Marc Daalder
Wellington, July 9, 2024
The Green Party wants to draw a line under a rough patch for its caucus over the first six months of the year with the conclusion of a long-awaited review into claims of migrant exploitation involving list MP Darleen Tana.
That review was received by the party late on Friday (July 5), two weeks after Tana was shown a draft version for feedback. Shortly before the review landed, Tana amended her Instagram page to remove a statement that she was a Green Party MP and has since locked down the account.
A Prescient Change
The change was a prescient one – on Saturday (July 6), the Green Party Caucus met to consider the report and hear Tana’s perspective, before voting unanimously to reject her from the Parliamentary Caucus and urge her to step down as an MP.
While Tana was given until midday Sunday to make a decision, she has yet to do so, Co-Leader Chlöe Swarbrick said on Monday (July 8) afternoon.
“The ball is in her court as to whether she accepts that request for her resignation. I would actually ask Darleen to please resign to minimise the collateral damage and the harm to the Green Party kaupapa,” Swarbrick said.
On Monday evening, following Swarbrick’s announcement, Tana emailed out a statement saying she did not accept the report’s findings.
Tana said she believed that the Party had formed a pre-determined view of the report’s findings, prior to hearing from her.
“I do not feel that natural justice has been followed during this process. I want to make it clear that I do not accept the findings of the report and believe that it substantially misrepresents the level of my involvement in my husband’s business,” she said.
Migrant Exploitation claim rejected
Tana went on to say she was “concerned” about the Party’s summary of the findings, saying that the report did not say migrant exploitation had occurred, or that she was responsible for it in any capacity.
Tana did not say whether she planned to remain as an MP.
While the Greens hope this will bring a close to a rough six months, in which the Party has undergone three scandals, a tragedy and a serious health issue, and suffered a serious blow to MP morale, there are still several unanswered questions about the Tana situation.
The first is what the nearly four-month-long inquiry into the Tana allegations actually found. While Swarbrick said the Party was keen to release the full report, she said that would have to come after consulting all the individuals named in it.
Presumably, some of those individuals are involved in proceedings at the Employment Relations Authority in relation to allegations of migrant exploitation by Tana and her husband Christian Hoff-Nielsen at the latter’s e-bike shops.
Swarbrick declined to delve into the details of what the report found, saying only that the behaviour it uncovered breached Green Party values, rules for MP behaviour and a code of conduct for candidates. She added it was her view that Tana had misled the Party Co-leaders on multiple occasions and that it was “a situation that the Party has never been confronted with in terms of the severity of these allegations.”
The Key Questions
The key questions about the substance of the report are therefore what behaviour Tana was involved in, what knowledge she had of other improper or illegal behaviour and whether she was truthful in her communication with Swarbrick and Co-Leader Marama Davidson.
Then there is the obvious question looming over all of this: What happens next?
Tana has two choices. Now expelled from the Green Party Caucus, she could choose to remain an independent MP like Elizabeth Kerekere last term or Jami-Lee Ross the term before. From this position, she could either continue to advocate for her own values (as Kerekere did) or take advantage of the platform to attack and undermine her former party (as Ross did).
A key difference is how early in the Parliamentary term this is. It has been less than nine months since the election and there are more than two years to go until the next. While Kerekere sat as an independent MP for five months, this would be a far longer stretch. Ross’ stint as an independent was two years, but he was also an electorate MP.
The quandary
An independent, first-term list MP has next-to-no influence or importance in Parliament. Remaining in the House in that context would look a lot like a misuse of taxpayer money, particularly when Swarbrick suggested on Monday that Tana should not only quit her job now but also return the salary she was paid during the period of the investigation.
If Tana does decide to stay, the only entity that can do anything about it is the Green Party, which would otherwise be down one MP for the remainder of the term. Under the so-called Waka Jumping law, Parties can have defectors removed from Parliament by writing to the Speaker. While the Greens voted for the law in 2018 as part of their confidence-and-supply agreement with Labour, they have steadfastly opposed it since and declined to use it in the case of Kerekere.
Swarbrick said that she had not discussed using the Waka Jumping provisions with the Caucus and hoped Tana would simply step down. That is a much more muted response than that provided by her predecessors.
“The Green Party was really clear that we don’t think that it should be up to the judgment of Party leaders to determine peoples’ reasons for their resignations from their Parties,” then-Co-Leader James Shaw said when Kerekere stepped down.
When the legislation passed in 2018, Shaw said he and Davidson had written to the party executive asking them to amend the Greens’ Constitution to prevent Party Leaders from using the provisions. The latest version of the Party’s constitution does not contain this barrier.
That means it is in theory open to the Greens to kick Tana out of Parliament, though doing so would fly in the face of the Party’s longstanding opposition to the Waka Jumping provisions.
The other option open to Tana, of course, is to resign.
Marc Daalder is a senior political reporter at Newsroom. He covers climate change, health, energy and violent extremism. The above article and picture, which appeared on the website of Newsroom on July 8, 2024, has been reproduced under a Special Agreement.
