- A millennial politician replied “OK, boomer” after she was interrupted and heckled by a colleague during a speech on climate change.
- Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick was speaking during a reading of the (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill in the New Zealand Parliament on Tuesday.
- “Right now the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old,” Swarbrick began before the interruption, which she batted off with the phrase “OK, boomer.”
- The phrase is a sarcastic, derogatory response to views expressed by some in the baby-boomer generation – born from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s – that young people consider outdated.
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A millennial politician responded with the millennial and Gen Z meme du jour “OK, boomer” after she was heckled by a colleague during a speech on climate change.
“In the year 2050, I will be 56 years old. Yet right now the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old,” Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick began to tell the New Zealand Parliament on Tuesday.
Swarbrick was cut short by a heckler, to which she retorted “OK, boomer,” before pressing on with her speech on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill.
Watch video of the incident below:
It is unclear who interrupted Swarbrick and what the person said.
The phrase "OK, boomer" recently entered the lexicon of young people across the English-speaking world as a sarcastic and derogatory response to what some consider outdated views held by some in the baby-boomer generation, born from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.
In a text message to the news website Stuff.nz, Swarbrick said the phrase was a "simple summarization of collective exhaustion."
Swarbrick's actions in Parliament were called disrespectful by some on social media, and she responded on her Facebook page.
"Today I have learnt that responding succinctly and in perfect jest to somebody heckling you about *your age* as you speak about the impact of climate change on *your generation* with the literal title of their generation makes some people very mad," she wrote.
The live broadcast of Swarbrick's speech on Parliament TV was accompanied by the caption "OK, Berma," an apparent misunderstanding of her phrase.