Jason Walls: ZB political editor on the Green Party detailing Darleen Tana's involvement in alleged migrant exploitation in new report

A report reveals MP Darleen Tana had continued involvement with her husband's troubled bike firm.

The Green Party has released the executive summary of the investigation into what Tana knew about alleged exploitation at the business.

A key plank of her defence that she didn't know about the allegations is she sold her company shareholding in 2019.

But the report finds Tana was still involved - at times extensively - and concludes she likely knew about the employment disputes.

ZB political editor Jason Walls says the Green Party is clearly counting on her to step away from Parliament following this release.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And news talks. He'd be political leader to Jason Walls
is here, Kilda Cura, Jack Adam here very well, thank you.
So another day, another Darlene Tana update. What's the latest? Yeah,
I feel like you in the view and the listeners
might be getting a bit sick of me talking about this,
but it is the big story in town. Even more
developments on this and some of somewhat of an extraordinary case.

(00:22):
The last time we spoke about this, the Greens were
waiting to sign off from darleyn Tana before releasing this report.
She and her husband we're not playing ball. Thus the
report was sitting in somewhat of limbo land. I say, limbo.
It's been leaking like a sieve. Every manner. Their dog
seems to have a copy of this report. I wonder why.
But the Greens have now said buggert and have just

(00:44):
released the executive summary, and there's been so much leaking.
As I say that, there's not really too much surprising
that we've seen in the executive summary, which is about
twelve pages. But we can now see in plain English
and black and white that a key plank of Darhlian's
Tana defense that she sold her shareholdings in April twenty
nineteen and ceased active involvement with the company then. However,

(01:06):
the report says that after that date she continued to
be involved with the company and that at times that
involvement was quote extensive. Tana has disputed aspects of the report,
but lawyer rachel Bert and the process used to complete
it essentially said that there has been conflicting stories and
evidence that has been moving around in the process of

(01:30):
making up this report. So all in all, it doesn't
actually paint Tana in a very good light at all,
and that's what the Greens are really banking on here.
They want her gone. They weren't her out of parliament
all together. But as we learned on One News in
the interview that they did with Tana on Monday, she's
still making up her mind whether or not she's going
to stay around, saying that she's taking advice from Ewe

(01:52):
and Hapu, and she says that she I mean to
be honest with you, Jack, it sounds like she's planning
on staying, but she says that she's going to let
us all know soon. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen
Drive listen live to News Talks it B from four
pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio