National MP for Tauranga Sam Uffindell. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National MP for Tauranga Sam Uffindell. Photo / Mark Mitchell
First-term Members of Parliament often arrive with bold ambitions, but their inexperience can lead to some unintended consequences.
This much became apparent over the last week, with two backbench MPs dominating media headlines in a relentless news cycle.
National's Sam Uffindell and Labour's Gaurav Sharma have hogged attention, both casting a negative light on their respective parties.
The emphasis on bullying behaviour in both these cases poses some serious questions about the culture in New Zealand politics and the quality of the candidates chosen to represent our voters.
Following a string of allegations, National is now calling in Maria Dew QC to conduct an investigation into Uffindell, after revelations he had been asked to leave King's College for assaulting another student prompted more people to come forward with allegations.
Things aren't much better at Labour, which will host a special caucus meeting this week to resolve the back and forth claims of bullying that have emerged off the back of Sharma's op-ed in the Herald.
NZ Herald political editor Claire Trevett tells the Front Page podcast this mess could be put down to the nature of the highly competitive political environment. "MPs are ambitious people and tend to be of a particular personality type in some cases," says Trevett.
"Having said that, there are probably more cases of MPs who don't bully than there are MPs who bully. It's just that the ones who do tend to get more air time once it comes out.
"I wouldn't say it's widespread, but there are isolated incidents of it and there are probably also other incidents that never come to light, because in employment issues in any workplace things like this are usually kept on the down-low to a certain degree."
Trevett says there have been numerous examples of this over the years, including allegations involving Nick Smith, Todd Barclay, Jami Lee Ross, Andrew Falloon, Hamish Walker, and Meka Whaitiri.
Looking at that list alongside the allegations facing both Uffindell and Sharma, the issue does seem to be most common among younger male MPs.
"A lot of MPs come into Parliament and are deluded into thinking that the job is one of great power and that they're basically the bees' knees. And that's where they come undone. When you're young, you're ambitious, you want to go places and you want to prove yourself. But then you end up making stupid decisions or you can't handle the pressure."
There have been attempts made to improve recruitment processes to better vet political candidates, but Trevett notes it's very unlikely that any recruitment process would have picked up the allegations levelled at Uffindell about his time at university.
The scale of larger parties also makes it tricky to ensure to keep track of the actions of every staff member down the ranks.
"This is the case especially in Labour at the moment because it's such a massive caucus," says Trevett.
"They're all just jostling for position, so you'll inevitably come across some issues."
Trevett also says that many MPs tend to come into Parliament without any real-world experience in leading people, which can lead to problems.
"They've put in place processes - like the one applied to Sharma - that invokes a staffing freeze to try coach people into being better bosses," says Trevett.
"This is one of the problems with the young MPs in general. They haven't had staff before in any great number and they haven't held real-life boss positions. So it can be quite a learning curve for some of them."
Dr Gaurav Sharma has made a number of allegations at Labour party members. Photo / Getty Images
Trevett says efforts are being made to fix these issues, but they ultimately come up against human nature, which has the potential to become complicated in any workplace.
So will these MPs have a lasting impact on the country's major parties?
"Voters don't tend to vote on whether or not some back-bench MP they might not have heard of before has had issues with their staff," says Trevett.
Trevett said the respective parties will instead be judged on how they deal with the fallout of these incidents.
• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
