The Labour Party has swiftly rejected the Green Party's proposed new policy to increase taxation on the wealthy. Labour is signalling, again, that the neoliberal orthodoxy will remain undisturbed. So where does that leave the Green Party?
LABOUR'S SWIFT rejection of the Green Party’s new tax policy tells us far more about Labour than it does about the Greens. According to Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick, the party provided Labour with the full details of its proposal before the public announcement. Yet on the very day the policy was released, Labour leader Chris Hipkins dismissed it almost instantly, as though it had never been seriously considered. That speed of rejection was not the behaviour of a party weighing up a potential coalition partner’s ideas. It was the behaviour of a party determined to signal, loudly and clearly, that it will not deviate from the neoliberal orthodoxy that has governed New Zealand for decades.
In that sense, Labour stands shoulder-to-shoulder not only with the governing parties and the business sector but also with much of the corporate media, which treated the Greens’ proposal as an eccentric outburst rather than a legitimate attempt to rebalance a deeply skewed tax system.
The Greens’ 'crime' is simple: they dare to contradict the entrenched belief that taxes on wealth must never rise, no matter how grotesque the inequality, no matter how threadbare public services become, and no matter how many working people are pushed into poverty. The political establishment treats this orthodoxy as sacred. Labour, even in opposition, refuses to challenge it.
This is the heart of the problem. Labour in government has repeatedly shown that it will not contemplate meaningful tax reform. It will not touch wealth. It will not confront the structural imbalance that allows asset-rich New Zealanders to accumulate more and more while wages stagnate and public infrastructure decays. And because Labour refuses to move, the Greens find themselves trapped in an impossible position: they can propose the most progressive policy platform in the country, but by tying their political fortunes to Labour’s, they ensure that most of those policies will never see the light of day.
We have been here before. The last Labour-Green arrangement saw both Green co-leaders, James Shaw and Marama Davidson, appointed as ministers outside Cabinet. That structure guaranteed that the Greens would have no real leverage. They were expected to defend Labour’s conservative decisions while receiving none of the authority needed to advance their own agenda. The result was predictable: little to no implementation of Green policy, and a great deal of political energy spent justifying Labour’s caution. At the end of 2022, Shaw and Davidson told RNZ that the Green's had done 'phenomenally well'.
The tragedy is that the Green know Labour will not deliver the transformative change they talk about. They know Labour’s instinct is always to reassure the business community, the property lobby, and the political centre that nothing fundamental will change. And yet, election after election, the Greens position themselves as Labour’s loyal partner, ready to enter a coalition that will smother their programme before it even reaches the negotiating table.
Chlöe Swarbrick, who has denounced neoliberalism many times and who speaks passionately about structural change, now risks finding herself propping up a thoroughly right-wing Labour-led government. That is not good enough. It is not good enough for the thousands of people who look to the Greens as the only parliamentary force willing to challenge the economic status quo. It is not good enough for the renters, the low-income workers, the climate-strikers, the young people who see no future in a system built on speculation and inequality. And it is certainly not good enough for a country that desperately needs bold, redistributive economic policy rather than another round of timid managerialism.
The Greens cannot continue to campaign as the party of transformation while acting as the party of accommodation. If they are serious about shifting New Zealand’s political direction, then they must be honest with the public about what they will and will not accept in any post-election negotiations. Voters deserve to know which policies are non-negotiable. Will the Greens refuse to enter government without a commitment to tax reform? Will they insist on free public transport? Will they demand real climate action rather than symbolic gestures? Or will they once again settle for ministerial titles without power, and a coalition agreement that leaves the economic model untouched?
This is not a question of political purity. It is a question of political clarity. If the Greens want to be taken seriously as a force for change, they must stop allowing Labour to define the limits of what is possible. They must stop treating coalition with Labour as an inevitability rather than a choice. And they must stop assuming that voters will continue to support them while watching their policies be quietly shelved every three years.
The rejection of the Greens’ tax policy is not just another skirmish in the election campaign. It is a warning. Labour is signalling, once again, that it will not move. The question now is whether the Greens will. If they continue down the same path—progressive rhetoric paired with political subordination—then the cycle will repeat itself. But if they choose instead to draw clear lines, to articulate real conditions, and to refuse to be Labour’s junior partner in another status quo government, then they may yet offer the country the alternative it is crying out for.
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