James Shaw and Marama Davidson say they no longer feel precarious or on the verge of being turfed out of Parliament, Marc Daalder reports
A single-party government has been good for the Greens, at least in the polls.
Unlike the bumpy ride of last term, the party has remained above the 5 percent threshold in every single poll conducted since the 2020 election. Their lowest result has been 6.4 percent, but they've consistently clustered around 10 percent for most of the past year - that's down slightly from 2021 but well up on their last electoral result.
That consistency means they can now consider splitting their message, co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw say, to encourage voters to give them two ticks rather than just one.
"If you just have a look over the past few elections, you'll see the Green Party evolving," Davidson says. "We've been party vote, party vote, party vote. What we've been worried about is when candidate votes take away from our party vote but we're proving more and more that that's not actually the case."
Shaw chips in.
"I think there probably was a period in our history where it was, definitely, we really had to focus exclusively on our party vote. It was so important to us. But I think that's no longer necessarily the case."
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While the co-leaders have every faith Chlöe Swarbrick will hold the Auckland Central seat, they say they would no longer feel precarious without an electorate.
"We're getting quite good at winning elections," Shaw quips.
Whether that means the party will now look to compete more seriously for electorate seats has yet to be decided, but Davidson says it's an active discussion within the party.
The Green Party's strength in the polls has defied conventional wisdom, which indicated the party would be overshadowed by Labour – particularly given its lack of hard leverage. Instead, the co-leaders believe the current arrangement has enabled them to better communicate their differences with Labour to the public.
"Polls are polls, but lots of polls show a pattern and show a narrative of people understanding we're doing what we're here to do, which is to prioritise action on climate, nature and inequality," Davidson says.
"Our members being able to see us calling government to account while also achieving things and getting things across the line was a part of the cooperation agreement which was really precious. Always, that's something that we know that we've been able to maintain."
That doesn't mean they're perfectly happy with their progress. Shaw, in particular, was overruled by Cabinet on high-profile decisions on the Emissions Trading Scheme and pricing agricultural emissions in the last few months of the year.
While the format of the cooperation agreement seems to have worked, party members will still be asking questions about which ministerial portfolios the Greens ought to take if they have another choice after the election.
Shaw is also keen to play a greater role in policy development outside of his rohe, as during the coalition government.
"Even whilst the relationship was fraught, actually everything that that government did, it did by consensus. There was a value in checking each other's homework," he says.
"So actually the quality of government in some ways was actually, we think, better. Every Cabinet paper had to have multiple eyes and so on. I think that another coalition would be a healthier democratic government than you've got now but you wouldn't have nearly the fractiousness that we had."
That's because the Greens' best hope of clinging on to power lies in the hands of Te Pāti Māori, who have been the current Government's only lifeline in recent polls.
The relationship with Te Pāti Māori is significantly better than the relationship with New Zealand First was going into the 2017 election, Davidson says. Already the Greens hold the smaller party's proxy vote, to represent them when neither Debbie Ngarewa-Packer nor Rawiri Waititi can be in the House.
"Our values and political positioning obviously have some commonalities – different commonalities with both the Labour Party and the Māori Party," she says.
"I think it would be a productive and efficient and experienced government," Shaw adds.
