He
took his forced resignation in February hard, employed an employment lawyer, employed a KC, filed an Official Information Act (OIA) request and finally this week broke ranks with the Prime Minister.
What he wants is to clear the record about what happened in his office in February. He says he didn’t assault a staff member. He enthusiastically grabbed the staffer’s upper arm in conversation.
He says he wouldn’t have resigned if he wasn’t stitched up. He says he was told there was a formal complaint against him (which the OIA has proved there wasn’t). He was told two other staff members corroborated the allegations (again not true, he says).
He tried to meet with the “assaulted” staff member to clear the air. He was told the staff member was on stress leave.
In fact, the “assaulted” staff member wasn’t even worried about it, according to what Bayly reckons he said when they were finally able to meet hours before the resignation announcement – too late to avoid it.
Bayly says he didn’t resign because he’d done wrong. He resigned because he didn’t think anyone would believe his story if three other people told a different story (which he now knows there weren’t).
The good news for the National Party is that Bayly is going out of his way to keep the PM out of this. This has come out while the PM was out of the country.
Bayly doesn’t blame Christopher Luxon or the PM’s staff for the stitch-up. He blames the Department of Internal Affairs, which manages whichever staff member witnessed the “assault” and whinged about it, and whoever then gave Labour a heads-up.
The bad news is not everyone can be counted on to be quite as charitable to the PM’s office and the PM. They were the ones who told him it was “very serious” when it wasn’t. They were the ones who, in my view, managed a fast resignation.
As for Luxon, try listening back to the now infamous three-minute interview with Mike Hosking the week after Bayly’s resignation. Despite Hosking repeatedly asking, the PM refused to say he would’ve sacked Bayly had Bayly not resigned.
It now sounds like maybe Luxon couldn’t answer that question because he actually wouldn’t have sacked Bayly. To me, it was not a sackable offence (despite Luxon to sticking his guns when Bayly spoke out this week). There was no formal complaint or corroboration of an assault.
Sadly, what happened to Bayly is not unusual in politics. There is no shortage of ministers, MPs or their staff who are forced to fall on their swords to protect the party or the PM. Sometimes they’re stitched up. Sometimes they’re unfairly punished for someone else’s mistake. Sometimes the PM just needs a distraction.
Almost always, they take their licks and shut up. It’s very rare for a former minister to try to clear their name like this. In part, because it resurrects old devils like that terrible vacillating interview.
So it’s courageous.
But it’s also naive. Because – politically – there was no other outcome. Bayly had to go. He was already on his last warning after “loser-gate”, where he made jokes at a vineyard staffer with his finger and his thumb in the shape of an L on his forehead.
There was no way the PM was going to spend political capital defending another unusual Bayly-related event.
And it’s possibly naive, because while it’s restored Bayly’s reputation on Google, it’s undoubtedly cost him a lot in the party.
That’s why no one ever really does this. Because they know that in order to mount a comeback, you have to shut up. If you don’t shut up, you don’t come back.