Is it just me or is it really easy to forget the Greens are in government?

I mean unless Marama Davidson is front page yelling out the C word, I tend to forget they’re there.

Are they being low key on purpose?

We hear a lot from NZ First, Shane Jones and Winston Peters seem good at garnering headlines and tossing out the one-liners.

Labour MPs do a good job of making a lot of noise and fronting for most things, but when it comes to the Greens, they seem quiet.

At their AGM in Palmerston North this past weekend, Leader James Shaw talked up all the good work they’re doing.

The goal to go zero carbon, ending oil exploration, green investment.

He mentioned that they’re ‘just warming up’ to make this the Greenest government ever.

There wasn’t much chat on Eugenie Sage’s foreign-owned water bottling plant sign off though, that’s probably not part of their highlights reel given the internal ructions and upset it caused.

It did lead Marama Davidson to try to fix this however, she announced that the Greens will push for a "water test" to be included on land sales to foreigners.

Essentially, what that means is that the Government would be able to stop people from buying land for water bottling. In other words, to stop sign-offs on what Eugenie Sage signed off on.

The government’s agreed to consider it as part of the second round of reviews of the Overseas Investment Act.

But ‘considering’ something does not necessarily mean supporting it.

It didn’t stop Davidson hammering the water point home though. She talked about the importance of water, the intrinsic value of it, that 'the water owns us', but that Maori have rangatira and kaitiaki rights over water, or guardianship, guaranteed in the Treaty of Waitangi.

This is where the government parts ways with the Greens, however, Environment Minister David Parker has said “no one” owns the water.

So does the more left-wing arm of the party risk alienating itself from the government?

Does the mixed bag membership of environmentalists, activists and socialists, gather itself together to remain a viable, albeit small force come 2020?

Or do they get swallowed up by the MMP machine or their own internal factions?

Time will tell, but working on their visibility may help.

If this is them ‘warming up’, as James Shaw said at the weekend, I look forward to seeing them in full blaze.