She has resigned from the party, but not as an MP.
The Greens could use the waka jumping legislation to force her out, but that has to follow a set process:
. . .The first is for Tana to write to Speaker Gerry Brownlee, telling him she has resigned from the Green Party or wishes to be recognised as either an independent MP or a member of another political party.
The second is for either Swarbrick or fellow co-leader Davidson to write to Brownlee saying that Tana remaining in Parliament would distort its proportionality as determined at the election, after having given Tana notice of this with a 21-working day window to respond. The co-leaders would also need to have two-thirds support in the caucus, and 75% support among party members.
Caucus support wouldn’t be hard, but a super majority among members might be.
Tana could make it easy for the party by resigning but she hasn’t said she will and her comments suggest that if she goes it won’t be quietly:
. . . Tana said she believed 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,” she said.
“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.”
Tana went on to say she was “concerned” about the party’s summary of the findings, saying 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. . .
If she does choose to remain an MP, the Greens will have to decide which is the greater problem – having a former member of their party and caucus as an independent – or a member of another party – or risking accusations of hypocrisy by invoking the waka jumping law.
. . . 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 she hadn’t discussed using the Waka Jumping provisions with the caucus and hoped Tana would simply step down. That’s 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. . .
She is unlikely to make it easy for her party, and could make it harder by joining another.
None of the coalition partners would be an option and Labour ought to have too much integrity to accept her. But that i word doesn’t appear to be in Te Pāti Māori’s vocabulary and they might welcome her.
Unless, and until, Tana resigns, the Greens are faced with a former member of their caucus who is out of their party but not gone from parliament and appears to be determined to stay either as an independent or, potentially, as a member of TPM.
There’s a lesson here for all parties about how very careful they must be in recruiting candidates.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
1 comment:
Luckiy Tana had no economics determining role. Whilst she is clearly calculating the economic worth of clinging on, if she and husband had applied rational economic reason they would have well rewarded their staff and the lucrative parliamnetary job could likely have continued with no awkward disclosures.
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