Green Party member who stood for leader suspended

The Greens have announced:

The Green Party has suspended David Hay’s membership for one year following an investigation into misconduct.

A panel found Mr Hay’s behaviour breached party rules, and recommended he be suspended for one year.

The panel’s recommendations are contained in a report (attached) released to the party’s executive and Mr Hay today.

The report recommended a “cooling down” period of one year, after which Mr Hay may reapply for membership.

Suspending a member is very rare. Unless the member does something such as stand for another party, it is rare for disciplinary action to reach this level.

While the report makes clear Hay has acted unwisely with some of his actions, they also find that he has a genuine grievance. Also of interest is they say:

We made it very clear that any member is entitled at any time to challenge for the leadership or any other position but asked if he had considered the effect on the party and the campaign of doing this in election year.

Which suggests that his decision to stand for leader, did play a part in the decision to suspend him. David Hay has done a release stating:

“For my part, I don’t resile from the statements I made in public, nor apologise for them. In summary these were:
• The Green Party is too weak in Auckland: it should have a co-leader based here, and at least 1/3 of the Green Party caucus should be Auckland-based.
• I was removed from the candidate pool because of a dirty smear campaign, led by senior members of the party. I concluded that the party co-leaders must have known about about this and approved of it, which is why I called for them both to resign.
• The main “smear” made against me was that I campaigned for the electorate vote in Epsom in 2011, contrary to party instructions. That allegation is untrue and is not supported by any evidence.”
“The Green party vote in Epsom increased from 6.93% in 2008 to 12.03% in 2011, and Epsom was one of only four electorates in Auckland that exceeded the national party vote of 11.1% for the Greens.”

Hay goes on to say he will not rejoin the Greens under its current leadership.