MPs can and should seek the resources and training they need to be better employers, says Shane Te Pou. Photo / Mark Mitchell
MPs can and should seek the resources and training they need to be better employers, says Shane Te Pou. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
Join me on a hypothetical.
Imagine for a moment the greatest political leader Aotearoa New Zealand has ever produced just entered Parliament as a backbencher, a stellar career paved with accomplishment stretched out in front of them.
(In my version, she is a Māori woman with progressive views but,for the purposes of this exercise, ideologies and affiliations are immaterial. Feel free to conjure your own).
As this newly minted MP sets out, she encounters some early trouble with staff.
Let's say she agreed to hire a long-serving electorate officer from her predecessor, but their styles clash. Nobody is in the wrong necessarily, and the staff member may well flourish in another role, but personality styles and approaches to the work just can't be made to align. It happens.
Let's now say the fractious relationship goes to the next level, whereby the aggrieved staffer complains to powers that be in the whip's office or Parliamentary Services, offering testimony that uses the word "bully", a claim our hypothetical MP doesn't just refute but is baffled by.
In our current media and political climate in Aotearoa, were details like this to enter the public arena, and you can guarantee they would, a media firestorm of the kind we've seen of late would surely ensue - and this, in turn, would brand this future leader in ways she may struggle ever to eradicate. A brilliant career, fizzled, at incalculable opportunity cost.
I raise this as a hypothetical for two reasons: Firstly, it would not help matters for me to weigh in on the specific cases of Hamilton West's Gaurav Sharma or Tukituki's Anna Lorck, both turbocharged by claims of bullying, without knowing the details. Second, by extracting names and affiliations, I hope you, the reader, can join me in assessing the issue without the distorting effects of partisan bias.
But I think we all need to do better on how we approach these matters because, if we don't, we risk not only missing out on hypothetical greatness but creating a climate where no sane person with an instinct for self-preservation would even consider standing for Parliament.
Our newly vigilant approach to workplace probity generally, and in the parliamentary context in particular, arises from good intentions. Nobody should want a return to the bad old days where too many MPs treated staff badly and paid no price for it.
But characterising every workplace dispute as bullying is wrong and deeply injurious, and I don't just mean to the wrongly accused.
Workplace bullying is a real and pressing problem for too many workers for whom it often carries devastating consequences in terms of physical and mental wellbeing.
But its victims won't typically be found along well-carpeted corridors.
They are the people who shower after work - the blue-collar, shift and migrant worker, often in isolated settings, likely without the protection of a union, let alone access to media. That's your typical bullied worker - and it does not help us understand or respond to their plight if a word so explosive and freighted as bullying is used so promiscuously it encompasses grievances as trivial as getting a few too many emails or being asked to move office furniture.
Photo / 123RF
Sure, employees should be encouraged to stand up for their rights – and mechanisms need to be in place to mediate disagreements over what constitutes appropriate demands from their employer.
As many former staffers have noted in light of recent events, the idea that certain tasks or expectations were too menial or otherwise beyond the pale simply would not have occurred to most people working in politics 10 or 20 years ago.
Don't get me wrong. I am not nostalgic for that era – particularly because, on reflection, such a gung-ho, anything-goes approach to running a political office almost always had the effect of diminishing the role and contribution of women.
But we need to draw a clear line between run-of-the-mill disagreements and accusations of bullying, which will be treated less and less seriously the more people feel free to deploy it.
We can all play a part here.
The media can and should apply more rigorous vetting before unleashing the B word. MPs can and should seek the resources and training they need to be better employers. Employees and union representatives need to explore more productive ways to raise concerns without imperilling careers.
And the rest of us must resist the urge to jump on these controversies every time they occur, gleefully weaponising them for short-term partisan gain, relishing the resulting drama so much that our democracy suffers because nobody in their right mind would subject themselves to it.
• Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour party activist.
