Bridges urges probe to include Beehive

National leader Simon Bridges says the Beehive must be investigated following the Labour sexual assault scandal or it will be a ‘‘whitewash’’.

He is adamant that what Finance Minister Grant Robertson and senior staff in the prime minister’s office knew and when they knew it should be part of one of the reviews launched by the party into the matter.

‘‘It seems to me that if the terms of reference are not changed to include the Beehive and what members of Parliament and senior staffers knew, then this will be a whitewash,’’ Bridges said. ‘‘The prime minister and Grant Robertson are simply not answering questions about what Grant Robertson knew.’’

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday the party would conduct two separate reviews – one a Queen’s Counsel-led investigation into the allegations of bullying and sexual assault themselves, and another into the way the party responded to the allegations.

The second review will be conducted based on the papers by Labour’s own lawyers Kensington Swan, and then independently verified by a third party reviewer who will establish the facts of the matter before asking for further comment from the alleged victims and the party hierarchy.

Bridges said either the Qc-led report or the other review must have wider terms of reference to explicitly cover senior ministers and staff in the Beehive. ‘‘The questions in relation to Grant Robertson are obvious. What did we know? Who, what, when, why? And what is his relationship with the man who has resigned. I think we need to know these things to have accountability on this.’’

Bridges’ deputy Paula Bennett has alleged in the House that Robertson knew about the seriousness of the allegations for some time and that the staffer at the centre of the allegations had ‘‘deep alliances’’ to him. She later told media that Robertson had not been told of the sexual assault allegation directly by the alleged victim, but by another complainant second-hand.

Robertson has declined to comment when asked if he knew about some of the allegations as early as June, citing privacy concerns for those involved.

He said yesterday that the first he knew of the serious sexual assault allegation published in The Spinoff in mid-september was when it was published. ‘‘The first I knew of the nature of the allegations that were in The Spinoff were when they were published on the Monday, beyond that I don’t think it’s helpful for me to get into what I did or I didn’t know,’’ Robertson said.

He said he would be happy to take part in the review of the Labour response if asked and repeated that he was comfortable with how he had acted in the matter. ‘‘I have acted appropriately throughout this. Any concerns that have been raised with me in this process I have dealt with appropriately.’’

The staffer has since resigned from his job at the Labour leadership office, which is not based inside the Beehive, but maintains his innocence. He has worked from home since the allegations were first raised in the media in early August.

Bridges said he wasn’t planning to name the man in the House himself.

He also said Ardern should ‘‘rein in’’ her ministers following Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters calling the matter an ‘‘orgy of speculation and innuendo’’ on Newstalk ZB on Monday evening. A note made as the defence minister raked senior military officials over the coals shows concern the SAS were being shielded from allegations of civilian deaths.

The New Zealand Defence Force attempted to suppress public discussion of the note, written by the military’s chief of staff, at a public hearing for the Operation Burnham inquiry.

The note, from the 2014 meeting with Jonathan Coleman, defence minister at the time, read: ‘‘[Special forces] are not fallible ... No question of their core skills but political judgment, lack of insight and confused desirability of their actions having a certain shielding . . . SAS credibility at risk’’.

Coleman had hauled senior officials into his office after a report detailing possible civilian deaths emerged from a safe in the chief of Defence Force’s office, despite the military denying knowledge of it.

This International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) report found possible civilian casualties occurred during the 2010 Sas-led raid in Afghanistan due to the malfunction of a helicopter gun sight.

The lawyer for the Defence Force, Kristy Mcdonald, QC, said the bundle of documents found in the safe in 2014, which contained the critical report, was provided to the inquiry only last week.

The inquiry has been inspecting allegations of civilian deaths, made by the 2017 book Hit & Run, since April 2018.