Decision Day: How The Process To Expel Darleen Tana From Parliament Will Play Out

Thursday, 17 October 2024, 6:12 pm
Article: RNZ

Giles Dexter, Political Reporter

• Green Party members will decide tonight on whether to 'party-hop' Darleen Tana out of Parliament
• The legislation allows parties to expel MPs no longer part of their caucus
• The Greens have historically opposed the legislation, but the co-leaders argue Tana's case breaks the mould
• Despite court action and an appeal from Tana, the meeting is still going ahead

Green Party members are meeting this evening to decide whether to use the so-called "party-hopping" legislation to remove former Green MP Darleen Tana from Parliament.

Despite an eleventh-hour appeal from Tana through the courts, the vote will still go ahead.

Party members need to reach a consensus over whether the legislation - which the Greens have historically opposed - should be used.

Tana took the party to court last month to argue the Green Party's disciplinary process had been unlawful, unauthorised by the party's constitution, unreasonable and unfair.

However, the judge rejected her claims, leaving the Greens free to proceed with the Special General Meeting.

How did it get here?

Originally 13th on the Green Party list, Tana was suspended in March, after Stuff revealed allegations of migrant exploitation at her husband's e-bike business.

In July, Tana, who had been the party's small business spokesperson, resigned from the party, following an investigation into what she knew about the allegations, and whether she was forthcoming with the Green Party leadership.

Tana has always denied any allegations of migrant exploitation herself, saying all the investigation could prove was that "for better or worse" she was simply married to her husband.

But the Green caucus believes Tana has refused to take accountability and demonstrated she is unfit to be an MP, and that her continued presence in the House distorts the proportionality and funding the party was entitled to at the election.

The Green Party is no fan of the party-hopping legislation, despite reluctantly voting for it in 2018 as confidence and supply partner to the Labour-New Zealand First coalition. (It is also known as the waka-jumping" legislation", but Swarbrick and other Green MPs and members have pointedly avoided using the term.)

The central philosophy behind the Greens' opposition is that it impedes a member's ability to freely dissent. Furthermore, original co-leaders Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons would likely never have been allowed to split from the Alliance Party had the legislation existed in the 1990s.

What happens now?

At 6.30pm this evening, around 200 delegates, chosen by party branches from around the country, will meet over a video call.

Chlöe Swarbrick will speak on behalf of the co-leadership and the caucus. Other groups from within the party will also speak, including representatives from the Greens' Māori and Pasifika caucus. The meeting will then be opened up for questions before the vote.

Members will need to reach a 'broad consensus' of 75 percent in favour of expelling Tana. This is a percentage the party has set itself, not one required by law. Indeed, the meeting itself is not a legal requirement, but one the Greens have set themselves.

If that percentage is reached, the co-leaders will formally notify the Speaker. It is then up to the Speaker on when he notifies the House of Tana's expulsion from Parliament. If the percentage is not reached, the co-leaders will honour the members' decision, and Tana will remain an MP.

The process has been long-running, legally fraught, and agonising.

Swarbrick initially announced in July at the party's AGM that the process had formally begun, with the co-leaders writing to Tana explaining their argument, a requirement of the legislation.

The meeting of members was then scheduled for 1 September. That was cancelled once the court action started, and then re-scheduled for 17 October.

Tana believes she still has support amongst the wider membership, and people had implored her to stay on as an independent.

"I'm listening to my communities, Green Party members and non-members alike, who have been constantly calling me and reminding me that they voted party Green for Darleen," she said in August.

Three members of the Pasifika Greens resigned at the AGM, protesting the party's treatment of Tana.

Exactly how long the meeting will take is anyone's guess. "The Greens love a yarn," Swarbrick said on Wednesday.

Regardless of the outcome, the Greens will issue a press release on Thursday night outlining what happened, and Swarbrick will front media on Friday morning.

What has Darleen Tana been up to?

