Mike's Minute: The more Darleen mucks around, the worse it is for the Greens

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

As Darleen Tana continues her "woe is me, I have been wronged” roadshow, we might look to a bit of history for advice, or instruction.

We have been here before.

I believe it began with Alamein Kopu many years back, another woman with very similar grievances to Tana. For Alamein it wasn't fair, woe is me and I'm hard done by.

She was part of the alliance in the early days of MMP when these new list members rolled into Parliament on nothing more than a party's whim and set about causing trouble.

Isn't it remarkable to think that three decades later we still haven't learnt how to run the system properly?

It's become embarrassingly obvious that the Greens aren't up to much when it comes to candidate selection.

Tana, who got voted for by basically no one and scraped in at 12th on the list, now has the power to just hang about the place and cause who knows how much trouble. All paid for by us.

In the meantime, the party who could do something aren't, for reasons only they can try to explain.

They can't contact her, they won't release the report we paid for, and they won't tell us how much it cost.

They are twisting themselves into indigestion over the waka-jumping law that would solve their problems, except for the fact they’ve banged on so loudly about it being unfair.

Here is the most important part of this - Chloe Swarbrick has aspirations.

She openly states she can take the party and overtake Labour as a majority player on the left.

But how can she even begin to do that when she can't even run the place with the size it is?

How do you appeal to 28, 29, or 30% of New Zealanders when at 12 or 13% you look a shambles?

They're a dysfunctional, indecisive, dithering shambles.

If all they aspire to be is a minor noise maker, yapping away on the sidelines of an MMP system that allows increasingly fringe operators a seat or two, then this would be just another amateurish mess.

But when you see yourself in the mainstream you've got to act like you belong there.

Small clue - this isn't it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.