The Greens Listened to the Symptoms

The biggest story in the latest 1News Verian poll isn't that National and Labour are both languishing on 28%.

It is that the Greens are sitting on 16%, their highest result in the poll's history. Chlöe Swarbrick's reaction was appropriately understated: "Pretty cool, isn't it?"

For parts of the political right, however, none of this is cool. It is confusing, concerning and apparently completely inexplicable.

It shouldn't be!

The Greens have spent years listening to the symptoms.

Rents rise. Power bills bite. Groceries gouge. Wages crawl, while the first rung of the property ladder seems to get higher every year. Payday comes in, the bills pounce, and by Friday the grocery shop has become an exercise in subtraction.

For plenty of people, particularly younger New Zealanders without well-paid jobs, property, share portfolios, businesses or family wealth to fall back on, the economy doesn't just feel temporarily difficult. It feels like a game in which all the pieces were bought before they arrived.

The Greens have consistently told those people: yes, we hear you.

That matters.

You don't have to believe the doctor is brilliant to appreciate that somebody finally asked where it hurts.

And while the Greens have been sitting beside the patient taking notes, National and ACT have increasingly sounded more interested in checking whether the patient qualifies for treatment.

The Government has now passed legislation tightening access to Jobseeker Support for many 18- and 19-year-olds, requiring them to satisfy a parental assistance test before receiving support. ACT wants to go further: work-ready Jobseeker recipients who remain on a benefit for more than four months would have their payments managed through an electronic card restricted largely to essentials such as groceries, rent, power, transport, health and childcare.

So if you're young, broke and struggling to get established, one side of politics increasingly sounds like: ask Mum and Dad, prove you're trying hard enough, and if you're still here in four months, we'll help manage your shopping list.

Meanwhile, the economic backdrop isn't exactly champagne and streamers.

Annual inflation is 4.1 percent. Unemployment is 5.6%. The underutilisation rate is 13.8 percent. Electricity prices were 12% higher in the year to June. Those figures do not tell the whole economic story, but neither are they imaginary aches invented by lazy patients looking for a medical certificate.

Then we get to housing, that great New Zealand economic sacred cow which must be milked, worshipped and, above all else, never allowed to become too cheap.

Christopher Luxon has said he wants "gradual, moderate, consistent house price growth", while wages grow faster. National is also promising to widen access to the First Home Loan scheme so more buyers can purchase houses with deposits as low as 5 percent.

Think about the message there.

The house remains horribly expensive, but don't worry, we'll help you buy it with less money up front.

The ladder is still twenty feet tall. We've shortened the first rung.

Property commentator Ashley Church recently published an article bluntly titled Declining House Prices Are Killing Our Economy.

Perhaps.

But try selling that diagnosis to a 27-year-old paying half their income to rent while being told the national economy requires the house they cannot afford to become more expensive.

Is it any wonder some young New Zealanders have looked across the Tasman and thought, bugger this?

New Zealand recorded a net migration loss of 28,500 people to Australia in 2025. The year before, 27,400 New Zealand-citizen migrant departures were aged between 18 and 30. Nobody can seriously claim housing or wages caused every departure, but pretending economic opportunity has nothing to do with it would be equally silly.

And this is where the reaction to Green polling becomes almost comical.

Rent caps!

KiwiMart!

Kiwipower!

A wealth tax!

A publicly owned supermarket? A publicly owned power company? Taxing multimillionaires?

What clown school did these commie Greens graduate from!?

You can almost hear the pearls being clutched from Parnell.

And yes, some of the Green prescriptions deserve serious scrutiny. KiwiMart may prove inspired, idiotic or somewhere inconveniently in between. Kiwipower is hardly guaranteed to usher in an age of cheap electricity. A wealth tax comes with real economic trade-offs.

These are not shy little nudges at the market. The Greens are proposing to put the state directly into places where they believe the market has failed, while shifting more of the tax burden towards wealth and high incomes. Their plan includes a 2.5 percent tax on net assets above $10 million, excluding the family home, alongside a $10,000 tax-free income threshold.

You can argue with the medicine. You can question the dosage. You can even throw the whole prescription in the bin.

But their opponents keep laughing at the medicine while refusing to ask why the waiting room is filling up.

Family First released its election voter guide this week highlighting abortion, drugs, gender ideology, puberty blockers, euthanasia and other social issues. Those questions matter enormously to its supporters.

But if you're 25, working a mediocre job, flatting with three people, watching groceries swallow what rent leaves behind and wondering whether you'll ever own more property than a second-hand Toyota, perhaps puberty blockers aren't the first thing keeping you awake at night.

And if you're going to preach endlessly about the importance of family, here's an inconvenient thought: people need some hope of being able to afford one.

A family needs a home, heat and hope.

You cannot sermonise people into having children they don't believe they can afford.

That is the political disconnect.

Are the Greens economic doctors?

No.

Have they correctly diagnosed every structural problem in the New Zealand economy?

Marginally, at best.

Would every Green prescription make the patient healthier?

I wouldn't swallow the whole bottle without reading the label.

But have they listened to the symptoms?

Absolutely!

And they have done it consistently, while others have too often sounded as though the patient simply needs to work harder, spend less, stop complaining and perhaps ask their parents for help.

That is why 16 percent shouldn't be shocking.

The Greens haven't suddenly hypnotised one-sixth of the electorate into becoming Marxists. A sizeable group of New Zealanders simply doesn't think the current economic settings are working particularly well for them.

The Greens noticed.

So while property shills, National acolytes and culture warriors continue scratching their heads over why anybody would vote for people with such ridiculous economic policies, perhaps they should stop shouting long enough to listen to the same people the Greens have been listening to.

The diagnosis may be debatable. The medicine may be dubious.

But the symptoms are real.

And in politics, as in medicine, people may forgive a doubtful prescription long before they forgive a doctor who never listened.