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Gaurav Sharma and Jacinda Ardern during the 2020 campaign.
Gaurav Sharma and Jacinda Ardern during the 2020 campaign.

OPINIONPoliticsAugust 19, 2022

Jacinda Ardern now has little choice but to grant Gaurav Sharma his wish

Gaurav Sharma and Jacinda Ardern during the 2020 campaign.
Gaurav Sharma and Jacinda Ardern during the 2020 campaign.

A squall of fresh allegations from the suspended Labour MP at once invites an expulsion and an investigation.  

For 48 hours, Gaurav Sharma said essentially nothing. Beginning Thursday last week, the MP for Hamilton West fired salvos at his own party, in the form of a frustrated, furious, enigmatic op-ed and across several social media posts alleging a pattern of bullying. Late on Tuesday afternoon, Jacinda Ardern told a press conference he had been suspended from the caucus by unanimous vote, for repeated breaches of trust. Not expelled. Suspended. The entreaty, in effect, was this: take a breath, hold your fire, and there may be a way back before Christmas.

The calm that followed was a false one, and the storm broke at 6pm last night. In a 36-minute-long interview with Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch, Sharma doubled, tripled, everythinged down. He accused former Labour whip Kieran McAnulty, albeit without compelling evidence, of “bullying a lot of people”. He accused the prime minister of complicity, of hypocrisy. And he went further, accusing his bosses of schooling MPs in how to dodge the Official Information Act – of preaching transparency while doing the very opposite.

As for the process he’d faced in caucus, it was “a kangaroo court in a banana republic”, he said, in reference to the non-caucus-meeting meeting-of-the-caucus on the eve of the official gathering at which he was disciplined – a meeting which he skipped, he told Newshub, ridiculously, because of other commitments.

To support his claims, he had secretly recorded a conversation with another MP, in which his colleague, by his account, confirmed he was the victim of a stitch-up. “People are scared, people are fearful,” he claimed of his colleagues.

“This latest example of releasing and misrepresenting conversations with his colleagues reinforces that decision [to suspend],” said a spokesperson for the prime minister in response. “We anticipated Gaurav would continue to re-litigate matters in this way. He has still not responded to our communications about entering into mediation, instead using the media to make his points.” The caucus would meet on Tuesday “to consider a motion to expel Gaurav Sharma from the caucus.”

That expulsion seems as inevitable as it is inconceivable caucus and the leadership do nothing till next Tuesday.

At this week’s press conference, Ardern said the facts of the case weren’t in dispute, and it was accordingly more a matter for mediation than investigation. In the National Party, a QC might have been called in to investigate the veracity of claims made about rookie National MP Sam Uffindell’s past, and whether he’d been straight up about it with his leader, but this was different, went the argument: it was a matter of interpretation, of definition, not about whether the events complained about by both Sharma’s staff and by Sharma himself took place.

That position is today hard to sustain. Lynch read aloud to Sharma the Worksafe definition for bullying and he said: yes, that happened. He said the prime minister was complicit. He made very serious, defamatory claims about McAnulty and others. He said, “the highest office in the country has refused for many, many months to listen to genuine concerns.”

In response to the slender olive branch held out to him earlier this week, Sharma struck a match.

It leaves the prime minister with little choice but to give the MP both his wishes: to expel him and to investigate what took place across the last year and a half. The New Zealand Council, Labour’s governing body, may have a role to play in the first part. But not the second.

There is no smoking gun. There is no damning catalogue of evidence. But claims from a member of your own parliamentary party of a cover-up and hypocrisy, of colleagues too terrified to share their concerns, together with grave impeachments of the character of the former whip and the prime minister herself – they can’t be blown off as sour grapes, desperation or bullshit. If not extinguished, they will linger. If you want to clear the air, there’s a big space between dismissed and disproven. QCs, keep your phones on. It’s already long past the point of mediation.

Keep going!
Image: Tina Tiller/Getty Images
Image: Tina Tiller/Getty Images

PoliticsAugust 19, 2022

A drongo’s guide to Scott Morrison’s secret-minister scandal

Image: Tina Tiller/Getty Images
Image: Tina Tiller/Getty Images

Thought you had a busy job? Spare a thought for poor ScoMo, who secretly took on five extra government portfolios – all while he was prime minister of Australia. Ben McKay explains.

Not content with running Australia poorly, it turns out Scott Morrison was job-sharing with his cabinet colleagues during the last government. Who knew! Certainly not his cabinet members – some of his closest allies in politics. And not even ScoMo, who forgot about a couple of his jobs until new PM Anthony Albanese reminded him. The kerfuffle has made international headlines and trashed the otherwise pristine (ahem) reputation of Australian governance. Scott, how could you???

