Bullying claims fly at city council

Ousted Wellington mayor Justin Lester has been officially accused of bullying by a councillor who herself apologised for bullying a city council staffer.

Councillor Diane Calvert has laid a complaint with Mayor Andy Foster and Wellington City Council chief executive Kevin Lavery claiming Lester continued a sustained and secretive campaign against her.

Lester said the accusations were ‘‘political shenanigans’’.

‘‘I supported Diane’s campaign in 2016, but over the last three years my support waned because of the way Diane treated council staff.

‘‘She developed a reputation as being bullying and patronising. In these disputes, my role was to protect WCC staff.’’

Her most-recent allegation – in which Lester was accused of leaking a private email of Calvert’s – was simply a case of the former-mayor giving her a ‘‘heads up’’ that media were asking questions about her position on the payment of vehicle mileage entitlements for councillors, to which Lester said he was strongly opposed.

Calvert confirmed she apologised to a staff member after a ‘‘misunderstanding’’ earlier this year. Responding to allegations she bullied staff, she said she expected high standards from staff that she did not always get.

Cases of bullying involved Lester telling her to ‘‘get over your f ...... self’’ during a Let’s Get Wellington Moving workshop in May and telling her ‘‘I will go hard against you’’ if she opposed the package, she said.

In an earlier incident, Lester threatened to take portfolios off her because he believed she was talking to media shouldn’t be, Calvert said.

In yet another incident, when Calvert indicated she was going to vote against Lester on a Shelly Bay issue, he allegedly responded: ‘‘Well Diane, I have to think hard about how I can work with you in the next triennium.’’

The most-recent case involved Lester on Friday forwarding on internal emails between Calvert and a senior council staff member regarding councillors being paid for mileage.

Calvert, who said the email was from last year, believed that Lester had been meaning to leak the emails to media but accidentally sent it to her. His explanation on the email trail was ‘‘quite frankly very disappointing but points to Lester’s ‘alternative facts’’’, she said.

‘‘Here’s one email where Diane is seeking more information about claimable expenses and mentions mileage,’’ Lester’s accompanying note said. ‘‘She held a very strong opinion that she should be recompensed for it, despite coming into the role knowing it wasn’t the case.’’

Calvert responded to the email – sent from Lester’s private Gmail account: ‘‘Was this email intended for me or someone else who you are sharing stuff with?’’

Lester was yet to respond so on Sunday Calvert emailed Lavery and Foster asking for an investigation into the leaked email.

Calvert claimed Lester’s sending of the email was ‘‘subversive, selective and unauthorised’’.

‘‘I do not know what Justin Lester’s motivation and or intention for sharing the information. This is not the first time I have experienced bullying and harassment by Justin Lester and at the very least I consider it to be part of an ongoing pattern of such behaviour.’’ when she