OPINION:
Green MP Dr Elizabeth Kerekere is under formal investigation for allegedly calling her colleague Chloe Swarbrick “a crybaby”. Kerekere, fourth on the Greens’ draft list, denies her comment referred to Swarbrick, third on the draft list.
The insult was part of a longer diatribe Kerekere accidentally posted to a WhatsApp group of all Green MPs and staff, and was enough to cause lower-ranked Green MP Golriz Ghahraman to gasp in horror.
Since then, Kerekere has been publicly accused by Green Party sources — who could they be? — of bullying and “mean-girl behaviour”.
Within the Greens’ rarefied dialectic, that’s not so bad. While Kerekere used “crybaby” as a noun, “mean-girl” was merely used adjectivally, applied to the behaviour, not the person.
The latest fuss follows the ruckus after Green co-leader Marama Davidson told a far-right news outlet, surely not entirely seriously, that the cause of violence in the world is white men who were born male. Who knew she had read Genesis 4-6 so carefully?
Sadly for the Greens, all this fretting has overshadowed Swarbrick’s attempts to promote a wealth tax instead of interest-rate rises to tame inflation; Ricardo Menéndez March’s campaigns against the supermarket duopoly and for all migrant workers to have a path to residency; Eugenie Sage’s critique of Labour’s latest Three Waters policy and National’s pretty average agriculture effort; and Julie Anne Genter’s argument against the new Waitematā Harbour crossing accommodating cars, whether electric or fossil-fuelled.
Worse, New Zealand’s gross greenhouse emissions falling 0.7 per cent in 2021 didn’t get the attention co-leader James Shaw hoped.
But the Greens have only themselves to blame. They have been the vanguard of what was once called “political correctness gone mad”, but is now more commonly known as “wokery” or the “politics of kindness”, but which is best described as Victorian-era inhibition, prudishness and hypocrisy.
It is good that behavioural standards and inclusion have radically improved over recent decades, to which the Greens also contributed. National was right on Wednesday to secure the resignation of its Taieri candidate, Stephen Jack, for abysmal behaviour on social media. It needs once again to review how someone like him was selected.
But it’s another thing to demand standards of behaviour from an 1860s handbook of etiquette or think that would even be desirable.
Every workplace — particularly Parliament — should welcome, accommodate, represent and draw wisdom from the full diversity of the community it serves.
The problem used to be that women, Māori, Pacific, working-class, disabled and LGBTQIA2+ people were excluded. The risk now is that only those who can meet Miss Manners’ standards of decorum will be admitted.
That includes it becoming impermissible to be angry and express it, rather than passively report to HR that “I am feeling angry”. Some may be able to do this without exception, but if so, it makes them more automaton than human.
Kerekere was born in Gisborne in the 1960s with almost every disadvantage possible at the time: Māori, woman, lesbian, isolated and — worst of all — bright. She didn’t attend the University of Auckland’s elite law school or even Victoria University’s business school but the local Eastern Institute of Technology. From there, she made it to Victoria University to complete a PhD on people who identify as takatāpui, a traditional Māori term meaning intimate companion of the same sex.
It’s not everyone’s bedtime reading, but Kerekere’s work is sufficiently acclaimed in its field that she is invited to academic events throughout New Zealand, North America and Asia.
Kerekere wouldn’t be the first highly intelligent and successful person to arrive at Parliament only to discover most of their colleagues are, to be charitable, third rate — just as they must be in any true House of Representatives.
Moreover, no one should be surprised if Kerekere’s life experiences have made her more direct than the privileged white snowflakes who dominate her party and its staff.
The same Green sources who accuse Kerekere of bullying and mean-girl behaviour also allege she’s too quick to call them racist, but it’s probably too much for them to consider why she might think that and whether they are. It goes without saying that all Green MPs and staffers are utterly convinced of their own moral rectitude, an attitude that doesn’t promote personal reflection.
Kerekere is the third Māori lesbian MP born near Gisborne to be accused of bullying over the past five years, after Meka Whaitiri and Kiri Allan. Perhaps there is something in Gisborne’s water and they all are bullies. Or perhaps their experience growing up with all their disadvantages and nevertheless reaching senior political positions makes them just a bit tougher and — god forbid — more angry than those whose journey was from Scots College or Epsom Girls’?
Maybe they even went to Parliament because they wanted to achieve something, not just add to their CV or brand. To quote someone greater than me, Parliament is not tiddlywinks, but a place where matters should be sufficiently important and contested that some people will stamp their foot and bellow from time to time. That’s true if they are a libertarian wanting to right-size government or a radical wanting to smash social injustice.
Calling a colleague a crybaby, a bully or a mean girl shouldn’t be encouraged. Nor should accusing white cis men of being exclusively responsible for violence.
Likewise, there wasn’t anything good about former National MP Nick Smith’s rants, Simon Bridges’ dismissal of a backbencher as “f — ing useless”, or Todd Muller’s equally accurate running down of a colleague to a journalist.
But likewise, these aren’t the high crimes that the Greens, the Grey Lynn liberal elite, the HR industry and outfits like the Employment Court or Human Rights Tribunal believe.
In the short term, the fixation on such trivia risks overshadowing discussion of more substantial issues, such as the ones Swarbrick, Sage, Genter, Menéndez March and Shaw have been trying to push.
Excessive puritanism and “kindness” also creates hypocrisy in organisations, with people no longer saying what they think or expressing what they feel but putting on masks. That doesn’t help, but undermines the efficacy of teams, creating a blandness and groupthink nearly as commercially and politically dangerous as when everyone was a white male who came from the same schools.
It means, as we are already seeing, only passionless careerists making it to Parliament or senior positions.
Parliament needs more, not fewer, people like Kerekere. She and her colleagues would be best just to shrug and move on.
The Greens have more urgent priorities, like staying over 5 per cent, than micromanaging the language of their one MP who genuinely brings diversity rather than just its veneer.
- Matthew Hooton has previously worked for the National and Act parties, and the Mayor of Auckland.
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