Parliament must not take eyes off prize, whatever happens to Trevor
Useful information comes from the strangest of places at times. After an unexpectedly explosive Friday we now know how much a defamation suit can cost, if the $333,000 awarded – most of which will go to pay legal fees – in the Trevor Mallard case is in any way typical. This kind of detail is hard to come by (and it appears Mallard did not wish us to ever have it) given most defamation defences are not paid for by the taxpayer, and therefore their cost is not publicly available.
No-one aspires to get slapped by a defamation suit here in New Zealand, thanks to legislation that counts as some of the most restrictive in the world.
Our laws are, for example, almost the polar opposite of those in the United States; where a prince of darkness like Harvey Weinstein would have to prove in court The New York Times had published false information about him. Here and in Australia, the person who says the thing (or publishes the information) in question must prove it is true, or substantially in the public interest. That makes defamation suits harder to fight, and that throws up a barrier that victims and survivors find hard to scale. You have to assume free speech is chilled as a result.
A $333,000 legal bill is not something most New Zealanders could afford in their wildest dreams. Apparently Mallard would once have had to foot this bill himself, but he had the rules changed after the fact, to allow payment by public purse. Whatever you think about the taxpayer having to fork out for this (I am not a fan, considering that money might have been put to other uses like, oh I don’t know, mental health services maybe?) that part leaves a very sour taste in one’s mouth.
I’m not drawing a direct line between the above (the bit about the chilling) and the New Zealand public’s gift to Speaker Trevor to get him off the hook. By all accounts, Mallard should not have said what he said, and he apologised because he had to.
In fact, one of the big problems with this current parliamentary/media spat is that it is focussed so narrowly on the actions of one politician. We may well see Mallard resign over this, and perhaps he really should, given the machinations he’s now been shown to have made to avoid the personal financial consequence of his actions.
But there is another, much wider lens to train on this issue, and for elucidating this I must thank Jayne Costelloe, who wrote to me this week. I’ve talked to Jayne on and off since the beginnings of the #MeTooNZ project in 2018; she worked at Parliament almost 30 years ago, and sexual harassment ended her career. Like many of these cases, Jayne’s is complicated – she was already reeling from a sexual assault in her life outside work at the time. The unwanted advances of a very, very senior MP were the final straw for her.
To say she is deeply unimpressed by this week’s political carry-on would be an understatement.
As you might expect, Jayne keeps tabs on developments in this area. She’s paid close attention to Debbie Francis’s independent review, Bullying and Harassment in the New Zealand Parliamentary Workplace and its aftermath – and the aftermath has left her, to put it politely, underwhelmed.
Jayne saw Mallard’s comment in 2019 – which has turned out to be an expensive misstep – as a beacon of possibility; for her, it signalled a potential breakthrough in the quest for justice against sexual offending.
‘‘There was a definite late-career opening for him here as justice advocate for half the population, if he chose to take it, as he seemed poised to do.’’
Here’s where it gets complex; a Parliamentary Service investigation found the accusation of serious sexual assault against the staffer Mallard appeared to reference (but did not name), to be unfounded. Mallard will say no more about the situation, citing court-ordered confidentiality. If the man who lost his job was unfairly accused, then he deserves our empathy.
But the fact remains that Jayne, and many other women and men who have been harassed or bullied at Parliament, felt a rush of hope when they heard Mallard’s original comment. As a result of the defamation suit, the argument, Costelloe says, has become a spectacle of male politicians all dancing together on the head of a pin rather than what it should be – a wider conversation about the safety of workers.
‘‘[David] Seymour’s attempt to skewer Mallard for wasting taxpayer money in litigation is misdirected, shallow and selfserving. Why is he not more seriously concerned about addressing, if not his women colleagues’ victimisation by his male coworkers, then the current epidemic of sexual crime experienced by the female population of New Zealand, as evidenced by the 6-month waiting list for help reported by all relevant agencies?
‘‘In short, there is no help. There is just lots and lots of rape and serious sexual assault, everywhere.
‘‘This is the serious concern Seymour should be raising in the media. This is where the serious cost is, both in taxpayer dollars and wasted female potential, most of it young. Perhaps he could initiate a cost deficit analysis to the country about this. He won’t, because nobody cares, least of all Parliament.’’
There are plenty who’re saying Mallard should go and I can understand why. If he does, though, doesn’t that leave the effort to cleanse Parliament of harassment and bullying in tatters?
It was up to Mallard to guide the response to Debbie Francis’s shocking report. He handed most of the early work to Anne Tolley, who was tasked with the first step – creating a Code of Conduct (a tiny first step, really, the mountain of dysfunction that needs dismantling.)
Tolley left at the election. If Mallard leaves too, where’s the guarantee that focus on this long-overdue reform, won’t be lost altogether?
If Mallard does go, though, doesn’t that leave the effort to cleanse Parliament of harassment and bullying in tatters?