Green Party 'Very Confident' Of Darleen Tana Investigation And Process

Tuesday, 16 July 2024, 3:40 pm
Article: RNZ

Russell Palmer, Digital Political Journalist

The Green Party is reiterating their call for Darleen Tana to resign from Parliament, saying they are "very confident" in the report and that their process allowed for natural justice.

Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick announced last Monday Tana had quit the party ahead of a caucus decision on whether to eject her, over the report which found she likely knew about allegations of worker exploitation at her husband's business but did not tell the party.

The report also found Tana and her husband Christian Hoff-Neilsen's evidence changed repeatedly over the course of the three-month inquiry.

On Monday night, Tana gave a 26-minute on-camera interview to 1News, saying she had been silenced by the party, that she was still considering whether she would stay on as an MP with full salary until the next election, and that the investigation was not comprehensive.

MP Ricardo Menéndez March is the Greens' musterer - known in other parties as the 'whip' - who has responsibility for discipline within the caucus on a day-to-day basis. He told RNZ he had seen the interview, but the party's message was the same: "She needs to do the right thing and resign."

"The planet is burning and wealth inequality is growing and we have a fight to go at, and Darleen needs to remind herself that no one is bigger than the party and therefore the best thing for the collective movement would be for her to move on."

March said the party was very confident in the investigation, the report, and its findings - rejecting Tana's claims.

"The investigation's finding laid very bare that Darleen has committed a serious betrayal of the party's trust, while also failing to meet the standards that we expect of members of Parliament," he said.

"We're very confident that we followed a very lengthy and at times frustrating process that allowed for natural justice and we're also very confident that we had all the information that we needed to make this decision based on the robust work from the investigator and the information that we also had based on media reporting.

"We simply refute those claims and we also believe it's time that Darleen is accountable for her actions. The report went to great lengths to ascertain the truth that she was clearly withholding information from the party."

He said the party was working on releasing the full report "very shortly".

"We've been doing our due diligence to ensure that we meet all of our privacy obligations, and that includes consulting with Darleen and Christian ... I don't have specific timeframe."

Tana said in her interview the Greens should be next to act, that the ball was in their court, but March said the party was clear

"Darleen indicated that she would be making decisions shortly, and therefore we continue of the view that the best thing for her to do would be to resign from Parliament altogether."

The party could yet force Tana out by using the so-called 'waka-jumping' legislation, but the Greens have previously strongly opposed that law on moral grounds - despite voting in support of it as part of a coalition deal in 2018.

March said the party would "continue having those political conversations".

Asked if he would expect Tana to pay back her MP salary, or to pay for the cost of the investigation, he said that would be a matter for "subsequent conversations", but "we could have avoided the situation altogether if Darleen had been forthright with the information that she knew regarding the very serious allegations of migrant exploitation".

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