Our Parliament as a study in character failings
If you adhere to the well-worn trope to test a person’s character, give them power, then Parliament for the past few weeks has been a study in character failings. Despite its best efforts four years ago to enforce a code of conduct on its representatives, in the past 10 days the House has witnessed hectoring and dogma, served up with lashings of entitlement-itis.
What’s exceptional about this outbreak of misbehaviour, in comparison with myriad others in recent years, is the seemingly banal acceptance of it. Which in turn is a symptom of declining trust in politicians and the institutions in which they serve.
For many MPs, a little bit of power, even as a lowly first-term backbencher, can leave them inebriated and disinhibited enough to believe they’re the Masters of the Universe.
How else to explain NZ First list MP Jamie Arbuckle opining on Monday that he felt “so comfortable” since being made an MP last year while continuing as a Marlborough district councillor, that he was going to keep both salaries, at a combined total of around $204,211..
What’s more, he reckoned he’d keep this arrangement up until Christmas, when he’d give his councillor’s salary back if it wasn’t working.
It took a mere 24 hours to tether Arbuckle’s hubristic fancy, with both the prime minister and leader of the opposition calling him out for doubledipping, before he announced he’d stand down as a councillor in October, to avoid a by-election, with his council salary donated to charity.
While Arbuckle’s was a rookie mistake and quickly resolved, the same can’t be said for the Green Party, which is wrestling with the consequences of a lack of party discipline, combined with its own peculiar brand of critical social justice activism.
There was a striking dichotomy between former co-leader James Shaw’s valedictory speech and Julie Anne Genter’s intolerant, childish rant to National’s Matt Doocey, delivered on the same day, just hours apart, that not even the Privileges Committee can assuage.
That outburst brought to light two more accounts of the Green transport spokesperson’s intolerance of dissent from her views, with claims she aggressively photographed one dissenter and grabbed the other’s arm.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee may have referred Genter to the Privileges Committee to investigate whether her actions amounted to a contempt of Parliament, but if the last such case is anything to go by, true retribution lies elsewhere. While Parliament formally censured National’s Tim van de Molen for standing over Labour MP Shanan Halbert last August and threatening him, the real punishment to his political career came when Christopher Luxon removed him from his four spokesperson roles, excluding him from Cabinet ever since.
Green co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have ruled out stripping Genter of her transport portfolio as part of their disciplinary process, claiming it was more important she got the support she needed, and dismissing comparisons with van de Molen’s censuring, contending it “couldn’t be paralleled”.
Which is all code for saying that the confidential investigation the Greens are conducting into Genter’s antics will carry no consequences.
Genter’s apologies immediately after the initial event, and in the wake of it, will go some way to restoring her battered reputation, but her case represents the third Green MP transgression this year.
Former justice spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman’s January resignation for stealing $8367 worth of high-end clothing took another turn this week when a complaint was made to the Chief District Court Judge, because Ghahraman made her guilty plea to a judge who she had previously worked with while a lawyer.
More worrying for the Green Party hierarchy is an investigation into the party’s former small business spokesperson, Darleen Tana, which calls into question its own transparency.
The Greens suspended Tana in midMarch, but only after a Stuff investigation revealed her links to migrant exploitation at her husband’s bike business and despite being aware of the allegations six weeks earlier when Tana was stripped of her small business position.
Now, seven weeks later, the Greens wait for barrister Rachel Burt’s investigation while Tana hasn’t been seen in Parliament, but remains on full pay, and the party pays its own price for not being honest with the electorate.
In Ghahraman’s and Tana’s cases, the party knew there were allegations long before the media did, yet stayed schtum, preferring to wait until journalists inevitably found out.
The small-scale scandals that are besetting the Green Party aren’t exclusive to it. MP misfortune plagues every political party at various times.
What does distinguish them is a pattern of the party not doing enough due diligence on all MPs in its caucus and not being free and frank with voters, coupled with a belief system that leaves it sitting in judgment on others, when in reality it is prone to the same hypocritical faults as all of us.