Yesterday Paula Bennett was interviewed by Simon Shepherd who grilled her on why she has alleged that there has been a serious coverup in the prime minister’s office. This week Bennett used parliamentary privilege to name three of the prime minister’s closest advisors who, she says, knew about the sexual assault allegations against a Labour staffer.
By standing up for the alleged victims Paula has helped them to seek justice but only a very naive person would think that her actions were just about her interest in transparency. Within her own party, Bennett has not been shy to use secrets to gain leverage. The most recent example being when she publicly made a statement about Jami-Lee-Ross that broke the unwritten rule of politics.
Bennett was asked if she was accusing Ardern and Robertson of lying.
Well, they’re either being misleading or they have been misled. It seems to me that pretty much everybody has known for a lot of weeks that we’ve got sexual assault claims within the Labour Party, except the Prime Minister is what she’s trying to say. Certainly, the victims have told me that they have spoken to senior staff in her office. Certainly, one of them have said that they’ve spoken with Grant Robertson. To be fair, none of them have said that they have spoken directly with Jacinda Ardern. So, in that context, I can only go by what I know.
She was then challenged by the interviewer who said, “So, you can’t actually say that they’re lying, though, can you? You don’t have evidence that the prime minister or Grant Robertson are lying?”
Her response to that was to say that because Grant Robertson was refusing to talk about it then in context his silence supported her claims. She also revealed that five weeks ago when the alleged victims came to her she took their claims to the speaker but not to the PM.
Why did you take it to the Speaker and not the Prime Minister?
[…] The way I read it and the way I heard it from them was actually I believed at that point that Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party and the Council already knew what was going on. This wouldn’t be new news to them. It was actually the actions that needed to change. OK. So, it is new news to them. Or the detail of the complaint or the fact that it actually involves sexual assault. That’s new to the Prime Minister, she said on Monday.
Why is it not possible that you can believe that the Prime Minister has either been shielded or misled?
Just because of the number of people that now we know know. And we can see by Nigel Haworth having to stand down. We’ve got senior people within the party right up to the president. We then have, I’m told, senior people within her office, of her Chief of Staff. If her Chief of Staff and other senior people don’t know, why was he stood down five weeks ago? So, they did know at least five weeks ago, otherwise he wouldn’t have been stood down from his job. We then have two victims that’ve told me— Who, by the way, these victims have been proven to be honest the whole way through this. People have tried to say that they have lied. They’ve tried to dismiss them. But they have proven time and time again to be honest people. And they have told me they took a direct complaint to one of the Prime Minister’s very senior staffers.
Which staffer did they complain to?
To Rob Salmond.
[…] You said under parliamentary privilege that they took out a witch hunt. I think it was Andrew Campbell that you mentioned in parliament performing a witch hunt. What evidence do you have of that? Or is it just the word of the complainants?
It was one day I was in contact with one of them, and they just said, ‘Look, it’s just absolutely awful here. Andrew Campbell is literally walking the corridors, looking for people that are talking to the media and looking for them. And we’re actually going more inside of ourselves because we’re actually terrified.’ The fear was genuine. […]
[…] the Prime Minister, she is defending it. She said she’s happy with the conduct of her senior staff.
All right. Well, that’s her call to make, I suppose. I think that there will be a number of victims out there that would disagree with that completely.
[…] Look, they wanted to keep this within the Labour Party. If they had been treated fairly and respectfully and appropriately from day one, then, obviously, we wouldn’t be sitting here discussing it now.
Well, the process is underway now. Nigel Haworth has resigned; so has the staff who’s at the centre of these allegations; and the QC is investigating. So, why not just step back now and let the process take its course?
Because the process is not taking it’s course. We have no terms of reference. The victims were expected to sign up to the QC’s investigation without even knowing what those terms of reference are. The Council themselves are deciding what they are. It’s not truly independent, and they don’t have faith in that. And I think we do have a job to now hold the Labour Party to account. They’ve completely botched this every step of the way. They need to get it right now for the victims.
[…] If it’s proven that the Prime Minister did know about the alleged details earlier than this week, what do you think should happen?
She absolutely can’t stay in the job if that’s the case. But that is a big step to make, because she has blatantly gone out there and said that she didn’t.
OK. And if it’s proven that she didn’t know, are you going to apologise and say there wasn’t a cover-up?
But there is a cover-up, because we’ve got the council that’s covering up. We’ve already got a president that’s had to resign because they’ve been covering it up. We’ve got Grant Robertson, who won’t say what he knows. I think it’s time they came clean. It’s time they fronted up. Time they gave these victims a voice, quite frankly, not me. I would rather not be here this morning. I would much rather that they were truly standing up and saying what they know and making sure that they got the process right from here.
Press Release: The Nation