Our tale is of two cities, not London and Paris but Tauranga and the area known as Hamilton West.
The last week was dominated with stories about two MPs - Sam Uffindell and Gaurav Sharma. One a bully as a student the other, well, it was difficult on early reports to tell if he was being bullied or was doing the bullying - he was certainly throwing an awful lot of mud at his senior colleagues.
This commentator said it best, I can’t recall where it was from, perhaps the Herald?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."
It is a trifle less direct than most descriptions in the NZ media, but a good summation of our current situation nonetheless.
Two MPs, one with a ghastly past and no remorse other than for how this has impacted him and one with a problematic present who doesn’t understand how to manage people, work in a team, or not repeatedly throw his colleagues under a bus to deflect from his own behavior. Two MPs with, you would think, no future in parliament.
First the curious tale of Gaurav Sharma (GS), which has been quite confusing with accusations and counter accusations:
GS became an MP in the Labour landslide of 2020. He hired staff as any new MP would, but they complained of bullying about his management.
He was offered support as a new MP learning to manage a team but he took umbrage at this offer and said that it was bullying. There were then further issues of staff bullying reported and hiring for GS’s office was suspended.
The staffing freeze was lifted at a meeting last Thursday – but since then GS has made repeated posts alleging bullying by the party whips and claiming Labour had refused to investigate his side of the story.
After these social media brain farts by GS, and the unsubstantiated claims, his caucus team had had enough and a meeting was arranged to address the matter.
An informal meeting was held on Monday night for Labour MPs to discuss the situation. GS was not invited to the meeting as his colleagues did not trust him not to leak information about the discussion. This will be referred to as the “Not a caucus meeting meeting”, or for brevity “Meeting 0”.
A caucus meeting was held yesterday afternoon, despite GS having been consulted about the timing of the meeting ( let’s call it meeting 1) he indicated via the media that he might not attend as he was busy.
All the other Labour MPs assembled for the meeting but sure enough GS could not as he was other wise engaged at that very time, busy communicating with the media that Meeting 0 had already determined the outcome.
Yes, in an alternate universe GS was announcing that caucus had secretly met without him to decide his fate. He had a screen shot that appeared to be of Kelvin Davis in a zoom meeting, so it must be true.
That was ample evidence for NZME who published with no mention that the claim was refuted, it was just presented that it had definitely happened, not alleged, not contested – just straight out happened, apparently without any attempt by the fine journalists at NZME to check.
An hour or two later the original article and headline were updated to indicate that was being contested. But reality is a lot of people will have read the article when it was first posted and won’t ever know it was later upgraded to at least cover the most basic requirement of journalism.
Speaking of which the PM was very clear in her press conference that Meeting 0 was not a full caucus meeting and those attending were told that there was to be no predetermination of the outcome of what would be discussed at the actual caucus meeting. But you wouldn’t have known this if you watched One News, they apparently forgot to mention it even as the same baseless accusation was being reported.
The caucus at meeting 1 concluded that GS would be suspended from their number to sit on the naughty stair and consider what he had done.
Phone calls and messages to GS to convey this were again ignored. Ironically the media raise that GS has indicated a dissatisfaction that the PM had not personally communicated more with him directly, despite the fact he doesn’t take her calls or respond to her messages other than with a single rant.
To me it looks as though things have been handled appropriately, quickly, and fairly even if I personally thought a catapult-powered trip to the moon would have been commensurate with that level of disloyalty
The Sam “crack down on crime” Uffindell (SU) case was rather clearer…
He did some stupid shit when he was a student, that isn’t in dispute or even what most people were concerned about.
Many could accept that people do stupid things when they are young and that shouldn’t close down the possibility of them maturing and becoming a decent citizen. Possibly a career in banking is not the best way to demonstrate you’re no longer a born to rule, entitled, self interested, bully – but that’s just my view.
The concerns people had were:
1) SU only apologizes 20 years later to a victim of his violence, which is a pretty strong indication the apology was for political purposes not out of any genuine remorse.
