Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern talks about sexual assault allegations during her post-Cabinet press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern talks about sexual assault allegations during her post-Cabinet press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell
COMMENT:
Rarely has a party official been put on notice as publicly and definitively as Labour Party president Nigel Haworth was by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday.
At the centre of Ardern's anger is one big question: did Haworth mislead Ardern when she was given an assurance that therewas nothing of a sexual nature among the multiple complaints against a staffer.
It is little wonder she suspects she may have been misled.
The Spinoff has published a detailed outline of a woman's allegations of a sexual assault in early 2018 by the staffer, and that woman's frustration at the way it was dealt with by the party.
The woman, a party volunteer, insisted she had told Haworth and then a panel of Labour Party officials who were reviewing complaints against the staffer about that alleged sexual assault.
She also provided The Spinoff with some documentary evidence of that in the form of emails and texts. She did not hear back until after the party cleared the staffer and allowed him to stay on.
The greatest confusion is about what Haworth knew and when. There is no longer any room for ambiguity on this, yet in his response to The Spinoff that is just what Haworth delivered.
Haworth's statement was that none of the complaints the party investigated related to sexual assault.
He added that the head of the review had made it clear to complainants that the party was not the appropriate body to handle allegations of a sexual nature, which was best left to the Police.
Of course, that does not mean Labour was not told about the alleged sexual assault – just that it had not investigated it. Nor did it address the woman's claim she had told Haworth of the alleged sexual assault at a meeting prior to that review.
It also raised a question that if no sexual assault complaint was made, why was it necessary to issue advice that the party could not investigate such complaints?
It is just one matter that must be cleared up, but Haworth was refusing to comment last night.
Now any chance Ardern had of staying out of it has gone.
So Ardern has been left to front on a confused and confusing morass of partial details and counter-claims.
She has a he-says, she-says situation before her. She also has hard decisions to make about a party president and a staffer.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with Labour Party president Nigel Haworth. Photo / Greg Bowker
Ardern is now waiting and hoping that a report by a QC will provide clarity before casting final judgement, but her public airing of her frustration with Haworth is an indication of which way she thinks things will go.
Haworth may do well to note that, for Ardern's dissatisfaction goes deeper than simply whether she was misled.
There was one matter on which Ardern and Haworth agreed - it was that Labour was not the right agency to investigate a sexual assault allegation.
But that does not mean it can simply ignore it when that allegation lands on its doorstep.
What will also concern Ardern is that the woman did not feel the party had given her the support she needed.
A review of Labour's handling of sexually inappropriate behaviour at a Young Labour summer camp in 2018 has now spiralled into a second case of mishandling by the party, so bad that Ardern herself has condemned it as disappointing and frustrating.
After all, those who had spoken out about the staffer did so after Labour encouraged them to come forward with any other instances of inappropriate behaviour.
Yet, in that case every extra piece of information has come into the public eye because the complainants got frustrated with Labour and turned to the media instead.
