This is unfortunate. Elizabeth Kerekere has announced that she is quitting the Green Party, will stay on as an independent and not stand again at the next election.
From Craig McCulloch at Radio New Zealand:
Under-fire MP Elizabeth Kerekere has resigned from the Greens after earlier hitting out at the party’s co-leaders over their handling of an investigation into her behaviour.
Kerekere – a first-term MP – has been under internal review since last month when she was caught speaking ill of her colleague Chlöe Swarbrick in a message sent to the wrong group chat.
Since then, multiple sources close to the party have spoken to RNZ anonymously, criticising Kerekere’s broader treatment of caucus colleagues and staff.
In a statement issued to media late Friday night, Green co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw said Kerekere tendered her resignation shortly after 8pm.
“Dr Kerekere has notified the Green Party caucus of her intention to sit as an independent MP until the general election, when she will retire,” the statement said.
The co-leaders said they would not use the waka jumping provision to eject Kerekere from Parliament, in keeping with the party’s position when the law was passed.
“We have been informed that Dr Kerekere made a number of statements whilst addressing party members tonight, that we consider to be untrue.
“We do not intend to address these tonight, but will do so over the coming days.”
Kerekere criticised the party leadership in her statement to Green Party members about the matter. Again from Radio New Zealand:
The development comes after Kerekere spoke to party members in a conference call on Friday evening and accused Davidson and Shaw of dragging out an investigation into her behaviour.
In a roughly 10-minute address, the Tai Rāwhiti-based MP criticised the weeks-long process and said the co-leaders were making it very difficult for her to continue working in the party.
She claimed a fellow MP had purposely leaked the group chat messages and said the Greens’ processes were not well-suited to “bad-faith actors”.
Kerekere told members she had apologised unreservedly to Swarbrick for her remarks and admitted she had been envious of her colleague when she wrote: “Sucks that her bill goes through during list ranking!”
But she said her follow-up comment – “omg what a crybaby” – had been misinterpreted and was meant in a self-deprecatory manner towards herself.
RNZ has been leaked a new screengrab of the group chat conversation which shows one of Kerekere’s initial responses on the night: “I am sorry I wrote down crybaby.”
The comment goes on: “I am jealous Chloe [sic] has a bill going up during list ranking because it’s great timing and I genuinely hope my bill gets pulled tomorrow.”
Speaking on Friday evening, Kerekere told members she categorically denied any allegations of bullying.
To be frank I have a great deal of sympathy for Kerekere. Her original text was unfortunate but the leaking and timing of the text, the coordination of multiple members to speak anonymously and even the leaking of this news from last night and the revenge leaking of the apology text suggests a rather concerted campaign against her.
And happening during the Green Party list process you have to wonder if the motivation was to reorganise the final list.
And she is right about the handling of the complaint. Something like this needs to be dealt with quickly and decisively. Otherwise she is left hanging and damaged at a time when decisions about her future are being made.
I suspect John Tamihere has been busy trying to locate her cell phone number to have a chat to her.
This will I am afraid not help the Greens nor for that fact Labour.
The waka jumping legislation will not be used which is appropriate given the Green’s fundamental opposition to it. But I wonder if there is a temptation to rethink this.
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