Green Party faces internal crisis as Pasifika leaders resign over ‘cultural disrespect’

The Green Party is facing major internal strife following the resignation of key leaders from its Pasifika faction.

Marie Laufiso, the Secretary of Pasifika Greens and Dunedin City’s first Pasifika councillor, delivered an open letter at the party’s AGM, expressing deep concerns over the treatment of some Māori MPs and what the group perceives as a severe breach of Pasifika communication protocols after the death of former MP Fa’anana Efeso Collins.

In a letter to the AGM Laufiso articulated grievances felt by Pasifika members, citing their marginalisation during Collins’ passing and the perceived neglect of fa’alavelave, a critical cultural practice.

The resignations highlight growing discontent within the party regarding perceived double standards and hypocrisy.

The departures of Professor Elizabeth Kerekere and Darlene Tana have exacerbated these concerns, leading to questions about the party’s adherence to its own values.

Laufiso, along with Alofa Aiono and Vasemaca Tavola, announced their immediate resignation.

Full text of Open Letter to the Green Party from Outgoing Pasifika Greens Members

Green Party AGM, July 2024

Te Mana Whenua o tēnei rohe Tēnā Koutou Tēnā Koutou, Tēnā Koutou Katoa. Mauriora, Kia orāna, Ni sā Bula vinaka, Mālō e lelei, Mālo ni, Kam na Mauri, Noa’ia, Halo Olageta, Fakalofa lahi atu, Fakatālofa atu, Fa’atālofa atu Ko Marie Laufiso ahau.

I am speaking as both the Secretary of the Pasifika Greens and the Greens’ first Pasifika Elected Member. Due to our recent experiences in the Green Party and in the spirit of openness and transparency, I am taking this opportunity to speak frankly, giving voice to our concerns and mamae (pain).Firstly, we express our deep hurt at the Greens’ blatant disregard for us earlier this year when Fa’anānā Efeso Collins passed away on February 21. Before he became an MP, Fa’anānā was – alongside Alofa Aiono – a Co-Convenor of the Pasifika Greens Lived Experience Network.

His leadership invigorated our small Network and with his “we got this” energy, Fa’anānā brought us much hope. While he knew that some Party members were initially suspicious of him and some MPs had privately attacked and undermined him during his 2022 Mayoral campaign, Fa’anānā bore this hurt silently while keeping his eyes on the big picture: the honouring of Te Tiriti o Waitangi which would mean the vast improvement of the lives and futures of his beloved daughters, all the Southside whānau and Pasifika communities throughout the motu.

Fa’anānā’s Maiden Speech of February 15th revealed the depth of his promise, of the gift he was to Aotearoa, and we are forever heart-broken for his ‘aiga, his communities and for ourselves. As a paradigm-breaker and expert relationships builder-and-broker, Fa’anānā inspired an increased level of investment amongst our membership, and we knew that this powerful and quietly commanding leader would bring many Pasifika supporters and voters to the Greens.

The void he has left is immeasurable. We feel the grief of his loss every day and we are so very grateful to have known and laughed with him.

Once he had passed, the Party’s leadership sprang into action. However, no-one in the Party’s leadership reached out to Alofa as our remaining Pasifika Greens Co-Convener to offer her support, to acknowledge her immense grief at having lost not only a Co-Convener colleague but also a beloved friend and brother.

We acknowledge Te Rōpu Pounamu, all the other Lived Experienced Networks and GLN who did reach out. Between us, we Sāmoans, collectively carry significant cultural knowledge amounting to hundreds of years of lived experience of fa’alavelave such as this – yet we were not called upon for advice or guidance. No welfare checks for us nor an invitation to stand with the Party while Members throughout the motu heaved in sadness and shock. If a Māori MP had passed, there is no way that Te Rōpū Pounamu would be left out of and not central to the Party’s response.

Of course, the exclusion of Pasifika Greens following Fa’anānā’s passing arose from the broken and damaged relationships caused by the Party’s disappointingly disgusting treatment of Professor Elizabeth Kerekere, wife of Alofa Aiono, our Co-Convenor. We cannot watch another wahine Māori be cannibalised by this Party without voicing our condemnation of the choices and decisions made by the Party’s leadership.

The appalling treatment of new MP Darleen Tana has deeply distressed and troubled us. The Co-Leaders have again inflamed and weaponised media narratives, intentionally smearing Darleen’s character, integrity and mana. And since threats and intimidation have failed to make Darleen resign from Parliament, the Co-Leaders have now resorted – at extremely short notice – to forcing the Party to consider invoking the party-hopping Act.

