Political drama sees internal fights for Greens, open conflict between Act vs Te Pāti Māori – On the Tiles

The latest political dramas have seen the Greens continue with the fallout from the Darleen Tana scandal, while Act and Te Pāti Māori have been exchanging words across the House.

At the Green Party’s annual meeting last weekend, the party said Tana had 21 days to respond to a letter asking her to resign from Parliament – otherwise the party would hold a special general meeting on September 1 to decide her fate.

Tana has been sitting as an independent MP since quitting the party, after a report into her involvement in alleged migrant exploitation at a cycling business run by her husband.

This week on the Herald’s politics podcast, On the Tiles, deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan was joined by Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls to analyse the latest in both dramas.

If Tana refuses to leave, the waka-jumping legislation may be invoked for the first time, and Walls said it would be interesting to see it tested.

“I’m not convinced that it’s just gonna go away as easily as they think. I mean, this is a piece of legislation that’s never been tested so far.

“You’ve got like Meka Whaitiri, Gaurav Sharma, Elizabeth Kerekere, you’ve got all these people that made their home in Siberia in the back of the chamber, and it wasn’t tested on any of them. And it’s slightly ironic that the most vehement opponents of the legislation now will be the ones to actually give it its first spin.”

The other drama has seen a war of words between Act and Te Pāti Māori. Initial tensions over political pins and stickers appearing in Parliament and in select committees turned into accusations of racial harassment, with Children’s Minister and Act MP Karen Chhour alleging targeted comments about her race and upbringing from Te Pāti Māori.

Coughlan said Te Pāti Māori seems “unusually callous” in targeting Chhour about her upbringing in state care, and it’s something he hasn’t seen before in Parliament.

“Working here, it’s fairly robust. MPs wind each other up. They try and look for chinks in their armour because that’s sort of how you get ahead. You look for weak spots, but you tend to leave personal stuff out of it. There’ve been things like relationship breakdowns, marriage breakdowns in Parliament, everyone knows which MPs are going through them, but it’s never mentioned in the House,

“In this situation, it’s slightly different obviously because the issue of state care is one that Karen Chhour is defending in Parliament, so the issue and the person are the same thing. But Te Pāti Māori do seem unusually callous in that they know that this is a certain thing that, and her identity, they know that this is a certain thing that hurts her and they are constantly attacking it.”

Listen to the full episode of the On the Tiles podcast for more from on how both scandals have unfolded and what might happen next in them.

On the Tiles is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available on Fridays.

The podcast is hosted by NZ Herald deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan, who is based at Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.