Uffindell affair takes wind out of Nats’ sails
The Sam Uffindell revelations of bullying could not have come at a worse time for National. The party had run a successful annual conference and on Monday night, Labour recorded its worst result in the 1 News Kantar poll since 2017. The poll showed National and ACT being able to form a Government.
Just as National was developing momentum, another mess-up in candidate selection process emerged. The story is a pretty simple one. Uffindell – who won the Tauranga seat in a by-election in June – was involved in the beating of a third-form boy in a boarding house at King’s College in Auckland. Thethen 16-year-old was subsequently asked to leave the school – expelled in all but name. He has admitted to being a bully and picking on other kids as well. He appeared contrite in doing so.
The story matters because it goes to character, the National Party’s selection process, and because what the victim described was serious: A vicious attack, using bed legs. Uffindell says he can’t recall bed legs being used. It wasn’t a Labour hit job – Labour members were just as surprised as the National Party’s leadership duo of Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis to learn of it.
In the initial story, broken by Stuff, Uffindell’s victim was very unhappy because Uffindell sought him out to apologise last year, before then popping up as an MP. The victim felt that the apology was not genuine, but clearing the decks before a political career. Uffindell maintains that it was heartfelt, genuine and not related to any tilt at political office.
The issue generally is not a straightforward one. While there’s no ambiguity about the brutal and
unacceptable nature of the boarding house assaults, there is a legitimate question about second chances.
What will grate with many people is not so much the fact that Uffindell got a second chance, but the inequality of second chances. The offending occurred in an exclusive institution and the main life consequence was his being forced to leave the school.
Another boy, in different economic circumstances, could well have faced very different consequences. The disparity hits a political vulnerability for National – that it’s the party of the privileged.
The political strategy from National around managing this has also been mistake-ridden. According to Uffindell, Luxon and a statement by the party, he was up-front in disclosing the beating during his vetting process.
The Tauranga selection panel knew, Uffindell said then party president Peter Goodfellow would have known. Campaign chair in Tauranga Todd McClay knew.
Yet the 60-odd party delegates who voted for his selection didn’t know, the parliamentary leadership didn’t know and the voters in the Tauranga by-election didn’t know.
And what’s more, no-one seems to have thought it worth devising a plan to make this public. Uffindell, a political greenhorn, was seemingly left to do what he thought was best and did nothing.
If there just wasn’t a plan, it was incompetent.
Coming after a few years of selection of smooth-talking but disastrous candidates – think Todd Barclay, Andrew Falloon, Hamish Walker, Jake Bezzant, Jami-Lee Ross – this should have thrown up flags.
While Uffindell does have his leader’s explicit backing, Luxon made clear that was given on the basis that he is now of good character. That support will likely evaporate if any other events or stories, which suggest a less than fulsome change in character, or less than complete disclosure, emerge.