Former Minister Andrew Bayly said he would not have resigned had he known the full facts of the allegations made against him.
Bayly is now fighting to clear his name and claims he was misled about the allegations against him before he resigned as a Cabinet Minister.
Bayly, the MP for Port Waikato, stood down as ACC and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister after he “placed a hand” on a staff member’s arm during what he described as an “animated discussion” in February. He apologised to the staff member and said he regretted “placing them in an uncomfortable position”.
Speaking to Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive on Newstalk ZB Bayly said he was told the allegations made against him had been corroborated by three other people. He now has evidence it was not.
“That’s what made me get to a position that I put my resignation in,” Bayly said.
“If I’d known what I do now, I wouldn’t have offered it,” Bayly said, adding that at the time he believed he was in a battle of “one against three”.
No formal complaint was ever made against Bayly, official documents obtained by Newstalk ZB show, and no formal investigation was conducted by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), the government department that is responsible for ministerial staffers.
Bayly says the fact no complaint had been made against him was contrary to what he was led to believe at the time. He says he’s determined to set the record straight and he now regrets his resignation.
Bayly says he was first made aware of allegations against him in a conversation with the Prime Minister’s office the day after the February 18 incident.
Bayly, according to a letter written by his King’s Counsel Jim Farmer, was told during that conversation the allegations against him were very serious and that it was “not looking good”.
Asked about whether he should consider resigning, Bayly says he was told the issue was “of that nature”.
Bayly met with the DIA the following day and alleges the facts he was presented with were “misleading”. The former minister claims he was told the accusations about his conduct were corroborated by three people.
“This statement has been proved subsequently to be false,” Farmer claimed in his letter, which was sent to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche in May.
“The claim by the DIA that the allegations were corroborated by all three people was a very significant contributing factor that induced Mr Bayly’s resignation.”
Bayly, according to Farmer’s letter, was dismayed after the meeting that there “could be such a divergent version of the ‘facts’.”
He told Prime Minister Christopher Luxon later that night that he couldn’t reconcile the difference in “the interpretation of events” and offered his resignation, which was accepted.
In the letter to Roche, Farmer called for an independent review of the matter and alleged the DIA appeared to have adopted a prejudicial approach to the investigation.
After interviewing Bayly and those associated with the incident, Farmer said he believed the process was unfair and in breach of Bayly’s right to natural justice.
Farmer said the DIA hadn’t requested to meet with Bayly, nor given him time to respond to the allegations “before coming to the firm conclusion that the complaint was justified and communicating that concern to the PM’s [office]”.
Bayly doesn’t blame the staff member from the Prime Minister’s office for the way they presented the case. He believes they were operating on incorrect information supplied to them by DIA.
Roche, in a reply letter to Farmer, declined to launch an independent investigation into the issue.
He said the department had not received a formal complaint and had not investigated the issue. The matter didn’t get past the information-gathering stage before Bayly resigned, Roche said.
Roche said it was appropriate for the DIA to inform the PM’s office given it operates on a “no-surprises” basis.
Bayly’s star had already dipped within the Government prior to the February incident. He apologised in October last year after it emerged a complaint had been made about his behaviour at a winery in Marlborough. It included that he had sworn at, ridiculed and mocked a worker there, including by repeatedly calling the man a “loser” and telling him to “take some wine ... and f*** off”.
Bayly admitted calling the worker a “loser” and pulling an “L” on his forehead but denied swearing or that he had been drinking before the interactions. He has acknowledged he took part in a small wine tasting, but that was after interacting with the worker.
First elected to Parliament in 2014, Bayly had a varied career prior to politics. He worked as a merchant banker, founded the consultancy Cranleigh with his brother Paul, and was a director of numerous companies.
An adventure racer and a mountaineer (he’s scaled Aoraki Mount Cook, Mount Aspiring Tititea, and four mountains in Antarctica), Bayly has also dragged a sled 112 kilometres to the South Pole.