Opinion: Jacinda Ardern - the part-time DJ dancing on a pin

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern showed little sympathy to Sharma, instead supporting those MPs who were "very hurt and upset" at his actions. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

We know Jacinda Ardern likes to do a bit of DJing in her spare time. But yesterday, she was the one doing the dancing for a change. And it wasn't on the dance floor - it was on the head of a pin.

It was all to do with the announcement that the Labour Party caucus had voted unanimously to suspend MP Gaurav Sharma after he went rogue, slagging off his Labour colleagues in Facebook posts about the length of your average PhD thesis and in an opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald.

So the Prime Minister came out at about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon and announced that because of what Sharma had done his caucus colleagues felt they couldn't trust him anymore and so they wanted him out. Suspending him from caucus for the rest of the year.

He's still a Labour MP - he's just not welcome at caucus. That may change if he pulls his head in and the Prime Minister said yesterday there'd be a review of things on that front in December.

She also said that if he keeps being a pain in the backside for the party (my words, not hers), if he keeps up with his antics, then the party may look at further action.

So that part of it is all understandable. But where it got weird, was the lengths Ardern went to, to try to explain away the so-called "secret" caucus meeting that happened ahead of yesterday's "official" caucus meeting.

Sharma himself found out about it when someone in the caucus apparently pressed a few wrong buttons on the laptop and mistakenly sent him a screenshot of caucus members having a chinwag online on Monday night.

The way Ardern explained it yesterday was that it wasn't an "official" caucus meeting because not every caucus member was invited. All but one were invited - Sharma was the one left off the invitation list.

The PM said yesterday that was because Labour MPs felt they couldn't trust Sharma and, therefore, couldn't speak freely and frankly if he was involved.

But for Ardern to say that it wasn't a caucus meeting because one of its MPs wasn't invited is like having a family gathering and not inviting one of the cousins, for example, because everyone's sick of hearing about their conspiracy theories - and then saying it's not actually a family gathering because one of the cuzzies wasn't invited.

It's weasel words. And I think that's being generous.

And, for me, demonstrates why I think the National Party - so far, anyway - has done a much better job handling the Sam Uffindell issue, than Labour has done with the Gaurav Sharma issue.

The first reason I would give for Labour not doing as well as National, is the fact that Ardern knew about the Sharma thing way before he went rogue on social media and long before he wrote the opinion article for the Herald last week.

So that's a failure on her part.

In contrast to National leader Christopher Luxon who, if we're to believe what we've been told, didn't know about the Uffindell thing until it was blowing up in the media.

So Ardern had time to be better prepared. Luxon didn't. But he still did a better job - in my view, anyway.

Another reason why I think National's response last week was better than Labour's response this week, is the way Luxon handed the whole thing over to a QC for an independent inquiry.

What Labour has done, is keep it all in-house - within the caucus - and has effectively told everyone what to say and do and I think because of that, Uffindell is going to be treated a lot fairer than Sharma.

The Labour Party has been judge and jury. The National Party has stayed right out of it, and is letting the independent inquiry currently being done by Maria Dew QC guide its thinking.

Of course, that is a much fairer way of handling it than doing what Labour has done and let its MPs handle it from the get-go.

Because, despite what the Prime Minister says, those Labour MPs won't be giving two hoots about natural justice - they're just brassed-off with Sharma and they want to make him pay for what he's done.

And they're making him pay by suspending him from Caucus with the threat of further action if he doesn't pull his head in.

Which is why, if we were dishing out a prize for the party that's handled issues with its MPs the best over the past couple of weeks, I'd give it to the National Party over the Labour Party.