Analysis - Gaurav Sharma is expelled but he's not giving up his campaign against Labour. The protest march doesn't turn into another occupation, Parliament gets a new Speaker and the government uses its majority to push through controversial legislation.
Independent MP Gaurav Sharma. Photo: Phil Smith
Gaurav Sharma was expelled from Labour's caucus on Tuesday but the MP, now an independent, continued his vendetta against the party and could soon be doing it under parliamentary privilege.
The expulsion vote was 60 in favour, one abstention and one opposed, presumably Sharma.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in her statement after the caucus meeting, said Sharma had engaged in "calculated breaches of caucus rules" through his public claims of bullying within the party and his complaints about the way he had been treated.
A detailed timeline is on RNZ's website, starting from the day the Herald published his astonishing article on 11 August.
Sharma calmly accepted his fate and coming out of the meeting he again called for an investigation into his claims - something Ardern has said won't happen because there's no basis for it.
The media was not sympathetic.
"There is still no concrete evidence of bullying, just an errant MP with an apparently brittle ego who feels disrespected," said Stuff's political editor Luke Malpass.
"Nevertheless, for Labour this is bad. Some of Sharma's claims, not backed up by evidence, including bullying, that Jacinda Ardern is a liar and that Labour MPs were coached in how to avoid Official Information Act requests (which Labour strongly denies) sound just plausible enough that they could seep into the public consciousness."
The Herald's Audrey Young said the longer Sharma had gone on the more he had enjoyed the attention and the less convincing he had been in his case for an inquiry.
She said that when mediation was offered to repair Sharma's relationship with the party it was rejected, and he had doubled down on his criticisms. "Expulsion was inevitable and completely justified."
Malpass is right in that what's become known as the Sharma drama is bad for Labour - two weeks of negative publicity that has overpowered everything the government has done, and with National and ACT enjoying the spectacle.
The really bad thing is that it could get worse.
Sharma is still an MP and he is now free of any party discipline, not that he seems to have accepted that he ever was.
He can speak in the debating chamber under parliamentary privilege, which means he can say whatever he wants without risking legal action for defamation.
The big question is whether he gets the chance, and the first opportunity will be the Wednesday general debate. There wasn't one this week because a new Speaker was being elected but there will be next Wednesday and on each Wednesday when the House is sitting.
Independents usually have to wait months between speaking slots but there's a short cut - a major party can gift one of theirs.
The Herald recognised this danger to Labour, headlining its report on the expulsion 'ACT open to Sharma speaking slot'.
The report said National had at least contemplated offering Sharma a general debate slot and ACT leader David Seymour was open to the idea.
"We'd certainly consider it if he approached us," Seymour said. "We would consider it on the basis of what he wanted to say. We think he may have useful insights into how this government has supressed the free flow of information."
In other words, give him a chance to shovel more dirt onto Labour.
It's a highly unusual move but there's a recent precedent for it. In July last year National gave one of its slots to Labour's Louisa Wall so she could speak during a mental health debate after her own party shut her out.
Apart from general debates, Sharma's opportunities to speak are limited but he's already indicated how he's going to use the chances he gets.
On Wednesday he hijacked the ceremony to elect a new Speaker, RNZ reported.
Jacinda Ardern, Dame Cindy Kiro and Adrian Rurawhe. Photo: RNZ /Angus Dreaver
Adrian Rurawhe had just been elected to replace Trevor Mallard and it was one of those rare occasions when MPs show some decorum.
No so Sharma, who in very bad form used his speech to criticise the outgoing Speaker.
He said he had approached Mallard two weeks ago to ask whether he could get legal support for his case for an investigation into the way he had been treated - however bizarre that may sound.
He said Mallard told him that if he raised anything about a Labour colleague, any challenges, it would be the end of his political career.
He said Mallard had then gone to the party whips to tell them he had laid a complaint against them.
Rurawhe shut him down, saying he was off track and the occasion was about welcoming the newly-elected Speaker.
That Sharma was upset by Mallard's advice - which simply stated that turning against one's colleagues isn't a good way of getting ahead - was just the latest demonstration of his amazing lack of perception about what politics is all about.
Several senior ministers took a dim view of Sharma's conduct.
"He's too humble to say 'today was meant to be about me' but that's what he meant," Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said.
