That makes it much harder for parties to hold badly behaved MPs to account, for fear of what they could do.
Given New Zealand's media and political culture places such importance on caucus unity and discipline, there can be an understandable tendency to look the other way in the interests of keeping the peace.
The 2018 Francis Review contained a great insight into the type of MP who often become "repeat offenders" against staff.
"It's often the ones with low people-management experience, poor self-awareness and a big sense of entitlement," one respondent wrote.
As a former union delegate for parliamentary staff, that description rang true to me.
The past two weeks show just how much power MPs like that still have, even when there are multiple staff complaints and the party whips and the independent Parliamentary Services are willing to take action.
Though he might not have meant to, Sharma has written a textbook for MPs on how to inflict maximum public damage on staff that complain or those who try to discipline you.
Strike first. Go public. Allege that you're the victim. Stagger your allegations to keep the media interested. Attack staff who can't fire back easily in the media.
And those tactics are always going to be available to even the most junior of MPs.
Journalists have to cover an MP making allegations like Sharma's.
Not because they've seen evidence that his allegations are true – but because it is undeniably newsworthy when an MP makes them against their own party.
Even when senior journalists have concluded that there's no proof of Sharma's allegations, hundreds of thousands of people will have already read the claims themselves, and that's damaging enough.
The Labour whips did exactly the right thing in this case by intervening, but they've paid a price that may put others off in the future.
That would be a real mistake, because Parliament has actually made great strides in the past few years at improving the treatment of staff and stamping out persistent bullying.
Even just a few years ago, MPs could trigger what was known as the "relationship breakdown" clause to fire a staff member for any reason, effective immediately, with no right of reply.
It meant the power imbalance between MPs and staff was nearly total.
The reform programme following the Francis Review has gone a long way towards putting that right.
Staff now have more rights, they can't be sacked on a whim, party whips and the Parliamentary Service are more likely to intervene when MPs are treating their staff badly, and the media is more likely to punish political leaders who are aware of bullying and don't intervene.
If anything, the balance in disputes appears to have shifted in favour of staff.
The Sharma issue is perhaps best understood as one MP reacting very, very badly to this new approach.
And it's important we do not lose sight of that or shrink away from holding MPs who treat their staff badly to account.
Abusing the power you have over your staff should be something that stops you rising up the ranks in politics.
Multiple staff complaints should be career-limiting.
At the end of the day, voters deserve to know that the people they elect into positions of power aren't in the habit of abusing the power they have over others.
It's the classic first date advice – if they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, they're probably not worth seeing again.
