Darleen Tana humiliating the Greens: The rogue rookie MP handing her old party a hiding - Heather du Plessis-Allan

THREE KEY FACTS

• A Green Party meeting set for this weekend to decide whether Darleen Tana will be booted from the party under the waka-jumping legislation won’t go ahead.
• Tana sought a High Court injunction this week to block the meeting, where party members were set to decide whether to use the waka-jumping law to oust the MP, who has resigned from the party.
• Both parties agreed for the meeting to be delayed, with the High Court to consider Tana’s case on September 12.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is the Drive host for Newstalk ZB.

OPINION

In hindsight, the Greens should probably just have left Darleen Tana alone.

After the first-term MP quit the party, they should have left Tana in Siberia, sitting in the Debating Chamber way up behind everyone else, with no one to talk to.

They should never have started down the path of compromising their principles to kick Tana out of Parliament.

Yes, that wouldn’t have been ideal. Or tidy.

It would’ve meant that Tana would be hanging around for two-plus years like a constant reminder of all their recent mistakes. Tana would be the most recent (but not only) below-average MP the Greens dragged in on their list.

Tana would’ve got a bit of media attention from time to time by saying something stupid or (at the extreme) joining some other party and hating on the Greens from there, and that wouldn’t have been ideal.

But it wouldn’t have been as bad as this. Although hindsight is a wonderful thing, and that is not what the Green Party did.

Instead, they picked a fight with someone who they clearly underestimated.

Darleen Tana is embarrassing the Green Party. The rookie is whupping them in front of us.

So far, it’s 2-0 to Tana.

When the Greens thought they had Tana beat with their expensive, barrister-led investigation, they didn’t. They thought Tana would quit Parliament in shame. Tana didn’t. Darleen got one over them. They were so frustrated it showed on their faces.

When they were just days away from calling a Green Party kumbaya session to collectively agree to expel Tana from Parliament, the rookie got one over them again. Tana went to court, filed an interim injunction and forced them to cancel the meeting.

This is embarrassing for the Greens. They’re being outmanoeuvred by a rookie MP, riding solo.

This is not to say Darleen will beat them in the end.

Tana may only be delaying an expulsion from Parliament. The experts reckon Tana’s case against the Greens is flimsy.

Darleen’s argument has basically become that they didn’t quit the party because they wanted to. Tana quit because they left the MP with no other option, by witch-hunting the MP out.

It seems Tana will try to prove that by arguing that the investigation into what they knew of the MP’s husband’s treatment of migrant workers wasn’t the Green way – it broke the party’s own rules.

But ultimately, Tana did quit. No one else quit. And so the waka-jumping law probably can be used.

But even if Darleen doesn’t end up winning, Tana is doing a lot of damage on the way out.

This is embarrassing for the Greens. They’re being outmanoeuvred by a rookie MP, riding solo.

Even with all the money and political experience and numbers of staff at their disposal, the Greens are being outsmarted by a weird person with a credibility issue who’s gone rogue.

Public sympathy almost certainly still lies with the Greens because no one likes a guest who can’t take a hint. But sympathy and embarrassment are not mutually exclusive.

And political parties talking about themselves often looks a bit embarrassing.

It also means they’re not talking about all the other stuff the rest of us are, many of which are slam-dunk debates for the Greens: importing LNG, whether to lift the oil and gas ban, the impact of higher parking fines on disadvantaged communities, the review of James Shaw’s Significant Natural Areas.

Ultimately, Tana will come out of this battle worse than anyone. Darleen will probably get booted. Tana will leave as a bizarre political hanger-on no one likes, as with so many other never-heard-of-them-before MPs who go rogue.

But the Greens are getting hurt too. When they win – eventually – they’ll probably wonder if it was worth it.