The co-leaders of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand are the dual highest-ranking members of the Green Party caucus, chosen by the party membership to represent the party. The current co-leaders are Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick.
The co-leaders are elected for one year terms at Green Party annual general meetings (AGMs) or at leadership elections held to fill vacancies at other times. Incumbent co-leaders are required to be confirmed in their roles, and to meet a 75% threshold of support in a vote amongst members, at each AGM. Confirmation is usually a formality, although Russel Norman and James Shaw have defeated a challenger in this way in 2013 and 2021 respectively. In 2022, Shaw was briefly removed from the co-leadership due to only garnering 70% of the vote in the first round of voting, but was later re-elected.
Any member of the party can be a candidate for the co-leadership, even those that are not currently members of parliament, as long as they have five other party members willing to nominate them. From the creation of the roles in 1995 until May 2022, the party had a requirement that one co-leader be male and one co-leader be female. This was changed and now it is required that one co-leader be female and one co-leader be MÃÂori. It is not required that these conditions be fulfilled by two different people.
The co-leaders comprise a quarter of the voting members on the Green Party's leadership team, known as (Council). The other members of the team consist of two Te Rà Âpà « Pounamu , two party co-convenors, and two policy co-convenors. The general manager of the party also sits as a non-voting member of the Kaunihera. The role of Kaunihera, as stated by the party's constitution, is to "...monitor the performance of the Party against the [party's] Charter, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Long-term Strategy [and] any other Party strategies supplementary to the Long-Term Strategy".