He is not the only MP to have faced such interventions, or to suffer consequences because of the treatment of staff. Others too may feel they were unfairly treated, or their side of the argument was not given enough credence against another.
He is simply the only one who has imploded over it – noisily.
Sharma was never going to win this one.
He was disciplined for going public, breaching caucus confidentiality and airing discussions with his colleagues, rather than for his alleged bad treatment of staff.
That intervention into his staffing also seems to have been fair: Ardern pointed to a string of complaints from multiple staff, not just one with a grievance. It pointed to a pattern – and Labour cannot be seen to tolerate MPs treating staff badly.
But there will be others within that caucus who are quietly nursing sentiments similar to Sharma's - although there will be little sympathy with his methods of dealing with it.
It is understandable Sharma decided not to attend the caucus meeting at which he was suspended. He had discovered the other MPs had met in secret without him the night before - and had reason to think that meant it was a pre-determined outcome.
But he had already ensured that through his own actions anyway.
By the time Sharma started releasing screengrabs of messages from other MPs, there was no choice but for caucus to suspend him. He was lucky he was not expelled immediately.
Ardern has ruled out trying to find out which MPs were behind those messages, but any who might have contacted Sharma to support or say they shared his views will now be very nervous indeed that Sharma starts to name names.
The reason he was not expelled was to provide the natural justice Ardern had promised – and to try to stem Sharma's outbursts.
She also made it clear that one more misstep would result in expulsion.
Ardern has to turn to the wider question Sharma's case poses: how did things get to this point?
How did an MP end up so cornered they felt they had no other option but to go public, explosively so?
Ardern cannot afford to take the view that Sharma was an isolated case and none of his concerns were shared by others. It may simply be that others were just too chicken (and too wise) to air them.
She needs to ask if Labour's management and oversight of its backbench MPs has come adrift – or was never put in place to start with.
One of Sharma's problems was that he felt as if nobody was on his side.
Caucuses are inevitably a forum in which patronage exists, where there are favourites and there are problem children. He clearly felt as if he was up against the favourites, and never given a chance.
The party whips are in a difficult place. It is their job to boss MPs around. They decide who gets leave, who does not and who has to do what. They discipline errant MPs.
They get paid more than normal MPs and they earn every cent of it. It's a job in which you cannot afford to like to be liked – the best you can hope for is to be considered fair.
In her press conference Ardern said she had had very little to do with Sharma since he became an MP – she also said that the channels the MPs were supposed to use in times of trial was first the whips, and then her as leader.
It is not easy for a new MP to simply bowl up to the PM demanding an audience. Nor does the PM have time.
Sharma tried that but did not make it past her chief of staff.
If the relationship with the whips sour, there does not appear to be a natural senior person for them to speak to. The caucus is too big and in Government everybody is busy with their own business.
In short, they don't have an "aunty" - the role the party's former deputy Annette King used to play - dispensing advice, blunt reality and sympathy – and flagging it with the leader if trouble could be building.
