Moralising over Parliament is a luxury many NZers simply don’t have

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
40
1573

Politicians ‘get drunk’ on power, have relationships with staff – Ali Mau

Workplace relationships among politicians and their staff could be due to the dominance they have over their employees.

Journalist Ali Mau, who investigates sexual harassment in New Zealand, says politicians can “get drunk” on the power they have and enter into a relationship with staff that has a power imbalance.

Her comments come as Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway was stripped of his ministerial portfolios on Wednesday over a relationship he had with a former staff member over a 12-month period.

This sudden eruption of criticism at the Culture of Parliament seems like self indulgent wank quite frankly.

Politics is worth saving. Is Parliament?

What an awful place.

That’s what any right-thinking individual would have to think about Parliament reading the horrid river of news stories from the last month.

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Look, Walker was played by Boag, Falloon was an ugly lying dick with compulsion problems and Ian Lees-Galloway had a run of the mill affair. The National Party MP sins were far worse than Iain’s and the only real issue here is the way Judith weaponised the information she magically received in order to distract from her handling of Falloon.

I appreciate for the woke that the only way a man can have consensual sex with a woman in the work place is if the woman is older and uglier than the man and they promise to only orgasm in Te Reo. Insightful cutting jokes aside, this puritan moralising is 18th century.

I can’t tell the difference between the revenge fantasies of the Woke or Sensible Sentencing Trust any longer.

Parliament is run by human beings, and human beings fuck up. If the fuck ups are malicious abuses of power that have wide ranging implications and break the law, throw the book at them but to suddenly plunge into this pitiful ‘what is to be done’ routine over actions that are more shabby behaviour than war crimes highlights how much micro-aggression policing subjective rage has replaced any nuanced sense of reflection.

In the media feeding frenzy there is no objectivity.

If you’re aghast at the ‘toxicity’ of Parliament & wish to spend energy hand wringing – do it the fuck away from me – we need to be debating actual issues of climate change, the  impact of Covid & real poverty and inequality – getting bogged down in moralising is a luxury many NZers simply don’t have.

It is deeply egregious to me that we are facing one of the largest economic and social challenges of our lifetime with the post pandemic recovery and we are wasting time over who slept with who.

Is this really what we have become?

 

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40 COMMENTS

  1. The answer to your last question is yes. This is Western politics 101 unfortunately as we have become so tribal in our political beliefs. Remember when you could have a couple of beers and debate politics at Shadows and the person on the other side would grab the next round? I do admittedly it was the mid 90’s, Kurt Cobain was still alive, you talked to the opposite sex as opposed to swiping left or right and no one had mobile phones.

    Humanity has been dropped for pure identity politics and we are lesser for it.

  2. A newspaper editor in the Far North, once said to me about a well known local affair between work colleagues, in rather crude terms–“you don’t get your meat where you get your bread…” other lumpen wisdom of this sort has emerged on right wing blogs too, that being caught bonking while human is not a great crime. And really, human attraction does cross many boundaries whatever public service guidelines might say.

    It is preferable though that people in positions of power keep their hands to themselves, it was not a waitress that pulled John Key’s hair was it?

    Judith Collins may come to regret playing the ILG card a little too early–the PM has boxed her in on the issue of affairs with subordinates now and for the foreseeable future. It was a queasy spectacle watching Dunky ask the patsy question in such an obvious manner–what a turd.

    • On the contrary – it’s the PM that has boxed herself into a corner. Fidelity and moral compasses usually have a particularly nasty way of working their way back to the sender.

      • I have made my opinion known on morals.
        The difficulty you have though Frank is that these two cases are very different, why?
        One is a sordid affair, the other is a possible criminal prosecution.
        So Tiger mountain is very much correct by way of the type of event, the PM has boxed her in on the issue of affairs with subordinates now and for the foreseeable future. A day is a long time in politics, what worked yesterday for Collins is now history as a 5th victim has come forward in the Falloon case and the police are now looking at a criminal prosecution.

        • I’d argue Judith is far more comfortable with a zero tolerance environment than Jacinda and placing the morals to the side would be far happier than Jacinda right now. The media narrative has moved from National in disarray to Parliament in shambles. This was further highlighted by Winston’s geriatric rants over the past week as he attempts to jump the shark.

          I don’t dispute from a moral perspective that Buffoon’s indiscretions are considerably more vile than, what on the surface was a standard ‘office’ affair. I do dispute however that strategically the PM won this round. Time will tell however Labour has a lot more to lose if this goes nuclear hence why it has died down today.

          From a political point of view taking a pawn (porn?) but losing a bishop can’t be considered a success.

    • TM I’m guessing who that Far North ed was and no need to know more. And do we know where the balance of power in a two person relationship is? They know but it can see-saw depending on time. There are some unreal rules about matters of the heart. There is the problem of a GP in an isolated area, everyone may be his/her patient, and he/she is not supposed to have a relationship with a patient even after some time has passed, or the nurse – that would be unprofessional. Give people a break in the wall, even if just a discreet tiny door.

  3. The NZ National Party are using ‘copycat sexual scandals” to attempt to bring down the NZ Government in a copycat style just as the “we too” movement in USA was set-up using, beginning with the attempt to stop the Republican Party having control of the congress before the midterm US elections in 2018 attaching Judge elect Brett Kavenagh in an attempt to impeach him.

    A warning was sent then that the funding of the Me Too movement of funded by a convicted criminal Billionaire named as ‘George Soros’ who often funded groups to upset countries with political policies he disagreed with.

    Money is power to Soros, so do we in NZ want this influence here??????

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_Supreme_Court_nomination

    The Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Judge Kavanaugh and heard witness testimonies concerning his nomination to the Supreme Court over the course of a four-day hearing, September 4–7, 2018.[1] Several days later, it was revealed that Christine Blasey Ford had written a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein in July accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault while they were both in high school in 1982. The Committee postponed its vote and invited both Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford to appear at public hearing. In the interim, two other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, accused Kavanaugh of separate past instances of sexual assault.[2]

    • Absolutely.
      Of more interest, looking at the way the Opposition Leader instinctively and compulsively responded to the Falloon scandal, means her “election campaign” is already doomed.
      No costed well though out policy. Just dead cats, fed via her usual sources.
      But then the Nats knew this would be her modus operandi already, didn’t they?
      They know they have lost 2020. But the beauty of the Judipath is she will shore up the hardcore “blue-no-matter-who” brain dead Nat vote and, after the Election, she’s goneburger – and they get rid of a perennial thorn in their side…..perhaps 😉

  5. On a personal level, I feel strongly about infidelity. I know what it feels like to have a partner cheat on me and I’ve witnessed the heartbreak and carnage on others when they have been on the receiving end. I would never condone the action but there are in my opinion, different levels of infidelity. On the bottom end would be a one off. A Christmas work party for example where alcohol was involved and things got carried away. As bad as it is, this could be forgivable. Much higher up the scale is long term cheating. The sort of cheating where you have to arrange your life around it with all that entails. Lying to your partner every day while looking them in the eye is a deal breaker especially if there is a family involved.

    I don’t however pass moral judgments on what others should or shouldn’t do. They have their own “normal” and set of values etc along with their style of relationship. It’s a very personal thing. Whatever the case may be, there is one clear fact. Infidelity is light years away from being on the same level as something like a 37 year old married man sending pornography to multiple young women.

    What I find deeply troubling about the actions of Ian Lees-Galloway is how this very private situation between consenting adults became available for public consumption. That is especially so when the infidelity ended some time ago. It has National Party dirty politics all over it. There is also no doubt that the National Party has sat on this information until it could best used for their own purpose. That being to throw a labour party minister under the bus during an election campaign and or to divert attention away from their own reprehensible conduct. The fact these details have been released in the very same week as the conduct of Andrew Falloon was exposed is absolutely NO coincidence. NZ needs to understand exactly how dirty politics are involved here.

    In May, Gerry Brownstain set up an “intelligence unit” to “dig up information on their political opponents during the 2020 election campaign”. See link below. Brownstain was adamant this “unit” was not about “dirty politics” but as is with almost everything the Latrine Rodents spout off, you just can’t believe a word of it. I’m certain Ian Lees-Galloway is the first scalp of that “intelligence unit”. No doubt Brownstain was congratulating himself late into the night with repeated visits to the buffet table. Ian Lees-Galloway has nobody to blame for his actions but himself but the way they have been served up for public consumption is vile and underhanded which sums up the National Party.

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/05/national-sets-up-intelligence-unit-to-dig-up-info-on-political-opponents-during-2020-election-campaign.html

    • You have to remember Labour and their enablers started this whole mess this time as a misguided attempt to halt any progress Judith was making with the electorate. Falloon (or Buffoon as i like to call him) absolutely deserves everything coming his way however if you don’t believe there was Labour-party operatives involved and the Prime Minister’s office knew about this before it dropped i’ve got a fully-funded light rail for Auckland to sell you.

      Point is both sides should now take a breather and tell their operatives no more. There is no winners only losers with this course of action

      • You have no evidence for this Frank. Nor is there a history of Labour doing this sort of thing. REad Nikcy Hager’s Dirty Politics and once informed feel free to comment again

        • Yawn – I remember Mike Williams searching the globe for dirt on John Key who also got his rubbish bins ‘searched’ regularly prior to being PM.

          But please keep thinking Labour’s shit doesn’t stink. Journalists were primed when the ‘Buffoon’ story broke.

      • “You have to remember Labour and their enablers started this whole mess”
        So who was responsible for leaking Winstons pension details in 2017? You need to remember National are the enablers however if you don’t believe there was National party operatives involved and the Collin’s office knew about this before it dropped i’ve got one of Bridges 10 bridges to build for you Frank.

        Brownlee even has a dark arts operative team for the dirty work.

        • Hahahahaha – of course she knew. Hell most of parliament knew! Read all my posts I have never disputed Judith didn’t know nor wasn’t involved in the hit. It was too clean, too precise to think otherwise. Given this I find it impossible to believe Jacinda knew nothing about this nor any of her office or senior MPs….

          As for the pension leaking – This was sloppy, lazy and ill-thought through and in the end caused the loss of the treasury benches. As big an own goal as you get. Sure as hell was National and thank god the low-rent, no-talent time instigators of this hit job are now gone. Trust me I am no fan of dumb and dumber as I think of them nor the Helen Clark economic acolyte that was controlling from the above.

          I still find it amazing that you all think Labour’s shit doesn’t stink and that they weren’t involved in the ‘Buffoon’ incident.

      • Shakespeare I think- “There are none so blind as …” can’t remember the rest but pretty sure it was Tanktypes he was writing about.

    • More likely it was common knowledge to a number of people and just used to deflect attention from National’s problems as you and others suggest.
      There will be bound to be other indiscretions to access undoubtably . Now that Judith is on the job watch this space.
      D J S

  6. Good one Martyn
    On “everyone is equal” Winston Churchill once remarked that ” no two men can converse together for 5 minutes without their inequality becoming evident” (not exact wording probably). That also applies to every single relationship between men and women. The balance may not always be as it appears at first and is certainly gender neutral and who is to judge which way or how much the scales should be allowed to tip before the relationship is offensive to society. There are only two people who’s opinion on the right or wrong of a sexual relationship between adults matters with possibly third and fourth if there are permanent partners in the background who are being cheated on, so that the relationship that is central to their lives is not as they imagine it to be. Their right is to know if their partner is unfaithful but it isn’t anyone else’s business.
    It is also a point that very often very successful people have a quiet partner in the background who is an essential component of their success.
    D J S

    • Winston Churchill is not a person who had the moral base to be telling others how to think.
      A very corrupt gambler who has played a pivotal part in the mess in the Middle East today and a legacy of resource theft through India. Europe, the Middle East and Commonwealth. A despicable character lionised by the profiteers of war.

  7. My biggest concern for the time after September is, whether the new govt can keep us Covid-free. The present government’s achievement of that is little short of phenomenal. But there are some politicians and political influencers who value money over human lives and who would push to have the border open asap, regardless of the social cost.

    • “A little short of phenomenal ”

      But Hosking said it was pure luck we are covid-19 free. I just dont know who to believe.

  8. Again, this office romance business yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with moralising or cleaning up parliament and everything to do with a self-indulgent bitchy leader of the oppositions’ brain explosion. Like a cornered rat, biting anything it sees or in her case hitting the nuclear button to take the heat off her and her dirty politics party by using …dirty politics.

    Judith Collins is an unpleasant and unwanted blast from the past. Her political morals are a cesspool in their own right and the longer she remains the more the putrid corpse-like smell of Nationals dirty politics returns and the more politics and parliament goes downhill. And if no one cares about that then think of the otherwise excellent persons this place could or should have attracted to better this country that have been turned off completely thinking the place is nothing more than a leper colony. And why people cannot be bothered voting.

    Collins has now demonstrated beyond any doubt, she needs to go more than most.

