Only took 513 days

So 513 days after “Sarah” informed someone working for Labour of her alleged sexual assault by a staffer in Jacinda Ardern’s office, he has quit his job.

It is incredible that it took this long. The level of incompetence here is staggering. You start to understand how the Kiwibuild fiasco also happened. Their default mode is stuff up.

Any competent organisation would have dealt with this within days, or weeks at most. You have someone trusted talk to the complainants, talk to the staffer, and then recommend an outcome.

Let’s think about how loud the sirens should have been warning at various stages on a 1 to 10 scale.

• One person makes a complaint against a staffer in the leader’s office – say a 4/10
• Seven different party members make complaints – 6/10
• Other parliamentary staff tell senior staff in the PMO they are scared of the staffer etc – 7/10
• The complainants are so unhappy they go to the media – 9/10
• The media report the complaints include sexual assault – 10/10
• Your own ministerial and parliamentary staff are talking to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition because they are so disgusted nothing has happened – 12/10

And even after that, it took five further weeks.

It is hard to know which scenario is the most damning:

• The PM really knew nothing
• The PM did know all about it, but they didn’t know what to do
• The PM did know all about it, but they valued the staffer so highly they tried to brazen it out

You have a choice of incompetence, lying or hypocrisy. You can decide which is worse.

There is a rumour it is even worse than what we already know. That he didn’t work for Ardern’s office when the alleged assaults happened, and they hired him *after* the complaints had been lodged with the party. That would be even more shocking.

The Civilian has a post from Jacinda Ardern that is so close to the truth it scorches:

I am every bit as angry as you are.
I am every bit as disappointed as you must be.
The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I am running out of patience with them, and the way they continually let us down, while helpless people like you and me stand by and can only watch failure after failure.
I can assure you, earnestly, that the moment I found out about the fact that you had found out about the facts, I acted immediately to see what the situation was.
I would never sit on my hands if it ever became apparent to me that something had become apparent to you, and that’s my promise.