She could be mistaken for an Opposition MP when she’s calling out the Government for picking and choosing its messages at the 1pm press conferences. The Greens’ Auckland Central MP tells political editor Jo Moir she’s not afraid to remind senior ministers who they’re there to represent.
Chlöe Swarbrick pauses and thinks a little bit longer than her usual quickfire response when asked what she made of traditional National Party pollster David Farrar picking her as the best MP to chair the Epidemic Response Committee.
Then-Opposition leader Simon Bridges chaired it last year while Parliament was suspended, but it didn't end up being reinstated during this year’s national lockdown.
Swarbrick told Newsroom she tries to be fair and collaborative and never goes into a debate unless she has all the facts in front of her. “Maybe it’s something to do with that, otherwise people are just making trouble I guess,’’ she chuckles.
Something similar happened during the 2020 election campaign when National Party leader Judith Collins was asked to pick her favourite MP on the other side of the House.
In an online interview with Essential Talent head Shaun O'Neill, Collins said she respected Swarbrick because she’s someone who “believes in what she says’’.
Looking back on that, Swarbrick told Newsroom it was “lovely and flattering’’.
“I put my head down and tried to disprove that, and I think largely now, thankfully, I’m no longer referenced by my age." – Chlöe Swarbrick
It’s not just Collins who finds Swarbrick constructive to work with – MPs across the political spectrum praise her work ethic and determination.
“The premise there is that I’m somehow, at least, not universally despised,’’ she offers between fits of laughter.
It’s almost fascinating to the MP, who entered Parliament in 2017, given she’s “subject to quite substantial reigns of fire and fiery rhetoric, particularly from the right-hand side of the House’’.
Swarbrick is a fighter and says she’ll never apologise or be ashamed for being “earnest’’.
She came into Parliament as a 23-year-old and was dismissed by some commentators, who said her age was the only real value she had to offer.
“I put my head down and tried to disprove that, and I think largely now, thankfully, I’m no longer referenced by my age.”
The entire Green Party could be described as a “kind of ragtag of activists and organisers who have landed in Parliament’’.
On that basis she says it’s difficult to work out whether she’s either a really good activist for getting to the place where the decisions are made, or a really bad one.
Calling it as she sees it
Swarbrick isn’t knocking all the information New Zealanders receive from the daily press conferences at the Beehive during Covid times.
She says the updates around vaccination rates and testing are a “pretty damn good flow of information” and it’s a platform that allows for accountability from journalists as well.
“That said of course, it is also an opportunity – particularly for that first 10 minutes, which I would say is when the majority of the public are tuned in – for things to be pitched in a certain way."
"There are so many voices that are not part of this picture." – Chlöe Swarbrick
Swarbrick thinks the health side of Covid gets plenty of attention, but it’s not the same when it comes to the economic response.
“We are not hearing from renters, we are very rarely hearing from workers. We have been very rarely hearing from students, we are very rarely hearing from people who are beneficiaries. There are so many voices that are not part of this picture,’’ she tells Newsroom.
When it comes to the economic response, she says it’s “disproportionately businesses’’ who are getting cut through.
Swarbrick has spent a lot of time advocating for the tertiary sector, calling for direct financial support for students impacted by Covid, many of whom can’t access the wage subsidy.
She’s conscious of putting pressure on Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Covid Response and Education Minister Chris Hipkins, and “reminding them they were once student presidents and believed in these things’’.
Her position on the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee has seen her put pressure on the Reserve Bank Governor and Robertson over the decisions they’ve made that she says have directly exacerbated the housing crisis.
Switching the narrative to talk about renters and “the cost that is being borne out for those who were already in a precarious position’’ rather than concentrating on those with mortgages is one example she points to.
When talking about the Covid recovery, Swarbrick says everyone focuses on returning to what the country had pre-pandemic.
“Why are we not using this colossal disruption to actually re-envision and redesign some of these things and come up with a more equitable way of doing things?’’
Swarbrick is increasingly frustrated by the way select committees operate under the Labour-majority Government and can’t stand patsy questions, where Labour backbench MPs lob soft lines of inquiry to ministers to derail another MP’s probing.
“It’s like when you have a line of questioning that is very evidently being obscured and obfuscated through answers from the minister, and then you end up with the microphone being handed over to somebody who’s just going to ask something to enable the minister to offload the narrative of the world and how everything is totally sweet and they’ve got it under control and don’t worry about it.’’
She says that’s when you realise Parliament’s “instruments of accountability and scrutiny aren’t working particularly well’’.
The same goes with the daily press conferences from the podium.
“You know there are communities whose voices are not represented there, whose stories are not told, and who are not being prioritised in the policy that’s being spoken about.
“And then those people in those communities and those demographics, who are neglected or not thought about - understandably - they’re not spoken about,’’ she said.
In some ways the “professionalisation’’ of politics and politicians has contributed to some of that, Swarbrick says.
“There’s a really resounding sense of how out of touch it is.’’
It’s on MPs and ministers to have “their ear to the ground’’ and represent all communities, she says.
Swarbrick is set on continuing her fight for renters, students, workers and beneficiaries.
And she's not giving up.