Transport Minister Michael Wood described Sharma's performance as solipsistic, meaning self-centred and egotistical.
Ardern is still saying there's been no discussion about using the waka-jumping legislation to boot Sharma out of Parliament, but if he continues using his presence in the House to denigrate the party and his former colleagues that could change.
Mallard resigned this week to take up the position of New Zealand's Ambassador to Ireland.
He's generated controversy as Speaker and sometimes before that as an MP and minister, RNZ's article A look back at Trevor Mallard's long and colourful career in politics covers it all.
Trevor Mallard. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Opposition MP's weren't sorry to see him go and some said so. National's Christopher wished the Irish good luck.
ACT's Seymour was the most acerbic. "He should have been sacked a year ago for the false rape allegation fiasco ... instead Jacinda Ardern kept Trevor Mallard on and now is giving him a plum post," he told Newshub.
Ardern said Mallard had spent more than 30 years in Parliament. "You don't spend that amount of time in this place without having a huge depth of understanding about New Zealand's priorities."
Rurawhe was elected unanimously to replace Mallard, he's respected on all sides of the House.
He told media he would be a fair referee in the debating chamber and would let debates "run bit further" than his predecessor.
"I don't mind if there's a more robust debate in the House... as long as it's fair," he said.
Rurawhe also said he was going to stop ministers dodging answers or waffling during question time.
That would be a relief.
The government this week pushed through two bills to reform Oranga Tamariki and state care monitoring through Parliament.
Their passage into law was unusual because they were opposed by all the other parties and Labour used its own majority to get them through.
Not even the Greens were onside, they had problems with the bills and wanted them referred back to a select committee.
National social development spokesperson Louise Upston said the government was making the services more difficult for children to access.
"They've made it incredibly complicated and separated out advocacy, monitoring and complaints, and they think that's going to solve the problem," she said.
"It creates an even greater risk of children falling through the cracks."
Brian and Hannah Tamaki seen during the anti-government protest in Wellington, marching towards Parliament on 23 August 2022. Photo: RNZ / Hamish Cardwell
The much anticipated protest march to Parliament didn't end up in another occupation, there wasn't even an attempt to recreate the chaos of the last one.
It was organised by a group associated with the Destiny Church and its leader, Brian Tamaki, told a mixed bunch of anti-government protesters he had created a new political party called Freedom New Zealand.
Tamaki claimed up to 6000 people were there but police estimated around 1500.
Tamaki said fringe parties the New Nation Party and the Outdoors and Freedom Party would join Freedom New Zealand, and he called on Democracy NZ and the New Conservative Party to do the same, Stuff reported.
The Outdoors and Freedom Party was surprised to hear it had joined. Its president, Alan Simmons, said it had made no such decision and had told Tamaki that days ago.
"We have got a lot of members who are actually upset ... we have actually had a few members resign today, thinking that we are in the coalition," he said.
Tamaki's idea is to join all the small radical and fringe parties together in an alliance under his banner, although he has said he won't himself stand for Parliament.
The Herald's Thomas Coghlan put this in perspective.
"It would take a miracle of political organisation and turnout for these groups to unify and make it into Parliament," he said.
"The notion of them entering Parliament is a fun hypothetical but one better suited to the pub than the newspaper."
The government's big announcement of the week was the latest move in its mission to increase competition, and thereby lower prices, in the supermarket sector.
Ardern and Consumer Affairs Minister David Clark made it together.
The government has given the supermarket duopoly a year to reach "substantial" agreement with wholesale customers or be forced to sell at prices set through a regulator, RNZ reported.
"Supermarkets have wholesale arms," Ardern said. "We have called on the duopoly to open these up to would-be competitors at a fair price. We've said if this does not happen a regulatory backstop will be triggered."
Clark said the duopoly would have to negotiate wholesale offerings to their competitors on commercial terms.
"Put simply, if there is no proper access to wholesale goods there is no incentive for competition to enter the market," he said.
"We need to address wholesale access because you cannot run a supermarket on empty shelves."
Nothing the government had done so far will have much of an impact in the immediate future, but at least it's doing something.
The next election is more than a year away, and it will be hoping that by then shoppers will be noticing a real difference.
*Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament's press gallery, 22 years as NZPA's political editor and seven as parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire.