Chlöe Swarbrick (born 26 June 1994) is a New Zealand politician. She is a member of the Green Party and has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 2017.
Swarbrick ran for the Auckland Mayoralty in 2016 and entered parliament as a Green MP in 2017. She gained global attention in 2019 after responding to an interjection by National MP Todd Muller in Parliament with “Okay boomer!”
Chlöe Swarbrick is the co-leader of the Green Party.
Quick Facts
Name:
Chlöe Swarbrick
Born:
26 June 1994 (age 30 years old)
Place of birth:
Auckland, New Zealand
Nationality:
New Zealand
Education:
Law Psychology
Alma mater:
University of Auckland
Occupation:
Politician
Political party:
Green
Partner:
Nadine Walker
Early life
Chlöe Swarbrick was born on 26 June 1994 in Auckland, the north of New Zealand’s North Island.
Her parents separated when she was young. She spent part of her childhood in Papua New Guinea with her father and in the UK with her mother. While in high school, she visited each parent spending a week.
Education
Swarbrick studied at Royal Oak Intermediate and Epsom Girls’ Grammar School. She holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Auckland.
In 2012, Swarbrick launched her first business, The Lucid Collective, with Alex Bartley Catt. She landed a gig as a news writer and newsreader at the student radio station 95bFM. She later became the producer and host of The Wire.
Swarbrick’s first article for What’s Good magazine dates back to 2014. She started an offshoot of What’s Good, The Good, in 2015 and won a New Zealander of the Year Local Hero Award.
Chlöe Swarbrick came third place after running in the 2016 Auckland mayoral election. She joined the Green Party after the defeat. She was the youngest politician to enter Parliament in New Zealand at 23 years old, since Marilyn Waring in 1975.
Swarbrick launched a digital consultancy and artist management agency, TIPS, with Bartley Catt in 2016. They also opened a cafe and gallery, Olly. She bagged the Jane Goodall Trailblazer Award in May 2019.
Swarbrick and other MPs across parliament worked to form a Cross-Party Group on Drug Harm Reduction in 2018. She launched the political podcast ‘Authorised By’ with Kiri Allan.
In 2018, Swarbrick worked with other MPs across parliament to form a Cross-Party Group on Drug Harm Reduction. She also worked to establish and expand the Piki pilot programme.
Swarbrick appeared on Fortune magazine’s ’40 Under 40′ listing under the “Government and Politics” category in 2020. A documentary about her background and political journey, Ok Chlöe, was released in August 2020.
In 2020, Chlöe assumed the Green Party’s Drug Law Reform portfolio. She launched a campaign for an end to the criminalization of drug users and addicts.
She contested and won the Auckland Central electorate during the 2020 New Zealand general election. In 2023, Swarbrick was re-elected as a Member of the Auckland Central electorate by 3,896 votes during the general election.
Swarbrick has been a vegetarian since age 14. She has dyscalculia and a history of depression and anxiety, visits a psychologist weekly, and is on anti-depressants.
She once revealed she received an adult diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in 2021.
