Politics
No free punch
by Jane Clifton
One silly mistake has cost us the full Cabinet services of one of Parliament’s most passionate politicians amid double-standards and histrionics.
At a time when terrorism and apartheid are daily smoko topics, it seems almost wanton that the most-debated issue in this country these days is what we should do with a bloke who threw a single punch in anger, causing no injury. Subsequent to what appears to have been a fortuitously incompetent slugging of Tau Henare, Trevor Mallard has been ritually humiliated for days on end, not least by his leader. He’s been demoted and packed off to anger management. His pedigree has been read and reread with lurid additions all across talkback land.
Sanctimony has practically fogged up the TV camera lenses.
Although it seems a trivial matter, it’s a lovely encapsulation of how tough it is for politicians to assert from any sort of moral high ground without having to take regular lowland breaks.
We are all hopelessly ambivalent about any sort of moral issue, including, it turns out, violence.
For every person out there calling for Mallard to be sacked for his betrayal of Labour’s anti-violence and anti-smacking crusades, there is another sighing heavenward at what a ridiculous beat-up the whole affair is. (No pun intended, as neither party to this footling scuffle could be reasonably said to have been beaten up.)
For instance, right after the incident happened in Parliament’s lobby, the National Party’s instinct was to tamp it all down. Leader John Key, told about it pretty quickly, decided he didn’t want to make a big deal of it. No one was to go snivelling to the media, he ordained. Mallard, now under starter’s orders from Labour’s all-purpose enforcer Michael Cullen, had gone in person to accept full responsibility and tender his apology to National. Clearly, he had already suffered enough.
And National astutely discerned that, whatever had actually happened, Henare was no choirboy, so his role in the affair had probably been no better than it should have been.
Now, does this instinct reveal a soft underbelly of tolerance to violence? You could make that argument.
But then consider the Maori Party’s position. It was swift and righteous in its call for Mallard to be prosecuted, as would normally happen to any civilian who assaulted another. Why should a Pakeha Cabinet minister’s assault in the lobby of Parliament get a different deal to a Maori navvy’s assault in the pub?
But in practically the same breath, the Maori Party’s MPs defended the already-admitted violence inherent in some quarters of the Maori nationalist movement, some of whose leading lights have been arrested pending possible charges under the terrorism suppression legislation.
Te Ururoa Flavell actually asserted that learning gun craft and possessing quantities of armaments were necessary to Tuhoe culture.
Pausing to ask, “Since when?”, you’ve got to exclaim at the potential double-standard. Possession of arsenals, napalm, Molotov cocktails and an appetite for guerrilla-style training, if proved, is rather more prosecutably violent than punching someone in the moosh. You don’t go in for gunmanship and weaponry on that scale unless, at the least, you intend to intimidate someone. And intimidation by weapons is surely a serious form of violence. If anyone is proven to have been hoarding and practising with such weapons, that trumps a lame right hook any day.
Then up pops born-again goody-two-shoes Rodney Hide, laying a breach of privilege charge against Mallard. A former oil rig worker, Hide knows the difference between serious brutality and a one-off scuffle.
Let’s be clear: this was not, by any account, a vicious fight. Nor was it one of those honorable Victorian gentlemen-of-honour bouts. There was tie-tugging involved, for pity’s sake. Mischievous daily journalists reported slapping and have, shamingly, not been contradicted.
Mallard’s punch left Henare utterly unmarked, suggesting that it nearly didn’t connect at all – for all that Henare’s jaw, ever hoist to the gloating position, is no small target. The pair ended up rolling around on the carpet, and Parliament’s interpreter, a senior fellow, managed to get them apart. Neither man suffered so much as a carpet burn physically. Both will have to live with major damage to their sense of machismo.
And aside from a risible incident involving Bob Clarkson’s ear and a manila folder, Mallard has never been known to try to slug anyone before. On the contrary, as a new MP, he was crash-tackled by a parliamentary security guard, who could not believe such a scruffy oik strutting into a secure area was a member of Parliament.
But Hide seems to believe – or perhaps finds it politically convenient to believe – that Mallard is the Jake Heke of Parliament.
And while we’re on double-standards and histrionics, Helen Clark and her right-on colleagues are hardly innocent in the affair. It’s all very well to lecture Mallard publicly about the need to get his anger under control. But this is a government that has legislated remorselessly to make stress in the workplace squarely the responsibility of the employer. If you, as a boss, can see a staffer wigging out, it is your legal duty to assist. If work is contributing to that person’s stress, you are liable.
So where were Helen, Michael, Steve et al when the normally ebullient Trev started exhibiting unmistakable precursors to stress?
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