Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick at an event earlier this year. Photo / Alex Robertson
Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick at an event earlier this year. Photo / Alex Robertson
A decision on whether to use waka-jumping rule to eject former Green, now independent, MP Darleen Tana from Parliament could come in a month’s time, following a discussion between the party and its members in Christchurch on Saturday afternoon.
The Greens were open about the fact the party would discusswhat to do about Tana at their AGM in Christchurch this afternoon. One option, the Herald understands, is to schedule a Special General Meeting in a month’s time at which party delegates will discuss what to do.
A motion to use the waka-jumping legislation to eject Tana would require consensus among delegates or a 75% majority to succeed.
This AGM is Swarbrick’s first as co-leader, and one which she led alone after co-leader Marama Davidson took leave to battle cancer, Swarbrick challenged members to “look at ourselves in the mirror and consider whether we want to evolve as a Party”.
She challenged the party that prefers the principles of consensus to those of compromise and often fails to value the importance of moulding itself into a larger and more powerful political force.
“There’s no point in us knowing we were right if we’re left clinging to our mountains of evidence when the last tree is cut down. If we believe the country needs us, we need the people of this country with us,” Swarbrick said.
She paid tribute to Green co-leaders of the past, saying the party needed to “remember and celebrate those who helped get us to where we are today”, but she urged members not to be bound by that history.
“Right here and right now, we are the ones making that history,” she said.
While there were any number of issues to which Swarbrick could be alluding, only one appeared to be on most people’s minds: whether to compromise on the party’s longstanding opposition to waka-jumping laws in order to eject Tana from Parliament.
Swarbrick was coy about this interpretation of her speech when speaking to media, but conceded that references to the public losing their trust in politicians when they don’t “come through with what they’ve promised” could be read as a reference to Tana.
On Saturday afternoon the party discussed what to do about Tana, and whether it will “waka-jump” her.
The outcome of the chat will be revealed tomorrow morning. The outcome will not be a straught decision on whether or not to use the waka-jumping law to eject Tana, but whether to begin a process that might eventually end in that decision being taken.
The caucus, which has already resolved to ask Tana to resign from Parliament, appears to support using the legislation to force Tana’s hand, although Swarbrick would not say so.
One member, who did not wish to be named, told the Herald that their “purely personal view” was that the party’s opposition to waka jumping was “not intended for situations like this”.
“I don’t think it would be hypocritical to use it [the legislation], but we need to talk that through,” he said.
The party has traditionally opposed anti-waka-jumping legislation partly because its founding co-leaders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald themselves partook of a certain sort of Waka-jumping when they fell out of The Alliance.
Donald, who was from Christchurch and whose funeral was held in the city’s now-ruined cathedral, spoke on the first generation of waka-jumping legislation which was passed in 2001 partly in response to the frenzy of waka-jumping in the 1996-1999 Parliament.
Former Green list MP Darleen Tana in her seat at the back of the debating chamber, known as Siberia. Photo / Mark Mitchell
That legislation had a sunset clause and was intended to calm Parliament after a chaotic start to MMP Parliament, nevertheless, Donald dubbed it “the most draconian, obnoxious, anti-democratic, insulting piece of legislation ever inflicted on this parliament”.
Members appear to have moved on, in part because they tend to take the side of the migrant complainants against Tana.
Another member said issues surrounding Tana were not “core” to why they were at the AGM, but noted that “everyone has a view” – although they were not necessarily keen to share it.
Swarbrick’s speech appeared to tiptoe around the issue, hinting that she believed the party could “evolve” from historical positions without explicitly saying so. Most decisions in the Greens of this nature are taken by members or with a high degree of member involvement.
Members can get frustrated if they feel the leadership has begun to act unilaterally and lost touch with the “flax roots” of the party. In the most extreme cases, those members can try to roll the leadership in retaliation, as former co-leader James Shaw discovered in 2022 when he was briefly turfed out by a process known as RON [Re-Open Nominations].
“I think as a membership, there is our kauapapa and there is our expectations. We’ve given our support and we’ve endorsed people, we expect them to be respectful and to behave with integrity and decency,” said one member, who did not wish to be named.
Some members who did not wish to be quoted seemed keen to just get whatever needed to be done with Tana out of the way so that the party could move on. There was some frustration that the party tends to agonise over almost every decision when it should be focusing on rebuilding itself and winning the next election. The process around Tana is taking up an immense amount of organisational bandwidth for what is a small party.
This sense of frustration at how distracting Tana had become was widespread. Members tucking into pumpkin and mushroom soup in the dining hall had come to talk about climate change and marine sanctuaries, not controversial aspects of electoral law.
Members were frank that the party has survived a torrid year, but did not think the party was necessarily broken. Ironically, being in opposition appears to be helping hold the party together.
After six years in government, seeing the roll back of the last Government’s agenda on climate, social development, and the Treaty under the new coalition appears to be binding the members together.
Paul, a member, told the Herald that the coalition had got him “more involved”, and that the recent scandals had brought the party closer together to weather the storm.
“I was in hibernation when we were in power because I was quite happy with how things were going and it’s the 100-day plan that’s got me fired up and why I’m here today,” he said.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
