Chlöe Swarbrick explains why three senior Green members walked out of AGM

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said tensions were high at this weekend’s meetings, causing three senior members to walk out.

The Green Party will decide whether to eject former Green, now independent MP Darleen Tana from Parliament at a Special General Meeting (SGM) on September 1.

Swarbrick told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking it was a very “charged atmosphere” during the party’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Christchurch this weekend where they discussed Tana’s future.

She confirmed three senior members had also walked out of the meeting.

Swarbrick said people were “hurt” about how things were handled.

“They feel hurt from their perspective on how some things have been dealt with.

“Democracy can be messy, it means people have different opinions.”

She said people just needed time to sit with their emotions and called the upset within the party “growing pains”.

Since quitting the party after a report into involvement with alleged migrant exploitation at their husband’s business, Tana, who has begun using they/them pronouns, has sat as an independent MP.

Swarbrick and co-leader Marama Davidson said they had written to Tana asking them to stand down.

Davidson tried multiple times on Friday to get hold of Tana to seek their resignation but was not successful, Swarbrick said. The party wrote to Tana again on Sunday morning.

Tana had been given 21 days to respond to the co-leaders’ letter, as is required under the waka-jumping law. It means if the Greens do decide to invoke the legislation after September 1, Tana will be gone from Parliament relatively quickly.

Swarbrick would not tell Hosking if she thought Tana would respond to the letter by the deadline.

Yesterday, when asked about the feeling among members, Swarbrick said: “There is a general sense of relief in that we now have a process to make this decision.”

Swarbrick conceded that the process was slow and joked that the protracted debate over what to do with Tana was “one of the most Green Party things in the world”.

“We have set up a process in which to make a decision our membership has been brought along for the ride in terms of how we go about setting up that process in the first place,” she said.

Swarbrick said 200 delegates would decide on what path the party takes. She hoped for a unanimous decision but said 75% support among delegates was the threshold.