What you need to believe to accept the PM only heard of the sexual assault complaints this week
The PM said she only found the allegations against her staffer included sexual violence this week, after The Spinoff article appeared on Monday.
This is what you need to believe, to accept that she is telling the truth.
- That no-one at any stage before this week informed her that a member of her staff had been accused of rape or sexual assault
- That her Chief of Staff who knew, never told her
- That her office director, who knew over eight months ago, never told her
- That her Chief Press Secretary, who knew, never told her
- That her closest friend and colleague, Grant Robertson, who knew three months ago, never told her
- That she took advice on an e-mail sent two months ago accusing the staffer of sexual assault, but never actually read the e-mail
- That she didn’t read a single newspaper item or listen a single radio or TV broadcast or read a single story online over the last five weeks which mentioned the allegations included sexual assault
- That the daily print out of political newspaper clippings to her, somehow omitted all the ones which mentioned the sexual assault allegations.
- That she never once asked a member of her staff what exactly were the allegations against the person who worked for her, after he stopped coming to work five weeks ago
- That when she said she told the Labour Party Council a month ago they are not the appropriate body to investigate a sexual assault, she was using that hypothetically and had no idea that was one of the complaints
- That when Mike Hosking asked her on the 6th of August about “this bloke who may or may not have sexual assaulted someone” she didn’t hear the question properly
- That despite the fact some of the complainants had gone to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition with allegations about a member of her own staff, she never sought details from anyone at anytime about those allegations – she just relied on a verbal assurance from the party president