A former Parliamentary staffer who felt bullied by MP Nick Smith says the Parliamentary Service promised to support him – and then abandoned him
The Parliamentary Service has been accused of failing to support a staff member who had been shouted at by an MP, despite promises to do so.
The staffer, who spoke to Newsroom on condition of anonymity, said he was told by Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero that both his reputation and his job security would be protected if he participated in an investigation into claims of bullying.
However, he now feels that he wasn't protected during a media storm about the investigation, he was not rehired after the 2020 election and he said his career has been affected.
The allegations come after a 2019 review found Parliament was a toxic workplace with systemic bullying issues. A new code of conduct came into place after the alleged bullying incident in question, but the staffer said the situation shows that Parliament has failed to repair its culture. While this could have been an opportunity for Parliament to forge a different path on bullying and harassment, it instead has shown no signs of improvement, he added.
"It's an example of them continuously letting staff members down. I wasn't here before the Francis review, so I don't know what it used to be like. But after working in other institutions, this is definitely the most toxic place I've ever been in," the staffer said.
"It's just accepted. The institution covers it up and is more worried about covering it up than fixing it. And I just think it's wrong."
Former National Party MP Nick Smith yelled and swore at the staffer in an altercation in July 2020 and a draft report into the incident - viewed by Newsroom - found this was part of a pattern of harassing and bullying behaviour.
The draft said Smith yelled that he was an MP and "you're just a f...ing secretary" and demeaned the staffer as an "embarrassment". The incident was overheard by another staff member, who recorded part of it before calling in senior National Party staff. The party whip's office manager, Sue Reid, gathered the chief of staff at the time, Megan Campbell, and together they went to Smith's office.
Campbell recalled that the yelling was still going on as she approached the office. When they then separated Smith and the staffer, Campbell said the MP continued to be "highly manipulative" by criticising the staffer at a volume that it could still be heard in the other room, where he was gathering his things. Smith said the staffer was "useless", Campbell told the investigator.
The draft also found that Smith in a different incident shouted loud enough that his spit landed on his target's face.
Parliamentary Service staff who interviewed the staffer for the position in Smith's office felt it wouldn't be a good fit, but didn't raise that concern, according to the draft report. Numerous other former staffers for Smith had described him as "challenging", prone to having "a very angry outburst" and "intimidating". The draft found two other staff members had also been harassed by the then-MP.
Smith told Newsroom that the draft report "does not reflect the final outcomes of the investigation that did not make a finding of bullying.
"I am disappointed that the draft report or parts of it has been made public when everyone involved was assured of confidentiality and the draft contains errors."
The staffer who was shouted at in the July incident has only seen the final report once, though he says it is substantively the same as the draft one. He was asked by the Parliamentary Service to sign a non-disclosure agreement before he was allowed to receive a copy. He refused to do so.
It was the second staff member, who witnessed and partially recorded the altercation, who filed a formal complaint. The staffer who had been yelled at initially didn't want to file a complaint or to participate, he said. It wasn't until Gonzalez-Montero initiated a meeting with the staffer and promised to protect him that he agreed to take part.
"Raf emailed me and asked me to come into his office, explained what was going to happen and how they would support us. He told me not to worry about my career and that I would be protected," the man told Newsroom.
That meeting occurred in August 2020. It was the last the staff member heard from the Parliamentary Service for nearly a year, he said. The investigation spanned multiple interviews with Smith and the staffer, persisted through the Christmas break and then suffered further delays due to tech issues. A draft report was released to Smith and the staffer on April 20.
Before the final report could be completed, Smith resigned in June. That sparked a media storm which focused on the employment investigation and Smith's behaviour towards the staff member.
"When he resigned, I felt like there was a smear campaign that was uncontested in the media," the staffer said. Media reports implied that both the staffer and Smith had yelled at each other. This was in part because Smith had filed a counter-complaint in September 2020, alleging that the staffer had yelled and swore at Smith and that this started the altercation in question.
The draft report concluded it was "unlikely" that this had occurred and the staffer said the final report came to the same judgment.
In a statement to Newsroom, Smith rejected the accusation of a smear campaign.
"The claim that the staffer has being smeared in the media is incorrect. You should ask for evidence of this," he said.
"I cannot recall any negative reference to him directly or indirectly by myself or in any media reports and have deliberately not disclosed publicly the staffer or complainant’s name. I have consistently taken the view that it is inappropriate for employment disputes to be debated in public as I see no good coming for anyone involved from doing so."
At the height of the coverage of the issue, the staffer reached out to Gonzalez-Montero, who asked to meet somewhere other than Parliament. In a discussion at the Dillinger's cafe/bar a short walk from Parliament, the staffer pleaded for some sort of backing from the Parliamentary Service in the media.
"I said, 'It's your investigation and you're the CEO of Parliamentary Services, you need to take control of your investigation and set the narrative right. You promised to protect me and you're not protecting me now,'" the staffer said.
The staffer paraphrased Gonzalez-Montero's response: "'I have the whole institution to think of. We need others to come forward in the future and if I create a big tit-for-tat fight with the National Party, no one will ever come forward.' And I said, 'No, no one will ever come forward if you don't stand up and do something and protect us, like you said you would.'"
The Parliamentary Service declined to answer questions from Newsroom for this article, saying it doesn't comment on employment matters.
The staff member who overheard the altercation with Smith expressed similar concerns about the media situation in a "witness statement" written in July.
"For days talkback radio was slamming me as a staffer with a gripe against Nick and criticising me for involving myself in another’s workplace relations. The news articles which were headlines and breaking news stories while not naming me personally slammed my character. All the while Parliamentary service were publicly silent and privately making excuses for staying that way," they wrote.
"Parliamentary Service encouraged me to speak out and all they have done is hide behind me."
The staffer at the centre of the complaint now feels his career has been affected by the lack of support.
"I think it has affected my career. Well, I'm not here [at Parliament] anymore. That's what I studied - I spent three years studying politics at university, I spent a year [in local politics] and then I spent a year in Parliament," he said.
"I've given five years of my life to politics and then I have to go and find work elsewhere."
The stress was compounded by a legal letter that counsel representing the Parliamentary Service sent to the staffer's union representative, Matt McCarten, on Thursday. In the letter, the lawyer says material sent by McCarten contains "various significant factual errors" and warns that if they were published, both McCarten and the staffer "may face claims for damages".
McCarten responded the next day, calling the letter "disingenuous".
"You claim we make incorrect statements. We have previously asked you to identify any mistakes and we will correct them. You have not done so," he wrote.
"Now you play the big bully lawyer game of threatening [the staffer] and myself with claims of damages. This whole fiasco has been about a vulnerable staffer being abused ... The irony of your threat is clearly lost on you. In that one line you reflect what is wrong with the power culture in Parliament."
McCarten told Newsroom that he wanted Speaker Trevor Mallard to intervene and launch an investigation into how the Parliamentary Service has handled the situation. Mallard declined to comment to Newsroom, saying the issue could come before the courts.
Speaking before the legal threat, the staffer said he still feels that the Parliamentary Service let him down.
"I think Parliamentary Services let me down by putting me in the office with Nick. I think they let me down by not protecting me or training me or supporting me in the office with Nick. I think they let me down with not giving me a job after the election. I think they let me down with not supporting me through the whole process. And I think they've let me down now," he said.
"They've let me down at every opportunity that they've had."
