Uffindell told of the assault in his application to the National Party's pre-selection panel, but it was not revealed to the National Party's Tauranga delegates who, in ignorance, selected Uffindell as the candidate for the byelection.
Though there were opportunities for Uffindell to admit to the assault during the byelection campaign, he failed to do so, though the Act candidate was open about a conviction for drink-driving many years before.
This train of events was set in motion by the blindness of the pre-selection panel to the
potential for disaster in Uffendell's admission.
An assault by definition involves a victim and the risk of the victim going public when his
attacker becomes a public figure should have caused the panel to reject Uffindell's
nomination.
This panel included a former National Party president, Judy Kirk, incoming president Sylvia
Wood, and Rotorua MP Todd McClay.
Apparently, the most egregious error by the pre-selection panel was its failure to alert the
National Party leader, Christopher Luxon, of Uffindell's assault admission so that when the matter became public, he was blindsided.
Or was he?
On Wednesday afternoon, Luxon announced that a member of his staff had indeed been told of Uffindell's admission but had not passed this on to his or her leader.
You can believe that or not.
With the emergence of further allegations of bullying by Uffindell while he was a student,
Luxon stood him down from the National Party caucus and called for a report by a Queen's Counsel.
There is something chronically wrong with how National selects its candidates.
National MPs Aaron Gilmore, Todd Barclay, Hamish Walker, and Andrew Falloon have all been forced to resign from Parliament in recent years because of bad behaviour. Right now, former National MP Jami-Lee Ross is on trial for misuse of party donations.
The week before the Uffindell imbroglio, the National Party managed to get itself into a tangle around its tax policy when it apparently abandoned the announcements around tax cuts leader Christopher Luxon had made earlier this year.
The centrist voters who decide elections might have been allowed a sigh of relief as the
ditched policy would have massively favoured the already very well off, given the average
earner an extra $2 a week, and starved the government of income when the country has to endure and recover from a pandemic.
Such relief may have been premature as Luxon went on to foreshadow even bigger tax cuts to be announced closer to next year's general election.
National seems convinced, despite evidence to the contrary, that heavily reducing
government income is a vote winner. Recent history suggests this is not true.
In August 2005, Don Brash announced a policy of $3.5 billion in tax cuts. This resulted in a short lift in the polls for National, but as the consequences of such a significant reduction in government's income became apparent, it turned into a vote loser.
Research undertaken by Labour showed that while centrist voters were initially attracted to such a policy, when they considered the likely impact on the health and education systems it became a negative for National, which went in to lose the election in September 2005.
The New Zealand electorate is intelligent and understands that reducing the government's
income by the amounts floated by Luxon will inevitably affect valuable assets like schools and hospitals.
In 2008, National was elected and implemented income tax cuts, though not of the magnitude anticipated by Brash in 2005.
These income tax cuts were partially offset by an increase in GST from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent. This was a broken promise as Prime Minister John Key had previously ruled out such a move.
These cuts did, however, result in a series of "zero budgets" and run-down health and
education systems that the present government has had to fix.
Our top income tax rate of 39 per cent, which National intends to abolish, is low by international standards. Australia's top income tax rate is 47 per cent and that of the UK is 45 per cent.
Countries that are often found to be the happiest in the world also have elevated income tax rates, with Denmark on 56 per cent and Finland on 51 per cent.
Sorry National: money can't buy you love!
• Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
