Green MP Chloe Swarbrick has made a new commitment. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Chloe Swarbrick has made no secret of her disregard for the Westminster style of politics on which New Zealand's Parliament is based.
The young MP has also been in a state of contemplation over her future and whether to commit to a second term with the Green Party.
But that is in the past. She is fizzing now.
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The decision is now made: she will stand again at 2020 and in Auckland Central rather than Maungakiekie, with the party's blessing.
She has also been given greater responsibility in the caucus, taking over Gareth Hughes' role as caucus strategist and party whip - or musterer as they call it in the Greens – after his decision to retire at next year's election.
That means she will also have a greater strategic role in honing the Greens' messages in 2020 and she is feeling optimistic.
"I'm so excited," she says.
"I'm genuinely excited about the change."
She said her questioning of whether she wanted to carry on "came from a place of operating in a very oppressive environment that is this Parliament and this Westminster adversarial model, where supposedly we yell back and forth at each other and we clash and that's how we are supposed to get meaningful solutions".
"I actually reflected on my maiden speech a few months ago because I was like 'what the hell am I doing in this place – it's so weird and it feels so disconnected from the Green kaupapa [principles] at times'."
Swarbrick ranges between incisive comments to lengthy streams of consciousness.
In her two years in Parliament, Swarbrick has made a name for herself in two main areas, addressing mental illness and legalising cannabis, not to forget her recent international profile for her "okay boomer" put down to an interjecting National MP.
But she thinks Green MPs find it particularly hard being in the parliamentary environment.
"We are not built for bureaucracy. We just want to get things done. We want to connect with people. We want to build things. We want to be constructive. We want to be collaborative. We want to be creative. We are trying to wedge that into this very weird Westminster system."
Swarbrick has a strong profile in Auckland already, having run for the mayoralty in 2016, before being courted by the Greens to stand in 2017.
She sought selection in Auckland Central but was beaten by a sitting list Green MP at the time, Denise Roche.
With the high-profile Swarbrick standing there, it is likely to get as much attention as it did in 2011 and 2014 when Jacinda Ardern as an ordinary MP competed in what journalist Patrick Gower dubbed the battle of the babes. It caught on.
Swarbrick doesn't seem unduly bothered by it. But the Auckland Central contest will undoubtedly attract extra attention, not least for the more serious reason of being a seat open to strategic voting.
The combined Green and Labour candidate votes in 2017 were more than Nikki Kaye's – and no changes to the current boundaries are proposed by the Representation Commission.
Swarbrick is particularly excited about her new role as caucus strategist but she eschews any suggestion – even though it was not made - that she is in politics for personal ambition.
"You don't join the Greens to become Prime Minister. You join the Greens to fight tooth and nail for something that you believe in."
She believes in transformational change, not incrementalism, and she says a lot people in politics justified incrementalism to themselves by "unintentionally self-centring".
"What I mean by that is that when you are faced with the opportunity to drive forward change, or to keep you neck down and just ride something out, then that is the option most people will opt for because they can justify for themselves they will be able to maintain a career and it means they can stay there and continue pushing something.
"Whereas when you stick your neck out for the transformative stuff, which the Greens have often done, I think it showcases that at the heart of everything the Greens do is transformative change. It is not maintaining office for the sake of it."
Swarbrick says that Gareth Hughes' recent comments on the slow pace of change reflected a widely held view in the Greens.
"We don't feel we have managed to achieve those levels of transformative change in quite a few of the areas we are aiming for but we are only eight of 120 MPs.
"We only have so much power. The focus for this coming year, this 2020 election, is to grow and build the mandate for that serious transformational progressive change."
Climate change and addressing inequality were the key targets.
The Greens had already had success in getting the Zero Carbon Bill through Parliament, setting up the Climate Change Commission, setting up the starting line for substantial progressive climate action.
"But the Greens want to push it further.
"We've managed to shift the Overton Window of what's politically possible in the last two years. Imagine what we could do with more of us.
"It's about reconciling all of the decades of arguably world-leading mahi [work] that the Greens created and built, did to set our foundations and the wisdom that they have accumulated and the activism that they've been at the forefront of, the advocacy and all of that institutional knowledge that they have, and bringing with it a new passion and momentum that we are seeing with the likes of the youth-led climate strikes and also the uprising of indigenous advocacy and movements for sovereignty there and connecting the dots between all of that to build a better world that works for everybody," she says before drawing breath.
"This is the Zeitgeist moment right? If we can't do it now, then come on humanity, this is the time. This is our time."
The circumstances around the death are being treated as unexplained.