This evening, Green Party delegates will vote on whether to get the now independent MP turfed out of parliament. Here’s a quick recap of how we got here.
Another day, another Green Party meeting. Why should I care?
This one’s been a long time coming. Some seven months after first-term Green MP Darleen Tana was suspended from the party, at 6.30pm tonight around 200 Green delegates will meet to vote on whether to trigger the party-hopping (AKA waka-jumping) provisions of the Electoral Act 1993 and get her kicked out of parliament.
Remind me, who is she and what’s her deal?
Darleen Tana entered parliament after last year’s election, gaining her spot via her 13th place on the Green Party list. She held a number of portfolios, including small business. In March 2024, the Greens suspended Tana amid claims of migrant exploitation at the ebike business owned by her husband, Christian Hoff-Nielsen, and launched an investigation to determine what she knew about the allegations.
Four months later, Green co-leaders Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson announced that Tana’s actions had been found to be “completely at odds with our party’s values, policies and kaupapa” and the party was requesting her resignation from parliament. The investigation concluded that Tana was involved in her husband’s business, knew a lot more about the potential employment breaches than she had claimed (and hadn’t disclosed this to her party), and had provided inconsistent evidence to the investigation, damaging her credibility.
I see. How did Tana respond?
She disputed the findings and how the Greens had summarised them, said “natural justice” hadn’t been served, and quit the party in a jumping-before-being-pushed manner. She didn’t resign from parliament, however, returning to the House on July 23 as an independent (having continued to draw down an MP’s salary while suspended).
What did the Greens think about that?
They weren’t stoked, and at their conference on July 28, party members accepted a caucus proposal to hold a special meeting on September 1 to vote on whether to get Tana booted out of parliament. Swarbrick (Davidson was on leave undergoing cancer treatment) wrote a letter to Tana to say her decision to resign from the party but not from parliament had distorted the proportionality of the house.
A letter, how quaint.
It’s required if one wishes to trigger the aforementioned party-hopping provisions of the Electoral Act 1993. The fact the Greens are even considering this is a big deal, because despite begrudgingly voting for the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act 2018 that enshrined these provisions (they said their confidence-and-supply agreement with Labour required it), they don’t like this law one bit, having condemned previous iterations as draconian and undemocratic.
How does this law work again?
Basically, it requires the speaker of the house to declare an MP’s seat vacant in two scenarios: if that MP tells the speaker in writing that they no longer want to represent the party they were part of when elected to parliament, or if a party leader informs the speaker of their belief that the MP’s behaviour is distorting the proportionality of parliament. As law professor and party-hopping pundit Andrew Geddis put it, “Case law then holds that an MP leaving a party’s caucus for any reason automatically creates such a distortion, as it means that political party now has one less seat in parliament.”
Seems pretty clear-cut, then?
Well, Tana didn’t think so, as on August 20 she responded to Swarbrick’s letter to dispute the legal basis of the party’s argument, essentially claiming that she wasn’t distorting proportionality at all because it wasn’t her actions that got her booted out of the Greens, they were just treating her badly. She headed to court to file for a judicial review of the investigation and an interim injunction to delay the September 1 meeting at which Green Party delegates were set to decide her fate. The Greens agreed to a raincheck on the meeting but on September 20, a High Court judge threw out Tana’s claim. The Greens rescheduled the meeting for October 17.
Let me guess, Tana didn’t give up?
She did not. Earlier this week, the Greens said Tana was appealing the High Court ruling, but the long-awaited meeting would continue as planned.
Tell me more about this meeting.
It’s not required under the legislation – the Green co-leaders need two-thirds of caucus support to invoke the party-hopping provisions, not wider party backing – but being a party of the people, they’ve said they won’t do that without the agreement of at least 75% of the 200 or so delegates. Earlier in the week, Swarbrick wouldn’t predict what the outcome would be, saying she felt “incredibly confident in the wisdom of our membership”. Many are expecting that she will get 75% support, but given the Greens’ history of opposition to the law in question – and members’ frequent willingness to challenge their leaders – it’s far from a sure thing. Not everyone has been behind Swarbrick’s handling of the issue, with three members quitting at the party AGM in July over how Tana had been treated.
What happens next?
If delegates gave the go-ahead, Swarbrick would write to the speaker, Gerry Brownlee, to ask him to get rid of Tana – a move that Swarbrick indicated would take place either tonight or tomorrow. As for the actual ousting of the MP, the timing is apparently at the discretion of the speaker, but once Tana was officially goneburger, the Greens would get a new MP – Benjamin Doyle, who’s next on the list.
What if the party delegates don’t agree?
Unless she had a surprising change of heart, Tana would stay on as an independent MP, just like Elizabeth Kerekere, Meka Whaitiri, Gaurav Sharma and Jami-Lee Ross before her, and the Greens would be stuck with 14 seats in parliament – one fewer than their election result entitled them to.
Either way, the Greens will announce the outcome of the vote tonight, and Darleen Tana will learn whether she’ll be out of a job – or will get to hold on to her lonely seat at the back of the debating chamber for the rest of the term.
