WHO IS HAWORTH?

Labour Party president Nigel Haworth is facing calls to resign from within his own party over Labour’s handling of a second sexual assault allegation.

Haworth is holding firm and maintaining he acted professionally throughout the saga, disputing accounts that he was told about sexual assault allegations.

‘‘The serious allegation of a sexual assault, outlined in The Spinoff article and in other media, was not provided to the president and acting general secretary at a meeting in the Wellington Central Library or subsequently to the Labour Party investigation panel’’, Haworth said in a statement.

He told media he was not resigning but would ‘‘consider’’ his position if found to be at fault when the independent review of the process was complete.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern has said her confidence in him was dependent on the review, noting the massive discrepancies between what the party had told her and what has since been made public.

However, Ardern technically does not control Haworth’s position as Labour Party president.

Party members recently reelected him unopposed for two more years.

The Labour Party is more than just its 46 MPs in Parliament. As an organisation it also has thousands of members, several affiliated unions, and a huge infrastructure of volunteers and staff throughout every electorate in the country.

Haworth is the leader of what is commonly called the ‘‘party executive’’, more formally known as the New Zealand Council. This council has representatives from the Parliamentary party, members and affiliated unions.

Haworth also sits on the party’s Policy Council, which develops policy and the election manifesto.

As president, Haworth has broad responsibility over the party’s direction and operations, particularly in elections.

He attends Labour’s caucus meetings of MPs, and is the person MPs go to when they have won the numbers to roll a current leader.

He chairs the ‘‘Moderation Committee’’, which produces the final list of candidates for every election.

The position of president is elected by members, unlike the more operational general secretary who is appointed by the NZ Council and then confirmed at Labour’s annual conference.

There is an election approaching at Labour’s annual conference in November. Haworth is running unopposed and since no candidates put their name forward before the deadline, he has been automatically re-elected.

There is no constitutional process for removing the president as there is for the party’s leader in Parliament, but realistically if the public face of the party – Ardern – expressed a lack of confidence in Haworth, his position would rapidly become untenable.

Generally all members of the NZ Council must also be members of the party so the disciplinary process used to remove membership could be used – although this is very unlikely.

Haworth has a long history in the wider Labour movement in New Zealand and overseas.

He was elected president in 2015 after Labour’s disastrous showing in the 2014 election.

Born in Wales in 1951, Haworth worked as an academic specialising in the industrial relations and the international labour movement. He emigrated to New Zealand and took up a role at Auckland University in 1988, becoming a full professor in 1993.

Haworth also worked in a variety of positions as a historian and economist, including for the International Labour Organisation, the Department of Labour, and Housing New Zealand.

His name first popped up in headlines in the late 1990s as a critical voice against the National government’s Employment Contracts Act.

But he found wider prominence from 2005 to 2008 as president of the Association of University Staff, a union now folded into the wider Tertiary Education Union.

In 2012, Haworth was elected to the Policy Council of the Labour Party and in 2013 to the party executive before being elected president in 2015.