Not surprised TPM lost the injunction

Stuff reported:

Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi has been reinstated after an interim judgment by the High Court.

The Te Tai Tokerau MP had sought the injunction against her party’s decision to expel her, claiming her expulsion breached numerous parts of the constitution.

On Friday, Justice Paul Radich confirmed to Stuff that Kapa-King should be reinstated as a member of Te Pāti Māori, with a full hearing into the matter in February.

I was not surprised by this decision. In fact I predicted it.

The substantive hearing outcome will be harder to predict. Generally speaking parties should be free to expel members who they no longer want to retain. But that right is not unlimited. There are two caveats.

The first is you need to follow your own rules. There is a reasonable argument that TPM did not. However minor deviations may not be deemed consequential.

The second is there should be some semblance of natural justice. This generally would mean allegations are put to you in writing, where you have time to respond to them. It should be explicit that your membership may be terminated, and why.

In this area TPM appears to be seriously lacking. To this day they have not provided details of what Kapa-Kingi did that would require her expulsion. The parliamentary spending was resolved and only became public due to Tamihere. She never attacked the party publicly until they attacked her. She isn’t responsible for what her son says.

I think their actions were so lacking in natural justice, that she does have a reasonable chance of winning the substantive hearing. Of course TPM could remedy that by starting the process anew, and this time using a proper process.