One of Darleen Tana’s lawyers says the former Green MP wants the party to wait for a ‘‘definitive’’ court ruling before booting her out of Parliament.
The Green Party’s membership unanimously decided to invoke the waka-jumping legislation at a special general meeting on Thursday night.
Ms Tana’s lawyer Sharyn Green said her client would prefer the party waited until the outcome of her upcoming appeal.
‘‘Ms Tana has an appeal pending to the Court of Appeal... her obvious reaction is that she would prefer it if the Green Party would wait till the outcome of the appeal.’’
The Greens co-leaders have already written to Speaker Gerry Brownlee, who will make the final call on whether or not the threshold of affecting ‘‘the proportionality’’ of Parliament has been met.
Ms Green said it was not appropriate this step had been taken, given the pending legal process had not run its full course.
‘‘She was contesting that she was ousted from the Green Party by her own hand, that she was pushed, and that was the claim that was made before the High Court, that she was unlawfully pushed out of the Green Party.
‘‘So if you accept that that is an issue, whether she was pushed out of the Greens or whether she resigned... then I would have thought as a lawyer and Ms Tana obviously thinks as the applicant in front of the Court of Appeal that the Greens should wait until there has been a ruling definitively as to whether she resigned as they claimed or whether she was pushed.’’
Last month’s High Court decision found the party’s decision to commission an independent investigation into Tana’s knowledge of migrant exploitation at her husband’s business had been ‘‘constitutionally authorised’’.
‘‘The inquiry was neither unreasonable nor unfair, and certainly not in the administrative law sense that might justify declarations by way of judicial review,’’ Justice David Johnstone found.
Act New Zealand leader David Seymour said the Green Party’s decision to use the party-hopping legislation was a sad day for democracy.
‘‘Regardless of what you think of Darleen Tana or the Green Party, it’s important that only the voters can remove a representative from Parliament.
‘‘Once you allow one group of members of Parliament to strip the rights of another member of Parliament then you remove the conscience of MPs speaking on behalf of New Zealanders and that is not a place that we want to go.’’
The waka-jumping law has not been used since 2003, when Act expelled Donna Awatere Huata over allegations of fraud.
