Greens co-leader Metiria Turei talks to media after meeting with Work and Income investigators about her benefit fraud.

Labour has moved to swiftly distance itself from the Green Party, following an admission from co-leader Metiria Turei that she enrolled to vote at an address she didn't live at, while she was also collecting more than she was entitled to on the Domestic Purposes Benefit.

Turei on Thursday night said she had enrolled at an address where she did not live in order to vote for a friend who was running in the Mount Albert electorate in 1993.

"The Greens have made their bed and now they have to lie in it," said Labour Deputy leader Kelvin Davis.

RNZ Law professor Andrew Geddis joins us to discuss the legal implications around news Metiria Turei enrolled to vote at the wrong address in the past.

He and leader Jacinda Ardern would be talking on Friday morning to decide how to navigate Turei's latest bombshell, as the two parties are committed to working together under a memorandum of understanding. But Davis' comments leave questions over whether Turei would be welcome in a Labour-led Cabinet.

READ MORE:

* Metiria Turei admits she registered a false address to vote

* Metiria Turei: Children shouldn't be punished for their parents' choices

* Labour bleeds while Greens profit from Metiria Turei's 'fraud bombshell'

* Tracy Watkins: Mad, bad or bold? Metiria Turei's big gamble

"It's turned to mushy peas for her, hasn't it?" Davis said on The AM Show.

"It's pretty ugly and I just think if you're going to open up about yourself like that, then you've got to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth".

On the same AM Show panel, Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett said it was a "serious" matter.

"Is she someone you can sit down at a Cabinet table with, and have her running portfolios?"

MONIQUE FORD / STUFF Greens co-leader Metiria Turei says she can see how the meeting with investigators can be traumatic for some.

Davis acknowledged that was a good question, and Labour would be assessing how much Turei's electoral revelation could damage their own party, which has just switched leadership teams due to languishing polls seven weeks from the General Election.

Ardern and Davis had not had the chance to discuss Turei's electoral admission, but Davis' comments suggested Labour could come down harshly to protect its own interests.

"The Greens - they've made their bed and they're going to have to lie in it and we're just going to have to have a good discussion about how this is going to affect us, because we don't want to be seen to be condoning this sort of stuff," Davis said.

Thursday night, Turei admitted she had enrolled at an address where she did not live in order to vote for a friend who was running in the Mount Albert electorate in 1993.

Public record habitation indexes from the time, list her as living there with the father of her child, at the same time as she was collecting the Domestic Purposes Benefit. She denies that she lived at that address however.

"I was the sole provider for my daughter. I was fully financially responsible for us both," she said in a statement.

"A friend of mine was running as a candidate in Mt Albert in 1993, and I wished to vote for them.

"That was a mistake – one of many I, like many other people, made as a young person."

Turei says she was on the domestic purposes benefit - set up for single mums - at various times from 1993 to 1998. During another period, she was also listed as living with her mother while collecting the DPB.

The Greens co-leader met with fraud investigators for the first time on Wednesday, at the Wellington headquarters of the Ministry of Social Development.

Turei's admission she was collecting the benefit while not being truthful about how many people she was living with, was during a speech to unveil the party's welfare policy last month.

However, it was a Newshub investigation, that unravelled the details that she was listed as living with the father of her child while on the DPB.

Now Labour and the Greens are scrambling for damage control, as they deal with the fallout of a new upset that it seems Turei was not planning to be part of her benefit gamble.

* Comments on this article have been closed.