Face of the Day

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says Chlöe Swarbrick would not be finance minister under a government he led, after the Greens co-leader said her party would be demanding high-profile portfolios if its success in the latest political poll was replicated on election day.

Monday’s 1News Verian poll had the Green Party at 16 per cent, the party’s highest ever result in that poll, while Labour and National both dropped to 28 per cent each. That result would translate to 19 Green MPs in parliament.

“The polls are catching up to the word on the street,” Swarbrick told 1News after the poll results came in. “The word on the street is that people want real action on the issues that matter to them.”

Swarbrick said her party was “going to need to have portfolios” if it helped form the next government – “the likes of finance, energy, state-owned enterprises, climate change and so on”.

National leapt on that prospect in an email to supporters on Monday night. “If Chris Hipkins wins, he will have no choice but to appoint Chlöe Swarbrick as New Zealand’s next finance minister,” the party said. “Do you really want Chlöe Swarbrick at the helm of the economy in this volatile world?”

Hipkins said that wouldn’t happen.

“No, Barbara Edmonds would be finance minister in a Labour-led government,” he told 1News on Tuesday morning. “One poll does not make an election result. We’ve got six weeks to go. No one should be divvying up office space at this point.”

On RNZ, Hipkins reiterated that message: “There are two non-negotiables for Labor in any post-election discussions around positions,” he said. “One is that I will be the prime minister and only prime minister, and Barbara Edmonds will be the minister of finance. She is the best qualified person in parliament to be the minister of finance. That is a bottom line. It’s not negotiable.”

Swarbrick told 1News on Tuesday morning the party would have to “see how the chips fall” on election day before firming up demands around ministerial portfolios, but said she’d been frank when asked about what the party would be looking for.

“I made it clear that we’ve outlined our election priorities and that means that in order to actually deliver those election priorities, we’ll have to hold [those] ministerial portfolios,” she said.

“I’ve been asked time and again throughout this election campaign, in the last three years, what my ideal portfolio would be, and I’ve been straight up: it is finance where the power exists to actually transform this economy into something that works for people and planet, instead of extracting from and exploiting both.”

Stuff