Harman has seen some pretty dysfunctional politicians in his time. But his account of trying to get comment from Labour on the Man-Ban proposal should send shivers down the spines of those few diehard Labour Party supporters who haven't given up; he opines:
Make no mistake this “Man Ban” furore has raised potentially fatal questions about David Shearer’s leadership of the Labour Party.
Here at “The Nation” last week we got a front row view of just how dysfunctional the Shearer leadership machine is.
First up, it is mind boggling that it was left to Cameron Slater and his “Whaleoil” blog to reveal that the party was proposing to allow women-only candidate selections as part of a bid to evenly balance its gender representation by 2017.
This proposal is part of the party’s Organisational Review which began work last year.
Its proposals have already surfaced at a national conference; at local LECs and at regional conferences.
They then went to the party’s Policy Council.
Either Mr Shearer is so out of touch with what is happening inside his own party or alternatively --- as one Labour source suggested to me over the weekend – he simply wasn’t listening.
But nor, apparently, were the rest of the caucus.
Or, and this is important, Mr Shearer’s media advisors.
On Friday, the chief press secretary was on a day off.
That about sums it up.
Such is the lack of urgency in the Leader of the Opposition’s office that his staff work appear to work public service hours.
Plainly no one in that office --- and this particularly means Mr Shearer --- thought on Friday that the political crap had hit the fan.
Even the loony lefties over on “The Standard” blog were in hyper-drive debating the “Man Ban” and of course Whaleoil and the mainstream media had forgotten about Kim Dotcom and the GCSB and were off chasing the latest unforced error from Labour.
We joined the chase.
First we learned the Leader’s Press Secretary was not in.
Then we spoke to two leading Labour women who supported the proposal and they were willing to appear but had conflicting engagements.
However it was our impression that at least one of them would be able to front.
We also spoke to another leading Labour woman who was an opponent of the proposal.
She indicated she would be available.
We also attempted to get hold of Labour President, Moira Coatsworth, who lives somewhere on the Coromandel and is always almost impossible to contact.
If you're starting to think that all is not well in the Labour leader's office, you wouldn't be wrong. But wait, as they say in the infomercials; there's more:
Then somewhat surprisingly in the mid-afternoon we got a phone call from the Leader’s office telling us they had heard we were making inquiries about the story.
What a surprise!
We were told the only person from Labour who would appear from Labour on the programme would be the Women’s Affairs spokesperson, Sue Moroney.
The others would not be available.
We now know that later on Friday an email went out to top Labour party officials advising them to shut up about the “Man Ban”.
Ms Moroney then appeared on “The Nation” with her compromise solution to the whole thing which she said she was going to put to the Caucus.
Surely the time for that was at least a week ago before the original remit was sent out to the media.
But that would have required planning --- and leadership.
Leadership is something that Labour is very sadly lacking at the moment. David Shearer's office is stacked with Grant Robertson loyalists, and one really has to wonder whether David Shearer is being set up to fail.
And if Labour thought that the intervention of Mr Shearer's office preventing some MP's from appearing on The Nation would bury the embarrassing Man-Ban issue, it would seem that they will be sadly mistaken. Richard Harman's closing sentence has an ominous sound to it:
We have not heard the last of this whole shambolic affair.
What a shame! Labour suffered significant self-inflicted wounds over the SkyCity corporate box debacle. A story which could and should have been shut down on day one haunted the party for more than a week. Now Labour has again been outed by a blogger, and the dysfunction which begins in the leader's office is there for all to see.
David Shearer is, from all reports, a thoroughly decent bloke. But the manner in which the tail is wagging the dog within Labour continues to expose him as a weak and ineffective leader. One has to wonder at the motives of those who are doing or orchestrating the wagging of the tail; not to mention those from within Labour's caucus who are yapping to the media about their leader's shortcomings.
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