Sharma vs Ardern offers lessons for both sides

They say you should always talk behind people’s backs — that way your victim hears you more than once. It’s a lesson Jacinda Ardern and Gaurav Sharma are learning as they wage war against one another in the public and private realms of Labour’s caucus and the media this week.

Sharma has survived his first week at the frontline of politics, but he’ll soon discover this a game of attrition, one which Prime Ministers can weather longer than backbenchers.

He’s already earning a reputation for a fairly cynical timing of his broadsides, dropping his allegation of a secret meeting right as Labour went into its caucus meeting on Tuesday.

Sharma is struggling to reconcile the role he’s written for himself as the concerned whistleblower, with the fairly conceited, showmanlike attitude he’s taken to PR (you can see why senior politicians palm this sort of stuff off to press secretaries).

He was less than forthcoming leading up to his bombshell Newshub interview this week, stringing other media along in a way more experienced operators would frown upon. Sharma’s about to learn frontline politics is a two-way street: You have a platform which you can use to blast your opponent, but sometimes that platform is where you, yourself, are held to account.

His broadsides against Ardern and Labour are increasingly venomous. His column vented spleen at Ardern with mocking references to kindness, and he teased his Newshub interview with a post to Facebook snarling, “Let’s Do This”.

It’s fairly mean spirited, excessively personalised stuff, and doesn’t become a man who is, by the account of his peers (if not his staff ) fairly pleasant. The timing and the venom have begun to give the impression Sharma is as concerned about exposing the truth about the Labour Party as he is about making a public splash doing so.

Despite the secret recordings eerily echoing National’s Jami-Lee Ross scandal, Sharma is a distinctly different politician to Ross, and that gives this scandal a different flavour.

He’s a former doctor, with a bedside manner to boot. He’s likeable and kind in a way Ross was not. So far as we know, Sharma was a terrible boss (a former employee told the Herald as much), but he’s not the deeply flawed character Ross could be. Indeed, Sharma’s crime seems to be an excess of ambition for himself and his staff — a notion of which he was disabused by the humdrum banality of life on an MMP backbench.

That’s a problem for Labour. Ross could be dismissed by National as someone better out of the caucus than in — and so he was, MeTooed into the dustbin of political history. Labour won’t dismiss Sharma so easily. As a doctor, self-preservation is his business. Ardern likewise cannot easily dismiss the evidence Sharma claims to have amassed to support his allegations.

Both sides have a point here.

Yes, Sharma has not furnished evidence for his claims of bullying and poor culture — but nor has Ardern provided a neutral avenue for him to do so. She cannot claim he hasn’t a case if she will not provide a neutral court in which he might make it.

It’s too late for that now. Ardern rightly will not want to be seen to reward the way in which Sharma has raised these claims. She will also no doubt fear at least some of Sharma’s claims are true and the backbench feels bullied and disgruntled.

Like Sharma, Ardern made the mistake of trying to marry two irreconcilable things: Preserving her brand of fairness, kindness, and political due process, while making absolutely sure Sharma was on his way, first out of Labour and then out of Parliament, either at the next election or sooner.

She’s learned that lesson now. If there’s a next time, if there’s another rogue MP, they will not find her so forgiving. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Though Sharma’s march out of Parliament was predetermined the second his column appeared on the Herald, Ardern could not immediately waka jump him on to the dole queue, despite having the legal mechanisms to do so.

Her reputation for probity and, yes, kindness, meant due process had to be followed. Sharma needed a chance to present his case to caucus and reform before his suspension, expulsion, deselection, and, finally, electoral annihilation.

If Sharma’s allegation is that he has been bullied and treated unfairly by his party, then calling a secret caucus meeting for about 60 of his colleagues to trash talk behind his back before deciding his fate isn’t the way to disprove what he’s arguing.

Whether the meeting “predetermined” the outcome of caucus has a different answer from a legal, emotional, and perhaps even philosophical perspective (what’s free will, anyway?), but the fact of the secret meeting shows a serious lapse of judgment on Ardern’s part.

The unnamed MP Sharma spoke to is right: The process is a sham and disguises the chief drawback of the MMP system, which is that while Parliament is more proportional and obviously democratic, a Parliament of a hundred different viewpoints has been reduced to the whims of five political parties and their leaders.

If Sharma were an American, British, or even Australian lawmaker he would face a very different fate — and he might even have some support from MPs who, unlike their New Zealand counterparts, know they can back a rogue MP and not risk expulsion themselves. All the same, his criticism of the slavish whipping of the modern Labour Party is fair and correct, but would be better directed at the modern MMP Parliament rather than one party within it.

All parties in this system require a level of discipline Sharma lacks, and all Governments will employ the Prime Minister’s vs Leader’s Office sleight of hand to avoid the glare of the Official Information Act.

Some privacy is necessary, even in public life. The ultimate question — one Sharma has to support with evidence — is whether that line between party and Government has been drawn appropriately. Has the Government been secretive when it should have been open? Who is the Government, and who is the party?

Sharma will almost certainly be expelled from caucus next week. After that, he will almost certainly be expelled as a Labour member.

The most curious part of this scandal: The support of many members of his electorate (again, evidence that Sharma might be a terrible boss, but a decent MP), will count for nothing. No longer a Labour member, he’ll be ineligible for selection as its candidate in 2023.

Ardern, ever the politician of compromise, will find a way to fudge some conclusion that doesn’t completely dismiss the episode, even if she dismisses Sharma.

She’s likely to look at ways of expediting Parliamentary Service’s glacial processes, and look at ways of assisting MPs in Sharma’s position so they have help, though they might not have staff. Sharma himself, of course, will be left out of that fudge.

The last MP to publish covertly recorded phone calls has recently resurfaced in the High Court at Auckland. The Jami-Lee Ross case, though dealing with matters far graver than intra-party bullying, has useful lessons for both Labour and Sharma. Labour should remember that the allegations made by Ross, which at the time included no greater evidence than Ross’s own testimony and a vague reference on a leaked phone call, turned out to have enough to them for the Serious Fraud Office to investigate and prosecute.

Sharma should remember that the one in the dock defending themselves isn’t the National Party, but Ross himself.