of the struggling Kiwi family. But one carefully stage-managed speech does not equal a sustained campaign. Will the Greens stick to this emphasis, or will they get distracted by the next identity debate or middle class crusade? A truly populist economic agenda can’t be a one-off; it requires discipline and a bit of ruthlessness in message management.
The reality is that when the Greens prioritise identity issues ahead of material concerns, they alienate working class voters who could be their natural base. And it means that the political right caricatures the party as middle class liberals obsessed with pronouns while people can’t afford groceries.
Why a Populist pivot makes sense for the Greens
If the Greens did decide to go all-in on an economic anti-crony capitalism crusade, it could reap big rewards. Getting a conversation going about “oligarchy”, “broken markets”, “oversized corporate power” would not just be good for them electorally, but for New Zealand’s political discourse. There is a gaping hole on the left for a party that vocally sides with the little guy against the “rich pricks” (to borrow Winston Peters’ phrase). Labour has shown itself unwilling to offend its business donors or middle-class homeowner base. That leaves the Greens as the only potential leftwing vehicle to rally the discontented.
International examples show that when leftwing parties embrace a populist stance, unapologetically taking on the banks, monopolies and super-wealthy, then they can energise people who normally tune out of politics. Bernie Sanders turned millennials and blue-collar Americans onto politics by lambasting Wall Street and promising universal services. In Britain, the Greens under Zack Polanski have surged in membership by proposing wealth taxes, free childcare, and public ownership. The British Greens have essentially outflanked Labour on economic radicalism and attracting those sick of the status quo. Even in New York, a democratic socialist just won the mayoralty by focusing relentlessly on housing costs, rents, and corporate landlords, which are issues very familiar to Kiwis.
The lesson to the Greens should be clear: boldness can be a virtue. Voters are not allergic to class politics if it’s presented as common sense fairness. In New Zealand, there’s latent support across the spectrum for cracking down on corporate excess. Whether it’s breaking the supermarket duopoly, taxing multi-millionaires, or forcing power companies to cut prices, such a campaign would be popular. A Green Party that championed these causes loudly could build a coalition of support far beyond its current base of middle class urban liberals. It could start to win over some of those non-voters disillusioned by decades of centrist fudge.
Crucially, a populist economic pivot would also differentiate the Greens sharply from both Labour and the rightwing parties. It would answer the perennial question: “What are the Greens for, beyond climate change?” They would be “for the people” against the powerful, a role minor parties can play effectively under MMP. It might ruffle some feathers in business, but frankly the Greens have spent too long trying not to offend corporates. A little feather-ruffling is exactly what the moment requires.
The Roadblocks to change
So if it’s such a no-brainer, why haven’t the Greens already ridden this wave? Partly it’s ideological and related to social class. The Green Party emerged from a middle class environmental and counterculture movement, somewhat wary of traditional left-right class framing. Their leadership over recent years (James Shaw and Marama Davidson) tended to be more policy wonk and activist than populist firebrand. There may also be internal resistance: some Greens worry that punchy anti-elitist rhetoric might stray into “negative politics” or conflict with the party’s consensus-driven style.
There’s also the reality that governing partnerships tamper down populism. When in alliance with Labour, Greens opted for stability and modest influence over rocking the boat. That instinct will return if they’re needed for a coalition in future, but it might be self-defeating if it prevents them from ever growing their support. They have to resolve the tension between being a protest voice and a responsible partner. Perhaps the answer is to be a bit more irresponsible, to dare to scare the establishment if that’s what it takes to get movement on deeply entrenched problems.
Will the Greens seize the moment?
New Zealand is at a juncture. Public patience with corporate greed, inequality and inertia is at an all-time low. There is a palpable hunger for politicians to call out the “rigged system” and actually do something about it.
Chlöe Swarbrick has shown glimmers of the needed courage and perspective. She’s talked about shifting power and even noted that some so-called “strongmen” (like Trump) misdirect anger toward scapegoats instead of the real causes of inequality. That suggests she understands the stakes: if the left doesn’t offer a genuine anti-elite narrative, the far-right or conspiracists will.
As it stands, the Green Party’s approach to the Broken New Zealand zeitgeist is hesitant and half-hearted. They have one foot in the waters of economic revolt, but the other foot is stuck in the comfort zone of incrementalism, culture wars and niche issues. To truly capture the public mood, the Greens would need to shed some of their caution and embrace a bit of polemical zeal. That means naming villains (yes, call out the banks, call out the landlords), simplifying the message (“cheaper food, affordable homes, fair taxes – now!”), and perhaps even adopting the language of class and fairness more explicitly.
It’s a gamble. But arguably, timidity is the greater risk. If the Greens continue business-as-usual, they risk irrelevance as voter cynicism deepens. Meanwhile, overseas, we see history leaving behind parties that fail to evolve. The zeitgeist is real: it’s anti-elitist, anti-corporate, and impatient for change. The question is whether the Greens will catch this wave or watch from the sidelines as others do. For a party that professes to put people and planet first, there has never been a more crucial time to prove it.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of The Integrity Institute
Previous columns on Broken New Zealand: