National has a problem. And it’s time they said it out loud. It can’t be dismissed as a one-off anymore or excused because ‘everyone does it’. No, it cuts deeper than that.
National has an ethics problem. Especially when it comes to privacy and using ordinary people as pawns in the cut and thrust of politics.
Nicky Hager’s books The Hollow Men (2006) and, more pertinently, Dirty Politics (2014) revealed an unhealthy culture in the party. Former leader John Key had a senior staffer, Jason Ede, entering the Labour Party’s computer systems to see names and details that those people would have reasonably thought were private to Labour. Paula Bennett used information she received as minister to attack two beneficiaries who had criticised her government. Judith Collins, similarly, gave blogger Cameron Slater (who later admitted in court trying to procure a computer hack) the name of a public servant she thought had been leaking information about then-Finance Minister Bill English.
MP Todd Barclay resigned after it was revealed he was making secret recordings of one of his staff members in his Gore electorate office. And Jami-Lee Ross left the party after a flurry of accusations that involved him secretly recording a conversation with his own leader, Simon Bridges, and then releasing it. Ross remains before the court, facing charges laid by the Serious Fraud Office relating to donations to the National Party.
And now, another backbench MP, Hamish Walker (who remains a National Party MP as I write this) has announced he won’t be seeking re-election after he leaked to media the personal details (including names, birthdays and the hotels they tested positive in) of 18 people suffering from Covid-19. (Rightly, no media reported those details). Former party president Michelle Boag resigned from the party after it was revealed she had sent Walker the details, which she had received in her capacity as acting chief executive of the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust (ARHT). She immediately resigned from that role too and as campaign chair for National’s deputy leader, Nikki Kaye.
For years the party has been able to shrug off the issues because they confuse – and frankly bore – most voters. And because their opponents had issues and dysfunctions of their own. Such antics do not directly influence the wealth and health of voters, and because of that, most voters don’t let the details trouble their busy lives. Ironically, because politicians are already held in such low regard by voters, MPs can get away with troubling – some would say appalling – ethical decisions because we assume the worst anyway.
But there’s no denying a worrying pattern for National. Under four consecutive leaders now, party MPs have used their privileged positions as representatives of the public in an attempt to score political points and play games. They have used private information for personal, political gain.
Yes, other parties have not been immune to scandal and poor ethical judgements. All have used ‘dark arts’, made excuses for their own and fudged small and serious indiscretions so that ethics is politics is the greyest of grey areas.
Think back to the Helen Clark years and you think of Taito Phillip Field and his Thai tiler or Chris Carter sneaking around leaving an anonymous letter about a leadership challenge against Phil Goff. You might think of Clark herself speeding across the Canterbury plains.
And of course New Zealand First has ongoing issues with donations and its foundation.
The current government has hit issues of its own this week, struggling to keep New Zealanders returning to the country in quarantine. Its ability to deliver on flagship policies is reasonably questioned and its promise of unprecedented transparency has become a farce.
But National has a specific, recurring problem: Using power and privilege for political gain. And a complete disrespect for New Zealanders’ privacy.
The question now is whether Todd Muller is willing to ask why. He wants to be focused on new policy and campaign strategy ten weeks from an election, but as the saying goes ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. Unless the culture is addressed, these sort of self-inflicted wounds will keep happening. It’s surely in National’s best interests to stop excusing this behaviour as normal, hard-ball politics and face it head on.
It’s no longer tenable for National to excuse these incidents as one-offs or the perpetrators as rogue MPs. Or for Todd Muller to dismiss the behaviour because “it doesn’t support the values of the National Party I know”. I’m sure he’s right to affirm that most party members and most MPs have the country’s best interests at heart and it’s natural to defend your team. But it’s time for Muller and the party, for its own good, to admit it has a problem. Otherwise it won’t be able to face it and deal with it. And if it won’t face the problem, voters have every right to draw their own conclusions about the character of the people wanting to run the country.
Voters who have decided ethics aren’t really a vote-changing issue may well look at National’s use of private information – information that might pertain to their granny or mate or even themselves – and decide this stuff actually matters.
So what’s Muller as the new leader going to do about? So far he has handled it poorly. His first statement on Walker’s release of the private data came a day and a half after he learnt about it and tried to brush the behaviour aside as “an error of judgment”. He even claimed he wouldn’t make any further comment on the matter. Only when it became clear that wasn’t sufficient did he go further, writing to National’s board about de-selection.
Muller also tried to dismiss the issue as between Walker and Boag, when he knew his health spokesperson Michael Woodhouse had also received private information from Michelle Boag. When asked if Woodhouse had received the same information as Walker, Muller chose pedantry and said no, rather than revealing Woodhouse had received similar, if different, emails.
The public is left with the impression he too is prepared to play games with private data.
So now Muller has a choice. Does he ride this out, confident that his party’s values are indeed more pure than they appear and hopeful that an election campaign and billions of dollars of promises will soon drive this from voters’ minds? Or does he grasp the nettle and demand a new and better culture inside his party?
Is he prepared to stand up and say, “Hi, my name is Todd and my party has a problem with dirty politics”?