    • hear hear !!! x-ray. Where are the forward thinkers? Where are the technically literate visionaries we so desperately need right now. The Administrative animals? the Engineers the educators for the future? The people who can see the big picture and plan for it?
      Had gutsful of overseas consultants with no effing idea of our unique weather patterns and geography and climate?? I know I have. I am sick to death of non NZ born experts who don’t know shit from clay telling us how to organize our country. Especially while our young and truly brilliant leave NZ in droves.

      • I agree with you Shona.
        Totally underwhelming vision and ingenuity on infrastructure investment.
        Blue wish to tarmac New Zealand. Nothing more to offer.
        I hope Red have more than that in reserve to announce prior to the election.
        I hope.

    • Well X-ray. Some people in NZ would prefer their ministers of the crown to be trustworthy and hopefully not corrupt. ILG was a fucking useless minister in my opinion and has has been proven to be untrustworthy and corrupt to his family and the rest of the NZ population. What you call dirty politics is just politics. Every party has played that game at some time in the past. JC plays hard but ILG brought this on himself. You and yours will lash out in indignation but it wasn’t Judith Collins who had the affair. She just took advantage of it. Maybe you could start to critique the Coalition instead of National who hasn’t been in Government for nearly three years.

      • Speaking of useless why are Brownlee, Smith, Woodhouse, David Bennett etc still employed New View?

  9. Yes Collins has ramped up this very human failing (nothing more when consensual) into a the worst crime of the century for political purposes, to deflect attention away from one of her own MP’s despicable behaviour and the right leaning MSM have pushed the ILG story well to the fore, smothering Fallons crime.
    Natz supporters will see this as clever and good leadership by Collins, but in reality just shows how morally corrupt Collins and most other politicians actually are.

  13. We won’t have to worry soon Martyn about such things as promiscuity. In Brave New World everyone was given a pill that dealt with their sex drive. Babies were produced in an efficient way, and in our future more and more decisions will be made by machine. At present they are still in training wheels for this with people trained by machines, to think like machines, but soon people will be ‘let go’ as machines are so much more efficient, less faulty, less ‘human’.

    The people who mass behind brightly coloured banners can spend all their time having marches and celebrating that they are no longer oppressed by the insensitive majority, and ‘moral outrages’ will be organised by the machines, as historic events bringing all together. And in a corner of some valley accessible only during the height of summer will be a little renegade group of humans stopping work at lunchtime, to have a hug and kiss before the meal, keeping the old traditions of human physical work, physical touch and human sweetness and attraction alive.

  14. ” It is deeply egregious to me that we are facing one of the largest economic and social challenges of our lifetime with the post pandemic recovery and we are wasting time over who slept with who.”

    This begs the question, what is this imaginary “post pandemic recovery” ?
    Covid19 only exposed the ‘ norm’ ? It is not this ill that is the world’s and then NZ’s demise. ” Economic Crisis” has been overused jargon for decades to panic the masses because everyone of us now relies on the ” fat cats” not losing money.

    Underlying this so called crisis ( which was always a bloody crisis before covid) are calls to save the environment, end domestic violence, end racism, end sexism, end persecution, stop poverty, stop slave labour, stop wars… what’s our normal we are asking for again?
    When the conversation argues to get back to this so called normal, who’s interests are being served when what we had as our normal there is exposed by a pandemic , the true underlying cause responsible not being addressed.
    It is inequality derived from greedy capitalism that is our plague ! Fixing a covid pandemic and then the next one and the virus after that, then ridiculously throw in some billion dollar roads, gets us back to ” normal” ????
    We are being asked to accept this as the solution when those in a race for everyday survival were only allowed to “get ready, set, go” standing miles behind the start line in the first instance!
    I recommend the very recent, hard hitting speech of the UN Secretary Gutteres to World leaders, it’s not difficult to read or understand. At election time, everyone of us has been responsible for the real plague we live with.
    “We belong to each other”, Gutteres said. “We stand together, or we fall apart”.  The world, he concluded, is at breaking point, and it is time for leaders to decide which path to follow.
    https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1068611

  15. Hear, hear, Bomber. Giving oxygen to scandal-mongering always benefits the parties with nothing but slick PR to offer. Let’s talk about housing, health care, social welfare, conservation, transport, energy, labour rights, regulation of drugs etc etc. Policy, policy, policy!

    How about you publish a detailed blog on each of the major portfolio areas, a couple of week, between now and the election? I’ll write one on tech policy if you like.

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