The Green Party's 'dead rat' is back: A brief history of waka jumping

Tuesday, 9 July 2024

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick holds a press conference, MPs Teanau Tuiono and Ricardo Menéndez March at her side, about the expulsion of Darleen Tana from the Green Party.

The Green Party expelled Darleen Tana from the party on Monday, or the ousted MP might argue she resigned first, after a near four-month investigation into her handling of claims of migrant exploitation at her husband’s business. But will Tana remain in Parliament? It might come down to the infamous “waka jumping” law, a “dead rat” the Green Party already swallowed once.

ANALYSIS: Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick held a press conference at Parliament on Monday afternoon to announce Darleen Tana had been voted out of the Green Party by its MPs, though Tana also resigned herself, after the party considered a report into her conduct relating to migrant exploitation claims linked to her husband’s business, reported by Stuff in March. Swarbrick repeatedly urged Tana to resign from Parliament altogether, however there has been no word from Tana on what she intends to do.

Chloe Swarbrick on the cost of the Darleen Tana investigation

Tana could now remain in the House as an independent MP, as has happened in other cases of party defection and expulsion in recent years: Gaurav Sharma, Elizabeth Kerekere, Jami-Lee Ross. But this prospect raises another vexed question: could the waka-jumping, or party hopping, law be triggered? This part of the Electoral Act could be used by the Green Party to try force Tana out of Parliament and bring a new Green MP in. But the law, which manages to be both complex and vague at the same time, has a contentious past. The Green Party, long opposed to the idea of such law, voted it through as part of Labour-coalition Government in 2018. It was deemed a “dead rat” the Green Party was forced to swallow.

Will the “dead rat” be reanimated by the Green Party in order to push Tana out?Swarbrick would not say, having put the decision firmly at Tana’s feet. But recent history suggests it would be difficult to effectively use the law any way. In 2023, senior Labour MP Meka Whaitiri defected to Te Pāti Māori, sort of. She was effectively treated as an independent MP for the purposes of Parliament, but stood with her party of choice on all matters. The waka-jumping law was not triggered. The Speaker at the time, Adrian Rurawhe, would not release the correspondence that informed his decision.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick walks into a press conference on Monday.

Speaker Gerry Brownlee won’t comment on Tana’s status as an MP. He’s currently in Sri Lanka, leading a delegation of MPs who are engaging in some inter-parliamentary diplomacy. If Tana decides to resign from Parliament, the Green Party may bring in Benjamin Doyle, a Hamilton teacher who is next on the party list. Regardless, the matter will have to be settled within two weeks, by Tuesday, July 23, when Parliament is set to return from a three-week long recess.

An interesting side note: when the waka-jumping law was debated in Parliament again in 2021, National MP Chris Bishop promised the party would repeal it if elected. Bishop did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, but comment from Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said National remained “not in favour” of the law, but had “bigger priorities”. National has long opposed the waka-jumping provision as anti-democratic, but its repeal has not featured in the Government’s agenda since elected in November. That might be because Winston Peters is at the Cabinet table; he sought the current law when in coalition with Labour in 2018.

Why would an MP who once defected from his own party (in Peters’ case National) want such a law? Insurance. Former National MP Nick Smith said back in 2020 that Peters was worried about a repeat of the late-90s, when MPs in his party split to keep the Jenny Shipley Government intact, after Shipley and Peters fell out.