What’s the story here?

It started with an excerpt from a new book, Plagued: Australia’s Two Years of Hell — the Inside Story, by Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers, two journalists at The Australian. Plagued revealed that Morrison took on the health and finance portfolios at the outset of the pandemic, which Morrison justified as a backup arrangement. “I trust you mate but I’m swearing myself in as health minister too,” Morrison apparently told his health minister Greg Hunt. What did he tell finance minister Matias Cormann? Turns out Cormann didn’t get a heads-up – and nor did Australians.

Morrison didn’t stop there. A year later, he returned to the governor general to be sworn in as resources minister, and then home affairs minister and treasurer, picking up jobs like All Blacks cards from Weetbix boxes. In a lengthy Facebook post (though only half as long as Gaurav Sharma’s) on Tuesday, ScoMo both justified the power grab – “necessary to put in place safeguards” – but also kind of acknowledged it was extra – “in hindsight these arrangements were unnecessary” – but also that he didn’t remember it – “There was a lot going on at the time.” In ScoMo’s defence, that is definitely true.

So how many extra jobs did Scott Morrison have?

On Tuesday, we thought it was three. But then the ex-PM dialled up his radio station of choice – Sydney talkback outlet 2GB – and said “there are no other portfolios I’m aware of but there may have been others that were done administratively”.

Later that day, PM Anthony Albanese held a press conference to reveal all five. Oops! Remember though, Morrison says he wasn’t actually doing the jobs he was sworn in to do, he was just there as backup in case someone got Covid or got stranded overseas due to flight cancellation or somesuch.

Oh – except that one time he used those powers which actually had nothing to do with Covid-19.

As the election loomed, Morrison vetoed a gas exploration project off the NSW coast. (Let’s pause briefly to consider the irony of Morrison intervening to *stop* a fossil fuel project.) He said he did so as prime minister, although legally, this was a decision for the resources minister, Keith Pitt. Now we know Morrison vetoed the project as the (second and secret) resources minister. According to reports, Pitt wanted to approve the project. Pitt (of nominative determinism fame) complained to his boss, Nationals leader and deputy PM Michael McCormack, who said “he’s the prime minister”. On Facebook, Morrison said he intervened “in the national interest”.

What’s been the fallout?

It’s fair to say all of Canberra has collectively lost its mind. The central charges are that Morrison has treated voters with contempt and trashed the convention that cabinet ministers should be left to do their jobs, and not be bullied by a president-style autocrat.

Albanese started out calling it “just weird” but quickly upped the attack. “I cannot conceive of the mindset that has created this… And I cannot conceive of how a cabinet allows this to happen.”

Morrison’s predecessor Malcolm Turnbull called it unprecedented, sinister, and “one of the most appalling things I’ve ever heard in our federal government”. “I’m even more astonished the governor general went along with it,” he told the ABC.

Karen Andrews, Morrison’s home affairs minister, called on him to quit. “The Australian people have been let down, they have been betrayed,” she said. It’s worth noting that Morrison started to shadow her job at the time the government threatened to lock up any Australians who tried to come home from India.

It has also spurned many a meme.

By far the most enjoyable part of all this.

Where does this story end?

The threads of this story are only just being untangled. The federal court is reviewing the legality of Morrison’s decision to intervene on the gas project. Albanese has ordered a review from the solicitor general. Crossbenchers, including teal independents and Jacquie Lambie, want a parliamentary inquiry. This is all to say nothing of the governor general, who has defended swearing Morrison into the roles. Morrison says he won’t be resigning from parliament.

However, it is clear the revelations have been unbelievably damaging to Morrison, who despite his election defeat, takes pride in his management of Covid-19 and defends it at any opportunity.

As respected gallery scribe Phil Coorey writes, it’s the secrecy that stinks. Why hide it from Australians, and why hide it from your colleagues? We can be astonished by Morrison’s move, yet we should not be surprised, given his career-long aversion to transparency.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

Still, Morrison is atoning. He has called the ministers affected to apologise. Except one. As savvy news.com.au political editor Sam Maiden notes, Morrison didn’t pick up the phone to the only female minister involved: Andrews. And he has form.

After an election campaign where he was whacked from pillar to post by influential women, and then booted out of office by them, it seems a fitting postscript. You just can’t help but wonder whether ScoMo should have asked Jenny for advice.

Ben McKay is the sole Australian in Wellington’s Press Gallery, as the New Zealand correspondent for Australian Associated Press. These are his personal views.


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