Every party has MPs who go rogue. For a few exciting decades around the turn of the century, our politicians flounced out of their parties for ideological reasons. Jim Anderton left Labour to form NewLabour; Peter Dunne and a clutch of others split from their parties to form Future NZ; Winston Peters resigned as he was ushered towards the exit by National and founded New Zealand First; the Greens defected from the Alliance; Tariana Turia quit Labour to launch the Māori Party and Hone Harawira quit the Māori Party to launch the Mana Party.
But modern rogue MPs are primarily rogues. They follow a predictable trajectory: a scandal emerges; the party investigates. A report is produced but rarely made public. The MP splits from their caucus and employs the standard crisis PR strategy drummed into them since they entered professional politics: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
They insist they’ve done nothing wrong; they’ve been betrayed by their leaders but they’ll heroically elect to remain in Parliament – to represent their constituents if they’re an electorate MP, or to continue their vitally important work if they came in on the list.
Their important work consists of receiving a pay cheque and attacking their former colleagues until they’re tossed out in the next election.
It’s the path taken by former Green Party MP Elizabeth Kerekere until the 2023 election, and now beckons her former fellow party member Darleen Tana. She was dumped by her caucus in the wake of accusations of migrant exploitation at her husband’s e-bike business, and suggestions she was involved in the alleged offending.
Tana is following the standard go-rogue script. She feels “silenced and isolated” by her former co-leaders. She may remain in Parliament – leaving would be too easy! – to uphold the kaupapa of her mahi.
The Greens are a small party and this is their second rogue wahine Māori MP in two years. Unhappy coincidence or deeper problem? Perhaps the fault lies in the party’s complicated candidate selection process.
Green MPs and activists are fiercely proud of their party’s internal democracy. Every election year, it holds a contest to determine which of its candidates will secure winnable list positions – the outcome is decided by the party, unlike the processes conducted by Labour and National.
This system works well for a minor party with a limited number of viable list slots: everyone knows everyone; the good candidates are obvious, the bad ones flagged via gossip networks.
Slipping through
But as the Greens scale up and the number of winnable list positions increases, the efficacy of its informal vetting process declines.
The Greens are also proud of their commitment to te tiriti, and this is reflected in the list ranking process, which prioritises and promotes Māori candidates: 20% of the list must be of Māori descent.
This can be fraught because green politics is predominantly upper-middle-class, white politics.
Most aspiring Māori politicians naturally gravitate towards Labour or Te Pāti Māori if they’re on the left; National or New Zealand First if on the right.
The Greens were great at identifying and cultivating successful new Māori MPs (Tana entered Parliament at 13th on the list) until they weren’t. The transition to a larger party has them drawing ever deeper from a shallow candidate pool.
It has been a dreadful year for the party – the sudden death of Efeso Collins, Marama Davidson’s cancer diagnosis, the resignation of James Shaw, high staff turnover following their exit from government, the Golriz Ghahraman shoplifting convictions and now the drawn-out Tana saga.
In light of these misfortunes, they’re doing surprisingly well in the polls.
For most of the 2010s, the Greens hovered around 10-15%. This crashed during the 2017 election and stayed suppressed for much of the Jacinda Ardern era.
It rebounded when she retired and Chris Hipkins announced his environmental policy bonfire.
Now they’re comfortably back at their pre-Ardern level of popularity. But shouldn’t they be higher?
The coalition government takes stands that are proudly anti-environmental, ferociously pro-mining and anti-conservation.
Insta star
The Greens’ new co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick is more popular than any of her predecessors. She hit 10% as preferred prime minister in a recent poll (Shaw and Davidson hovered around the 1-2% bracket).
Her social media audience is vast – 164,000 followers on Instagram, compared with 69,000 for Christopher Luxon, 24,000 for Chris Hipkins.
Her message is pure left-wing populism, denouncing politics-as-usual, calling for radical economic change. Hipkins’ digital media content focuses on his love of pies.
These should be the Greens’ salad days. Like all the minor parties, they quietly dream of major party status: why should the political left be ruthlessly dominated by Labour, which stands for little, when it could be benevolently dominated by the Greens, who stand for so much?
Maybe it’s their culture holding them back, alongside their rogues and shoplifters. The internal democracy, the commitment to non-hierarchical politics and consensus-based decision-making (most parties have whips who enforce caucus discipline; the Greens have musterers, who do not.)
Perhaps the party itself needs to go rogue, defecting from its past to seed its own future; becoming more like its adversaries if it hopes to defeat them.
