Craig Young says the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act or ‘Waka Jumping’ helps protect rainbow communities from fringe extremists and The Greens need to use it to remove Darlene Tana from parliament.Â
It looks like the Green Party is about to expel former List MP Darleen Tana from Parliament over issues about migrant labour maltreatment at her husband’s e-bike business.
I support this move and the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act, or ‘waka jumping’ legislation as it is more colloquially known.
‘Waka jumping’ is legislation that dates from the early days of our current MMP electoral system, when both New Zealand First and the Alliance were destabilised by turncoat party list MPs who deserted their parties once they were in parliament and even helped prop up incumbent governments of opposing political philosophies. However, there are other examples, one is particularly striking. Frank Grover, formerly of the Alliance, was poached by the defunct anti-LGBTQI+ fundamentalist Christian Heritage Party, much to Alliance leader Jim Anderton’s understandable anger. Happily for us, Grover was flushed out of Parliament in 1999.
In 2003, the ACT Party voted to expel Donna Awatere Huata from its caucus due to fraud charges. As there was a sunset clause which had ended the original Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act’s operation in 2005, ACT had to litigate to remove its errant former MP from Parliament. Given Winston Peter’s own adverse experiences of turncoat List MPs, he used the Ardern government’s first term to reintroduce the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act in 2018, supported by Labour, New Zealand First and (reluctantly) the Greens. Given that they had had no problems with renegade List MPs of their own, however, the Greens remained theoretically opposed thereafter. That is until the recent Darleen Tana situation arose.
The Frank Grover case is the primary reason why I support electoral integrity legislation. Why should the LGBTQI+ community have to put up with a List MP defector propping up an anti-LGBTQI+ government, as Frank Grover (and his fellow Alliance List MP defector Alamein Kopu) did, for instance?
There are other aspects of MMP that should not be interfered with. I support the current MMP five per cent threshold and if it had been set any lower, unstable fringe extremist political parties like the Christian Coalition of the late nineties and Colin Craig’s Conservative Party would have been able to enter Parliament.
As it is, however, the ‘coat-tail’ provisions do need looking at. If a party polls under five per cent of the total voter share but manages to secure a constituency candidate, should it be able to top up with party list candidates? Under German MMP, two constituency MPs are required for this to operate.
As for the Greens, they shouldn’t feel any self-reproach about what has happened. If an MP misleads their party, then they need to pay the consequences. Although the Greens prided themselves on their internal dispute resolution procedures, this is undoubtedly an aspect of growing pains while they mature as a political party. Pragmatism and party discipline should rule in this context.
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