Labour’s lies

Almost everything Labour initially said on the sexual assault allegations has proven to be false. Let’s start here:

Andrew Kirton, the Labour Party’s general secretary, said he stood by the way the party had handled the situation, which he said was done with a “victim-led” focus on the back of advice from a Wellington sexual violence charity.

False. They only talked to the charity many weeks later when the story was on the verge of breaking. They did not take any external advice in deciding to basically do nothing and say nothing. This is later confirmed here.

He said he wasn’t aware of any of the victims taking their complaint to the police, although both he and Labour Party president Nigel Haworth had offered their support to the victims if they chose to do so.

They have now backed away from this and said they never explicitly told the victims they could go to the Police.

Newsroom reported:

Ardern defended her party officials’ decision not to report the assaults to the Police. 

“Yeah well look – when our general sec was made aware of the allegations …. they were offered the next day what support they needed, would they like to go to the Police and at that time they didn’t wish to, they were asked again later on, they didn’t wish to again. It took too long but support was also offered through Wellington services through ‘Help’.”

The Prime Minister’s account seems to be at odds with information obtained by Newsroom which suggest that some of the victims were not offered the opportunity to go to the police. 

So all just spin.

Parents of the victims hadn’t been told about the incident because “we wanted to deal with the young people in the first instance,” Kirton said.

By deal with, he means do almost nothing at all until one victim is so upset they contact a senior Labour Party Minister.

“We have also offered further, professional support to those involved.

The offer was made almost a month later the day before the story broke.

Basically Labour’s response was to do nothing and say nothing and hope it goes away quietly.

There are now stories of a new alleged assault at a separate Labour Party event. This may or may not be related to this tweet:

Now it is important to stress that any sexual assault is the responsibility of the person who does it, not the organiser of an event. There would be few groups who have never had an issue with inappropriate or even illegal behaviour with young people, especially with alcohol involved. The issue is how the organisation responds to it.