Chlöe Swarbrick’s 2025 Green Party AGM speech opens with a calm, almost meditative invitation: “I want everyone to take a deep breath… In. Out.” It is a disarming way to begin a political address, especially one delivered in the midst of deepening inequality, climate breakdown, and an increasingly authoritarian political atmosphere in Aotearoa. The breath is meant to unite the audience in a shared physical act, to steady the nerves before talk of political struggle. Yet there is something telling in this opening. In a time when people are not just tired but actively crushed by capitalism’s pressures, to lead with a collective deep breath risks quieting the urgency rather than sharpening it. Breathing together is fine, but only if that inhalation is the prelude to a shout, a rallying cry, and not just a sigh.
The speech proceeds to identify the fundamental problem: our infinite human potential being commodified and constrained by the “market logics” of neoliberal capitalism. Swarbrick is right to call this out. For decades, Aotearoa has been reshaped into a playground for property speculators, agribusiness, and foreign capital, while ordinary people are told to measure their worth by their productivity and their ability to pay rent on land their ancestors may have lived on for generations. She correctly links these conditions to a politics of betrayal, noting how the state has retreated from providing for its people, replacing social care with market-based solutions that treat citizens as customers. But even here, the analysis feels limited. The speech diagnoses the commodification of life but shies away from identifying the root cause – the very existence of hierarchical power and private property. The state and capitalism are not malfunctioning; they are functioning exactly as designed. They exist to centralise control and extract value from the many for the benefit of the few. Naming “market logics” is a start—but the speech stops short of advocating the abolition of those logics.
When Swarbrick speaks about anger, she walks a careful line. “We have a lot to be angry about,” she concedes, but she insists that anger must be channelled into “organised action” to be effective. This is unobjectionable on the surface, but in context, “organised action” here is clearly parliamentary action – votes, campaigns, policy proposals. For anarcho-communists, the channeling of anger into such avenues is precisely how anger is neutralised. Our anger should not be tamed into legislative processes that ultimately serve to protect the system. It should be nurtured into direct action, workplace organising, rent strikes, community self-defence, reclamation of land and resources, forms of collective struggle that do not wait for permission from Parliament or for a better-intentioned politician to hold office. The history of Aotearoa is rich with such action, from Ngāti Whātua’s occupations at Bastion Point to the militant unionism of the early 20th century. Those are the channels that truly transform anger into power.
One of the most striking choices in the speech is the decision to avoid a politics of blame. Swarbrick says that people “don’t want to hear another argument about whose fault it all is.” This sounds conciliatory, even mature. Yet there is a danger here. When we avoid talking about fault, we risk obscuring the reality of class domination. It is not enough to say that “politicians, CEOs, landlords, monopolies” have failed us. They have not failed, they have succeeded in enriching themselves and maintaining control. It is the system, hierarchical power itself, that perpetuates exploitation. By refusing to engage in explicit class analysis, the speech risks collapsing systemic oppression into a story of bad actors who could be replaced, rather than a structure that must be dismantled.
This avoidance is most evident when we consider the solutions Swarbrick proposes. Like much of Green Party policy, they are reforms – wealth taxes, free public services, climate mitigation through government regulation. These are, without question, preferable to the punitive austerity and privatisation pushed by the political right. But they are still bound by the same framework of centralised authority, wage labour, and market dependence. There is no space here for community control of production, for workers seizing their workplaces, for hapū and iwi reclaiming their land in perpetuity. Instead, the proposed changes would keep the capitalist economy intact while redistributing some of its spoils more equitably. This is “green growth” rather than ecosocialism; a better-managed capitalism rather than its abolition.
The environmental elements of the speech are equally limited by this framework. Swarbrick’s climate politics are far stronger than those of Labour or National, she is willing to name fossil fuel companies, agribusiness, and extractive industries as culprits. Yet the solutions remain locked within the logic of state-managed capitalism. There is talk of renewable energy investment and public transport expansion, but no acknowledgement that true climate justice requires dismantling industrial capitalism’s core, the endless extraction of resources for profit. Anarcho-communists argue for degrowth – planned, democratic, and voluntary reduction of production to meet human needs within ecological limits, not for more efficient ways to keep the growth machine running.
Hope runs as a constant refrain in the speech. Swarbrick insists that we can and must restore it. This is an appealing message in dark times. But hope, when tied to the electoral cycle, becomes a commodity too: something that parties sell in exchange for votes. The hope we need is not hope in politicians, no matter how principled, but hope in our own collective capacity to live differently. This is where anarcho-communism diverges most sharply from the Green vision. We do not want better managers of the system; we want to abolish the system that requires management in the first place.
Perhaps the most glaring omission in the speech is solidarity with movements outside Parliament. Nowhere does she mention striking workers, tenants’ unions, anti-colonial land occupations, or the mutual aid networks that kept communities alive during the pandemic. These struggles are where the seeds of a liberated society are sown, outside the glare of the Beehive, in the daily acts of resistance and cooperation that build real autonomy. By centring Parliament as the locus of change, the speech inadvertently sidelines these grassroots movements, reducing them to potential allies in a legislative campaign rather than the primary agents of transformation.
And yet, the speech is not without its strengths. Swarbrick speaks with an authenticity rare in parliamentary politics, openly acknowledging burnout, despair, and the manipulation of fear by those in power. Her critique of neoliberalism is sharper than anything heard from Labour in the last decade, and her willingness to challenge the myths of trickle-down economics is refreshing. But for anarcho-communists, sincerity and courage in the halls of power are not enough. The problem is not simply who holds office, but the fact that such offices exist at all.
In the end, Swarbrick’s AGM speech embodies the contradictions of the Green Party itself. It speaks to a deep disillusionment with the status quo and gestures toward systemic change, but it remains committed to the parliamentary path. It seeks to unite people across divides, but in doing so, it blunts the revolutionary edge needed to confront capital and the state. It recognises the urgency of our crises but proposes solutions that leave the underlying structures intact.
For anarcho-communists, the task is not to dismiss such speeches outright, but to read them critically and to see both the openings they create and the limitations they impose. When Swarbrick names the commodification of life, we can seize that moment to push the conversation toward collective ownership. When she calls for organised action, we can remind people that the most powerful organising happens outside parliamentary walls. When she speaks of hope, we can insist that it must be rooted in self-management and mutual aid, not in electoral victories.
We should not expect the Green Party, or any party, to deliver the revolution. That is our work. It is the work of tenants refusing rent increases, of workers taking control of their workplaces, of communities rewilding stolen land, of neighbours feeding each other without waiting for the supermarket delivery truck. It is messy, decentralised, and without guarantees, but it is the only path to a freedom that cannot be legislated away.
So yes, breathe in. Fill your lungs with the air that capitalism has not yet stolen. But as you exhale, let it be a roar, not a sigh. Let it carry across picket lines and protest marches, into community gardens and union meetings, into every place where people are refusing to be managed and are instead taking control of their own lives. The future we fight for will not be delivered from a podium at an AGM, it will be built by all of us, together, in the streets, on the land, and in the countless acts of defiance that make another world possible.
