Chlöe Swarbrick

At age 23 she was the youngest politician to enter Parliament in New Zealand since Marilyn Waring in 1975.

Chlöe Charlotte Swarbrick (born 26 June 1994) is a New Zealand politician.

Swarbrick was born in Auckland in 1994 and went to Royal Oak Intermediate and Epsom Girls' Grammar School.

Her parents separated when she was young and she lived with her mother in the UK for six months and then with her father for 18 months in Papua New Guinea.

She said her father taught her how to formulate an argument while practising her first speech at age seven.

During high school, she spent a week at a time with each parent.

She entered the University of Auckland at age 17, and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy.

She says she did not want to be a lawyer but wanted to learn more about the Treaty of Waitangi and the legal system.

In 2012, Swarbrick opened her first business, a New Zealand-made fashion label called The Lucid Collective, with Alex Bartley Catt.

Around the same time, she began working in the newsroom at the student radio station 95bFM as a news writer and newsreader, before becoming a producer and eventually host of The Wire.

In 2014, Swarbrick wrote her first piece for What's Good magazine.

She became the editor, and an owner.

Later that year, The Lucid Collective held a New Zealand Fashion Week side-show at the Gow Langsford Gallery and participated in the "Youthquake" exhibition at the New Zealand Fashion Museum.

The label went on to be stocked across Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, before Swarbrick and Bartley Catt closed the business.

Swarbrick launched The Goods, an offshoot of What's Good, in late 2015.

The project opened a pop-up store in St Kevin's Arcade on Karangahape Road.

Swarbrick won a New Zealander of the Year Local Hero Award.

Following a high-profile but unsuccessful run for the 2016 Auckland mayoral election, she became a parliamentary candidate for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, standing in the 2017 New Zealand general election and was elected as a member of the New Zealand Parliament at the age of 23.

In April 2016, she resigned from her position as a regular host.

The Lucid Collective is no longer in business.

In 2016, Swarbrick and Bartley Catt started a digital consultancy and artist management agency called TIPS.

The pair also opened a cafe and gallery, Olly, now listed permanently closed, next to the Crystal Palace Theatre in Mount Eden.

Swarbrick ran in the 2016 Auckland mayoral election, coming in third place, with 29,098 votes—almost 160,000 votes behind the winner, Phil Goff.

In 2016 as a mayoral candidate, she gave a speech at a human blockade (organised by Auckland Peace Action) that briefly interrupted a New Zealand Defence Industry Association Forum.

Swarbrick said she entered the mayoral race as a form of protest after interviewing "uninspiring" potential candidates while working as a journalist for bFM and discovering that only 34% of the electorate had voted at the previous mayoral election.

Swarbrick gained significant media attention largely due to her age.

After losing the mayoral race, she joined the Green Party.

Soon after joining the Green Party, Swarbrick announced she would challenge sitting Green MP Denise Roche as the party's candidate in the Auckland Central electorate for the 2017 general election.

Her challenge was unsuccessful, as the local branch selected Denise Roche to stand in the seat again.

Swarbrick was selected instead to stand for the Maungakiekie electorate, and placed 7th on the party list.

After the 2017 general election, Swarbrick lodged the Election Access Fund Bill (a member's bill originally drafted by Mojo Mathers) in the member's ballot and in February 2018 this bill was drawn from the ballot.

This piece of legislation aims to "establish an Election Access Fund to be administered by the Electoral Commission and used by any disabled candidate to cover disability-related costs of standing in a general election, by not-for-profit bodies to cover costs of making election education events and materials accessible, and by registered political parties to support access needs of any members to allow them to participate within the party."

In May 2019, Swarbrick received the Jane Goodall Trailblazer Award.

The award recognises individuals who have demonstrated dedication to the prosperity of animals, people, or the planet through their work.

In the 2020 election, Swarbrick was elected as the Member of Parliament for Auckland Central, becoming the second Green Party MP ever to win an electorate seat, and the first without a tacit endorsement from a major party leader.

She retained Auckland Central in the 2023 election.

In March 2024, she was elected co-leader of the Green Party.

Swarbrick is Green Party Spokesperson for Auckland Issues, Mental Health, Drug Law Reform, Revenue, Climate Change, Tertiary Education and Skills, and Youth.

In 2020, Swarbrick was named to Fortune magazine's '40 Under 40' listing under the "Government and Politics" category.

In August 2020, a short documentary film named Ok Chlöe was released about the background of Swarbrick and her political career.