Since returning to Parliament, Tana has kept a low profile.

She has been able to participate in the Committee of the Whole House stage on bills, but has not taken calls on their other readings.

While she has not been officially allocated a position on any select committees, she has still been able to sit in on some and ask questions.

She has been allowed a limited number of Parliamentary questions, and asked one to conservation minister Tama Potaka earlier this week on marine protected areas.

She has rarely responded to texts, emails or phone calls from the media, and has only held one pre-scheduled media standup, on the same day she wrote a letter responding to the Greens' formal request she resign from Parliament entirely.

In that standup, she said she felt the Greens had abandoned their values.

"I was gobsmacked to be held up as not fit-for-purpose, or to be a, dare I say, liar," she said.

Last week, however, she gave a 40-minute, wide-ranging interview with Chris Walker from Waiheke Radio.

In the interview, Tana explained her reasons for wanting to stay as an MP, and shed some light about what it has been like to be an independent.

"As I sit there, not being whipped by anybody, being able to call the votes as I see fit, I can't help but think that we need more independent MPs. And MMP is a process that allows for that," she said.

Tana has not spoken to her former colleagues in the Green caucus, but said MPs from other parties have been warm and engaging, and she was happy to work with any party.

"When I'm having discussions with members of the National Party or members of ACT Party about different mahi that they're doing, I can understand it from the different perspectives, and then I can try to talk to them from another perspective and offer out some of the ecological wisdom," she said.

She has found an unlikely ally in the ACT Party. Leader David Seymour, who spent six years as a "sole MP" himself, is opposed to the party-hopping legislation, believing the only people who have the authority to remove an MP are the voters at an election - something Tana agrees with.

"It's not the MPs who voted the people in, it's the people themselves. And we have that process to vote people in and vote people out, and that happens once every three years in a general election," she told Waiheke Radio.

ACT has also been casting Tana's proxy vote in the House when she has not been able to. MPs are not able to be in the House all the time, and in those cases, votes are cast on their behalf. This is much easier when someone belongs to a party, but in Tana's case, it has meant she has needed to find alternative arrangements.

Te Pāti Māori initially cast Tana's proxy votes, but Tana told Waiheke Radio this stopped when Te Pāti Māori MPs failed to show up for a vote themselves, meaning any vote Tana might have hoped to cast was not recorded.

A recent history of potential party-hoppers

Waiheke Radio asked Tana if she had spoken with other MPs who became independents after resigning from or being expelled from their parties, such as Elizabeth Kerekere and Gaurav Sharma.

"Yes - the short answer, yes," Tana said.

She revealed she had also spoken to former Green MPs David Clendon and Kennedy Graham, who resigned in 2017 after co-leader Metiria Turei admitted to lying to Work and Income in the 1990s while on a benefit.

Tana said the conversations with the MPs were not about their particular circumstances.

"It makes sense, but the observation that each of us take away from that is that our own experiences are our own experiences, so there's not necessarily commonality, per se, to each of them."

And their situations are all different. When Kerekere resigned, the Green co-leaders explicitly said they would not invoke the party-hopping legislation. It was also only five months out from the election.

Clendon and Graham resigned before the legislation was in place.

Sharma was an electorate MP, who was removed from the Labour caucus and then resigned. He claimed he resigned because Labour was planning on using the party-hopping legislation within the six-month timeframe before the 2023 election. Labour denied this was the case, and his resignation then triggered a by-election, which he lost.

Meka Whaitiri, who defected from Labour to Te Pāti Māori in 2023, did so without formally resigning from Labour in-writing, and so the Speaker felt he was unable to apply the legislation.

There is also the case of Jami-Lee Ross, who resigned from National in 2018, but was an electorate MP and National, opposed to the legislation, and did not use it.

Tana, then, is already the latest case study for constitutional scholars to pore over for years to come. It is now up to Green Party members to decide what her entry in the history books looks like.

© Scoop Media

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