As such an invocation would be against long-standing policy, this decision should not be rushed. This rush, we assert, is not because of Darleen’s alleged poor treatment of migrant workers but because of the Party’s budget.

For us, the treatment of Darleen has been deeply re-triggering, evoking once more our feelings of sheer helplessness, deep disappointment, and shame for the Party as we observed Professor Elizabeth Kerekere being subjected to a process that was reported as being mana-enhancing – yet was anything but.

In that case, the Co-Leaders manipulated the racist “angry brown woman hurting the fragile white woman” trope for the frenzied media coverage when in real time Elizabeth was routinely attacked and undermined by senior staff and some MPs during her term.

I spent a day with Elizabeth once she moved into her new Independent MP’s office and the immense relief from having to cope with the supposedly non-violent Green Party Caucus and Parliamentary Staff was palpable.

Elizabeth provided the Pasifika Greens with invaluable support, offering with her characteristic generosity a wealth of organisational knowledge and strategic leadership to guide us in developing a national Pasifika Strategy which incorporated a campaign to wrap around Fa’anānā and a road map to visualise and eventually harness the enormous untapped potential of new Pasifika members and their communities.

We know too of Elizabeth’s invaluable contribution to Te Rōpū Pounamu, the Rainbow Greens and the wider Party so we were not the only Network or individuals who spoke out against such treatment. Following her resignation, Elizabeth continued to put the Party’s interests above her own as an Independent MP. She voted with the Greens in the House, assisted Fa’anānā and encouraged her communities to Party Vote Green in 2023. We have no doubt that Darleen will, as an independent MP, continue to Party Vote Green with the Party in House as well.

The Greens’ principle of Non-Violence in the Green Party Charter has been again and again contravened by women Green MPs who routinely heckle and yell in the House, who intimidate other MPs and who bullied two wāhine Māori MPs. Contrasting the treatment of Elizabeth and then Darleen with that of two other women MPs this year leads us to ask, “Will wahine Māori MPs who are perceived as a threat to the Co-Leaders’ comfort levels and ambitions always be an endangered species in the Green Party?”

A Green MP was filmed in Parliament being verbally abusive to and physically aggressive with another MP. How was that behaviour not a serious breach of our Charter? Why is that MP still in office?

Minimising her behaviour because an apology was given rings very hollow indeed when both wāhine Māori women MPs were silenced, not allowed to be at Parliament and left with no choice but to resign. Why were they so hypocritically held to this mythical standard of behaviour when others are not?

At least in Darleen’s case an actual investigation occurred. That is a disgraceful waste of money and the Co-Leaders should not speak of natural justice when the decision to force a resignation had already been made.

Because members of the dominant culture are never impacted on a daily basis and in a myriad of ways by racism – the unjust deployment (whether conscious or unconscious) of power based on the assumed rightness of whiteness – people of colour are often asked to explain what ‘culturally unsafe’ means:

• We are culturally unsafe when we are voiceless in an organisation that purports to care about but only pays lip service to the needs and priorities of our respective peoples.
• We are culturally unsafe when we must endure the performance – but not the substance and actual practice – of genuine cultural competence.
• We are culturally unsafe when wāhine Māori MPs are sacrificed for the Party’s media optics, political gain and money.
• We are culturally unsafe when the Co-Leaders, Pākehā or other Tauiwi MPs continually disregard and flout the principle of Non-Violence with no repercussions.
• We are culturally unsafe when we as the people in this Party most close to him and his family, are not strategically supported to deliver on the dreams, hopes and ambitions of the late Fa’anānā Efeso Collins.
• We are culturally unsafe as we make this statement – knowing that instead of reflection and genuine change by the Party leadership – we will most likely become the next targets of vitriol and misinformation.

Having suffered from and witnessed actions that have diminished, demeaned, and disempowered our cultural, spiritual and familial wellbeing Alofa Aiono, Vasemaca Tavola and I tender our immediate resignation from the Green Party. We also speak for other Pasifika members who did not feel sufficiently safe to add their names here.

We hope that in time the Greens will once again be a Party that consistently and equitably lives by and upholds the four principles of the Green Party Charter. Therefore, we wish all our very best and much alofa to those – especially our Pasifika Greens’ ‘aiga who are willing and able to stay. As Fa’anānā said on February 15th, “Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Secretary of the Pasifika Greens and the Greens’ first Pasifika Elected Member Marie Laufiso.