A composite image of now-independent MP Darleen Tana, and Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick, against the backdrop from this year's AGM. Photo: RNZ
"We are going through growing pains, I think that we are needing to constantly look at ourselves" - Chlöe Swarbrick
The Green Party is trying to find ways to grow for the future, while doing its best to leave this year's problems in the past.
That laundry list of challenges has been thoroughly aired - but the membership still faces a crucial question that goes to the heart of its values, and could yet prove a barrier to its ambitions.
Political parties' annual meetings are meant to be straightforward. The leader does a speech, members agree on remits, tidy up constitutional niggles, and discuss strategy for the year ahead before spilling out of the venue inspired and ready to spread the word.
Unlike the Green Party's AGM in Christchurch last weekend, they don't typically include member resignations.
Three Pasifika members walked out on the party on the Sunday, saying they felt culturally unsafe, and the rush to kick Tana out was over concerns about the party's budget, not her alleged behaviour.
Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick speaks to RNZ about what went down, and what she has planned to turn the party into the world's largest Green movement - if they can just get rid of the Darleen Tana-shaped thorn in their side.
Read more:
- Green Party fractures start to show over Darleen Tana debate
- Three Green party members quit over treatment of Darleen Tana
- Watch: Greens give Tana a last chance to resign before considering legal move
- Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick speaks at AGM
- Party processes will be respected on Tana issue, Swarbrick says
Swarbrick's speech called for the party to become the dominant force on the left. Members spoke animatedly to RNZ about being up for the challenge. Commentator Gareth Hughes, a former member, says there's a hunger to do more.
But the drawn-out Darleen Tana saga still hangs over the party. After a months-long investigation, the party's consensus-based, will-they-won't-they approach to considering use of the party-hopping legislation has dragged on for weeks - with another month before any final decision is made. Tana's recent return to Parliament is just salt in the wound.
The law would allow the Greens to write to the Speaker of the House to have Tana ejected - and this is one of the clearest cases where it could be applied. The Greens have typically opposed it on ideological grounds, but another outspoken former member, Sue Bradford, says it would make sense to use it in this instance.
The party caucus has been clear such a move would not go ahead without the support of the wider membership, and about 200 delegates were charged with considering it before coming together again on 1 September to decide.
Despite the party's difficulties this year, their polling is largely holding up. Swarbrick says the caucus has been forged in fire, but the party must also have some difficult conversations about how to increase its vote share - and will face "growing pains" as that process continues.
With the Tana question yet to be resolved, the caucus and the membership are still inevitably talking about themselves rather than the wider issues they say should be central to politics.
In this week's Focus on Politics, Political Reporter Giles Dexter speaks with Chlöe Swarbrick after the Green Party's AGM about the challenge she gave members to go through some growing pains, and the ongoing fallout of the Darleen Tana party-hopping saga.
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