2) The incident that resulted in him being expelled was revealed to the selection committee but they did not disclose any such information to the voters who were asked to rubber stamp his election to parliament in Tauranga.
Ironically he could have come out and said he used to beat up kids at school but he feels bad about it and doesn’t do it any more and they would still probably have elected him with a large majority.
Let’s be honest he could have taken a dump in the main street of Tauranga every day for a year and said “oops, my bad” and they still would have elected him.
They didn’t need to hide the truth and hope nobody noticed.
3) Despite knowing what they knew about Sam they still went ahead and selected him. It seems sometimes as if there is a perverse desire on the part of that party to select the worst possible people as candidates such is their disdain for the voters of New Zealand.
After a dog’s breakfast of who knew what when, and who didn’t tell the leader - even though it was not believable that they didn’t tell him, they stood SU down from caucus for investigation.
Now I have a friend who was taking the piss when the second case came out especially as it was still being portrayed in the media as if GS might be the victim rather than just bad at his job.
“Nick you lefties you’ll complain about a National MP doing something but turn a blind eye and defend your party if it is one of your own.”
To which I would say if you think that’s the case you don’t really know we lefties. Sure we’ll take great delight in pointing out the disastrous character flaws in your MPs but when it comes to one of our own being disloyal – that is where the real vitriol comes out.
The opinions of those on the left have been as full of displeasure, more so, at the actions of GS as they were for SU which was more a case of “oh they picked another awful candidate - don’t they know that people can actually see what they’re doing?”
Nobody wants to condone bullying but the thing is what GS is complaining about happens in many workplaces all the time. He has essentially been told to pull his socks up in terms of his performance and pull his head in in terms of acting like a politician – and he calls that bullying.
If we drew the line for bullying there work places across Aotearoa would grind to a halt. I’m not saying it’s right – but it is true.
Going into meeting 1 yesterday the outcome for GS could have been steady as she goes, suspended from caucus, or even expelled from the party. They went with suspension from caucus to be reviewed in December.
The party could not allow the damaging behavior to continue but neither did they want to create a Jami Lee-Ross style martyr sitting on the cross benches using what remains of his parliamentary career to throw hand grenades at his former colleagues.
In her press conference to announce the outcome of the PM said that in years past bad behavior by MPs has been tolerated but it is not any more and it was very clear she was talking about GS.
GS was suspended from caucus due to repeatedly breaking trust in a unanimous vote – well unanimous apart from the guy who didn’t turn up because he was feeding more information to the media at the very time of the meeting, as the PM noted dryly.
The informal meeting 0 was held not to determine the outcome but because they needed time to discus things and could not trust GS not to leak the contents of the meeting if he was there.
The tone of the PM made it clear that in her mind the issue lies with GS and he is not the victim. Although there were grounds for expulsion he is being given a chance to rebuild trust. The suspension will be reviewed with all options available, but at any time there could be an expulsion if there are further breaches.
He can now step back think about things and try to repair them if he wants, or perhaps leave quietly with a modicum of holding his head high, or he could just keep putting out the fire with petrol.
My guess is the former is pretty unlikely to happen and this is the end of Gaurav Sharma’s political career, one he appears completed unsuited for.
As for Sam Uffindell, who knows? Probably keep his head down a bit then a cabinet minister, down the track something in the Queen’s Honours and then eventually perhaps a foreign posting representing Aotearoa as an ambassador or something.
Either way lads, politics 101 - no alarms and no surprises…
As Always well thought and clearly told. Thanks Nick.
And l really enjoy your musical choices which dovetail right into the story you’re telling. Thank you
Watching this thing play out over recent weeks illustrates the following. Regarding Sharma, he is either politically naive beyond words, or has evil intent to take the action he has. There is no middle ground here. It’s one or the other. If he is that thick,to be unaware of how much damage caused by going to the media in the middle of the uffindel debacle, he should not be an MP. In the first place,On the other hand if he was aware of the harm caused, he’s just a traitor. The party has made the correct decision to sideline him in the meantime, pending further investigation,however, it’s hard to see him given a second chance in light of such reckless behaviour.