Derek Mackie: The Green's red-hot candidate whitelist

Tonight on We Can Handle the Truth…. 

 The Green Party are reeling after another - yes folks, yet another- political scandal involving one of their MP’s. 

Darlene Tana was told to get on her e-bike by party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick when it came to light, after many long drawn-out months of investigation,  during which she was suspended on full pay, that she and her husband’s eco-cycle business was exploiting migrants.....albeit to save the planet by ostensibly reducing CO2 emissions! 

Karl du Fresne: The vacuum at the heart of the democratic process

Ever heard of Naisi Chen?

No, me neither. Then how about Mark Cameron, Karen Chhour, Emily Henderson, Marja Lubeck, Liz Craig, Camilla Belich, Ibraham Omer, Teanau Tuiono, Damien Smith, Lemauga Lydia Sosene, Simon Court and Helen White?

They are all current, serving Members of Parliament. Chen, Craig, Lubeck, White, Belich, Sosene and Omer are Labour list MPs. Cameron, Court, Chhour and Smith got into Parliament on the ACT list. Tuiono represents the Greens and Henderson is the Labour MP for Whangarei.

My point in running these names past you is merely to illustrate that there are people sitting in the House of Representatives whom most of us have never heard of. I follow politics reasonably closely and most of those 13 names are unfamiliar to me.