Green Party fractures start to show over Darleen Tana debate

Darleen Tana's fate is now over to Green Party members, after the co-leaders formally initiated the process to get their former colleague removed from Parliament at the party's AGM in Christchurch over the weekend.

Party delegates will re-convene on 1 September to decide whether to use the so-called party-hopping legislation against Tana.

But debate over the legislation's use has already prompted some fractures, with three Green members choosing to resign from the party.

Pasifika Greens members Marie Laufiso, Alofa Aiono, and Vasemaca Tavola resigned from the Greens on Sunday, with Laufiso reading out a letter at the AGM.

The letter, published in-full on Radio Waatea, said the three members felt "culturally unsafe" in the Greens and had suffered from and witnessed actions that have "diminished, demeaned, and disempowered [their] cultural, spiritual and familial wellbeing".

Their resignations came shortly after the co-leaders confirmed they had written to Tana that the now-independent MP's continued presence was distorting the proportionality of Parliament.

"Not only by virtue of us now being reduced to 14 MPs and 14 votes in Parliament whilst entitled to 15 at the most recent general election, but also the implications on for example, Question Time and our Parliamentary budget.

"This will curtail our ability to do the outreach that people in this country voted for with three 330,000 votes at the most recent election," Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said.

That mention of the budget appeared to have concerned the three members, who said the process was being rushed because of the budget and not because of Tana's alleged treatment of migrant workers.

They said Tana's "character, integrity, and mana" was being smeared, saying for them it drew "re-triggering" parallels with the party's treatment of former MP Elizabeth Kerekere (Aiono is married to Kerekere), and a perceived double standard with the co-leaders' statements about Tana compared with those they have made about Julie-Anne Genter.

"Minimising her behaviour because an apology was given rings very hollow indeed when both wāhine Māori women MPs were silenced, not allowed to be at Parliament and left with no choice but to resign.

"Why were they so hypocritically held to this mythical standard of behaviour when others are not?" Laufiso said.

The three members also felt the party had disregarded the Pasifika Greens after the death of Fa'anānā Efeso Collins.

"Between us, we Sāmoans, collectively carry significant cultural knowledge amounting to hundreds of years of lived experience of fa'alavelave such as this.

"Yet we were not called upon for advice or guidance. No welfare checks for us nor an invitation to stand with the party while members throughout the motu heaved in sadness and shock," Laufiso said.

Speaking to media before the resignations, and just after the letter had been sent to Tana, Swarbrick said the best way to minimise harm and any further collateral damage was for Tana to resign, and the party could avoid the party-hopping issue altogether.

"Let me be really clear: this sucks. This is not a situation that I think any one of us or our party wanted to be confronted with. But we have been so we're dealing with it."

She said Tana had "betrayed" the Greens' principles, and was not responding to texts, calls, or emails from co-leader Marama Davidson who - despite being away from Parliament to undergo treatment for breast cancer - wanted to take the lead on the outreach.

Writing to the MP concerned is a requirement of the party-hopping legislation, and Tana has 21 days to respond to the co-leaders' letter.

But Swarbrick said the final step - writing to Parliament's Speaker - would not happen without the party's approval.

"We're a party that is very proud of the fact that we have a lot of divergent opinions, and really love a yarn, really love pulling an issue apart and putting it back together, investigating it from a lot of different perspectives.

"It's probably one of the most Green Party things in the world, [to] have set up a process in which to make a decision in which our membership has been brought along for the ride, in terms of how we go about setting up that process in the first place."

Around 200 party delegates will spend between now and 1 September speaking to their branches to consider the option, and any defence Tana may put up.

They will then hold a Special General Meeting, with 75 percent of delegates required to decide to party-hop Tana before the co-leaders write to the Speaker.

Swarbrick told Morning Report on Monday the letter from the members who resigned was "pretty charged" and came from a place of upset and the part needed to take time to consider it.

She said no one had been forced to make any decision at the weekend about what was happening with Tana.

"I'm really proud of the work we have done to consistently uphold natural justice. I'd say personally under an immense amount of media scrutiny and pressure over the last four months in particular that we have done everything we can to not jeopardise this process."

Despite the resignations, members RNZ spoke to outside the AGM were largely happy with how things had landed.

"The Greens wouldn't use that process without full reflection at every opportunity to look at the consequences," said one member.

Another, who said they were relatively new to the party, said they were impressed with the member-driven process.

"It enables a just decision to be made," they said.

"The process has always been done with Green membership and Green values at its forefront," said another member.

None, however, were willing to offer up an opinion on the legislation itself, or whether it should be used.

Throughout the weekend Swarbrick insisted the Tana situation was just one part of the AGM. She and Davidson were re-confirmed as co-leaders, and in Davidson's absence Swarbrick delivered both keynote speeches.

Her first encouraged members to go through some "growing pains" and make time for "slow, new, potentially hard" conversations if they wanted the Green movement to grow.

Swarbrick laid out a vision that not only could the Green Party become the world's dominant Green movement, but also the dominant force on New Zealand's Left - but only if members rolled up their sleeves.

In the speech, she tasked members with winning over people who may align themselves with Green values, but had not voted Green before, or who had become jaded with politics altogether.

She said she had spoken to people who voted for her in Auckland Central, but could not bring themselves to give the Greens their party vote at the last election. (The Greens received 8503 votes; National got 11751.)

Before his death, Faʻanānā Efeso Collins had discussed with her plans for more outreach into South Auckland, a traditional Labour stronghold, Swarbrick said.

Swarbrick's second speech of the weekend went after the government on its climate and social policies. She asked members to get 10 people they knew to sign an open letter to the Prime Minister on renters' rights - and then to get those 10 people to speak to 10 more people, and so on.

It was in keeping with the Greens' "flaxroots" style of campaigning, but members RNZ spoke to were up to the challenge to do more for the movement.

"I don't blame people for wanting to switch off. It can be exhausting, and that's what Christopher Luxon is aiming for people to do.

"But the best way I've found is just to find something in common with someone, and if they start complaining about it, be like, 'Yeah, me too, dude!' " said one member.

"Even though life can be pretty hard, we have to keep working on building those relationships in between elections, with the people who are so hard-hit by the current policies," said another.

One member conceded the Greens had historically not done enough for some communities, such as South Auckland and Pacific communities.

"A lot of it's going to be about reaching out to groups that haven't realised about how the Green mission already aligns with their basic personal values."