Curse of the Greens? From historic election result, to turmoil

Friday, 15 March 2024

Former Green Party MP, Golriz Ghahraman appears at the Auckland district court on charges of shoplifting.

After cementing the party’s best-ever election result it’s been a turbulent time for the Greens, with all eyes on how the party, under new leadership, manages its latest upset. Kelly Dennett and Anna Whyte report.

No sooner had political scientist Bryce Edwards extolled how disciplined the Green Party had been over former MP Golriz Ghahraman’s shoplifting than he had to rethink his comments.

“Certainly, the Greens’ traditional reputation for strong integrity is now destroyed,” he said bluntly yesterday, after the party confirmed it had suspended new MP Darleen Tana amid allegations that her husband’s business owed a migrant worker $25,000. The worker says they approached Tana for help, and has filed an Employment Relations Authority complaint.

“This …will haunt the party for a long time…But it’s the cover-up of some of the behaviour of the poorly behaving MPs that might do even more damage,” he said.

“There’s a growing sense that the Greens have become less open and more like traditional parties in their attempt to suppress information about wrongdoing within their own ranks. It’s twice now that MPs have been secretly suspended, and the party’s own supporters will have lost some of its trust in the leadership’s trustworthiness and openness.”

Fresh after electing Chlöe Swarbrick to co-leadership on Sunday, the party was immediately caught on the backfoot by allegations that Tana’s husband, Christian Hoff-Nielsen, had failed to pay a migrant worker at his Auckland business, Bikes and Beyond.

Former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman enters court to face shoplifting charges.

Tana’s husband has denied the allegations and late yesterday Tana issued a brief statement saying she “welcomed” and would co-operate fully with an independent Green Party investigation. “I will not be commenting further.”

The Green Party was aware of the allegation as far back as February 1, saying it planned to let the Employment Relations Authority process take its course.

But when the nature of the allegations became the subject of media inquiries on Thursday, the party suspended Tana, on Friday clarifying it was trying to get to the bottom of how much Tana knew, and when. An independent barrister has been appointed. “It became clearer that we needed to investigate whether there may have been some prior knowledge from Darleen,” co-leader Marama Davidson conceded yesterday.

It’s a second serious blow for the party this year, fresh off the back of ex-MP Golriz Ghahraman’s theft of high end clothing worth thousands of dollars from stores in Auckland and Wellington, which saw the MP resign earlier this year. She plead guilty to four charges in the Auckland District Court this week, and will be sentenced in June. It’s expected she will apply for a discharge without conviction so she may be able to practice law again.

Many The Post spoke to this week said Ghahraman’s actions and resignation were of no great loss to the party - that its new cohort of MPs would pick up where Ghahraman left off, and that the incident would be forgotten quickly.

Darleen Tana said she welcomed and would cooperate fully with an investigation.

Edwards, on Thursday before the allegations about Tana emerged, said in relation to the handling of Golriz’s crimes the Greens had been “incredibly disciplined”, particularly after several years of navigating potholes like the uproar over Metiria Turei’s historical benefit fraud confession, and apparent infighting between ex MP Elizabeth Kerekere and other party members that saw Kerekere blastthe leadership in her parting speech.

“The party wasn’t so good at keeping itself together, but on [Golriz’s actions] they have been remarkable,” Edwards said. “Nobody is speaking out, or embarrassing the party, or showing the internal problems. At the same time, you’ve had the co-leader campaign - it’s gone like a dream.”

The party was on a high as it installed co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick earlier this week. That was short-lived.

But on Friday the party’s advocacy reputation - for both the worker and the migrant -was thrown into jeopardy. As Edwards put it, looking like “it’s lost its working class moral radar”. High profile Green members like Ricardo Menendez March have been outspoken about migrant issues - Ghahraman was, too.

Political commentator and former parliamentary staffer for the National Party, David Farrar, said every party had MPs accused of doing bad things - but with a small party, and two in almost as many months, was “very unfortunate”. Farrar was particularly baffled that the party had kept the allegations quiet for so long.

“When it’s accusations around something that is a real issue for you, then it can bring up hypocrisy, in terms of, ‘they knew for six weeks, did they ask the right questions, why have they only made it public here now’?. It can be a really significant issue especially with Golriz too, they were both somewhat similar in that they knew some weeks before it went public and it only went public because of media.

“Every party has [scandals]. But you’re always best to front-foot it. It makes you look like you haven't got control. The danger for them is, this damages their brand…You can’t just sit on it for weeks and wait for the media to ask questions.”

The party has hired an independent barrister to internally investigate Tana’s conduct, but Farrar says the party needn’t have waited this long.

Co-leader Marama Davidson has defended keeping the allegations quiet since February.

“The job of the chief of staff is to [get] the basic facts, work out what is and isn’t in dispute, and then say, ‘here’s the best and worse case, and this is what we should do’. The last [scandals] certainly seem to be examples of how not to do it.”

Just a few months ago, at the end of last year, the party was celebrating a historic election win, with a larger share of the vote and more MPs - 15 - in its wings than ever before, the party attributing it to one of its largest-ever grassroots campaigns that included 280,000 door knocks and phone calls with nearly 8000 volunteers. The exit of long-time co-leader James Shaw did little to rock its stability, with popular Auckland central MP Chlöe Swarbrick announced as his replacement earlier this week.

It’s the latter that Farrar says is a silver lining for the party. “I don't think for her personally it necessarily damages her brand with her supporters. The one where it’s possibly more tricky is the voters they won off Labour. Labour was not looking that stable, they lost all the ministers, the Greens are now looking equally unstable. They might lose those supporters back to Labour.”

Kalyn Ponti CEO of Humankind, a Wellington-based employee HR organisation, said from an employment standpoint, “there is always a responsibility to do due diligence, act in good faith and respect employees’ privacy”.

“But these are serious allegations and acting on these swiftly would have clearly signalled the values of the Green Party and what they consider acceptable. So from an employment perspective, you lose trust and confidence in your leadership if issues aren't addressed adequately.”

Ponti said if the allegations were serious enough to be stood down from the small business portfolio, the leadership should have looked into the situation in more depth.

“It's a representation of the values of the Green Party, and they need to be able to come out really strongly around the behaviour that they accept, and what they don't.”

Yesterday co-leader Marama Davidson agreed that, “It’s been a bit of a rough time. Absolutely. I think that’s clear to everybody.

“We can only work through each situation as it comes through… we are working through this process as fairly and as quickly as we can.”