Why Aaron Gilmore should resign, but won’t

I am the last person to criticise someone for getting rolling drunk.

LATEST: PM hints apology will be enough to get Gilmore off the hook

By some measures, the volume of wine per person reported to have been drunk at National List MP Aaron Gilmore’s infamous Hanmer Springs dinner was positively temperate.  (Although, despite many years of trying, I have never had a wine waiter at a flash restaurant deny me service, so perhaps there is more to this part of the story.)

In a country where, rightly or wrongly, binge drinking remains acceptable and commonplace, what really does in Mr Gilmore is not his drunkenness but the horrible way he is reported to have treated the waiting staff, including clicking his fingers and abusing them, and – perhaps even worse – his idiotic threat to have the Prime Minister fire one of them.

On this point, I yesterday found myself in complete political agreement with the ‪Service and Food Workers Union, something no doubt damaging to both me and the union.

Far from thinking it is acceptable in egalitarian New Zealand to click fingers at waiters and abuse them, one of those first-world, middle-class problems we face is how to get our children to look waiting staff in the eye and say thank you, not just when the meal comes but each time the water glass is filled.

When previous MPs have run into trouble for drinking they have survived because their uncouth behaviour has not crossed the line into personal abuse.

When Mr Gilmore’s fellow Christchurch MP, Labour’s Ruth Dyson, was picked up one night for drink-driving, there was no suggestion she had been rude to the police and she had the integrity to resign as a minister before the sun came up.

Similarly, when Mr Gilmore’s fellow National Party MP, trade minister Tim Groser, got himself well-and-truly inebriated at the bar of an Emirates A380 flying home after a disastrous Middle Eastern trade mission to bury his mother, there was no suggestion he abused anyone (except, I was told by my spies on the flight, me – after he found out what I, after a few wines, had written about the trade-mission fiasco for that Friday’s NBR).

In any event, both Ms Dyson and Mr Groser were valuable to their Prime Ministers and governments.  Mr Gilmore has no such advantage.

Going nowhere
To say Mr Gilmore’s political career is going nowhere is an understatement.

Reportedly never popular even within the National Party in his home district of Canterbury, he was National’s 2008 sacrificial lamb in the safe Labour seat of Christchurch East, losing to Labour’s Lianne Dalziel by over 5000 votes.

Nevertheless, he snuck into parliament on the list, but received no promotion in his first term as an MP, indicating the low regard in which he is held by John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce, and much of the rest of the National cabinet and caucus.

Meanwhile, his 2008 contemporaries Nikki Kaye, Simon Bridges, Hekia Parata, Amy Adams and Michael Woodhouse have become ministers, and the next in line for ministerial jobs, Todd McClay and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, already chair the powerful Finance and Expenditure and Social Services select committees respectively.  There will never be any such promotions for Mr Gilmore.

Undeterred at having achieved nothing in his first term except attract publicity over a false CV, he sought re-election but was awarded the lowest place on National’s 2011 list among incumbents except for newbie Jami-Lee Ross, only elected as MP for Botany earlier that year, and the unloved Paul Quinn.  He was also put up again for Christchurch East.

In the 2011 election, it turned out that is not just National Party officials and MPs that seem to have a particular dislike of Mr Gilmore but also the good voters of Christchurch East.

3000 National/Dalziel voters
One of the seldom-told stories of the 2011 election was the huge swing from Labour to National in Christchurch, an apparent endorsement of Gerry Brownlee’s handling of the earthquake response.  Without it, Mr Key would have lost the election to Phil Goff.

In Christchurch East, the swing to National was over 10% and it won the party vote for the first time in the seat’s history.  National’s majority was overwhelming, beating Labour 13,252 to 9,100.  Mr Gilmore, however, was utterly unable to capitalise on this, losing to Ms Dalziel 15,559 to 10,225.

It means, unbelievably, that around 3000 National voters in Christchurch East voted for Ms Dalziel, an incredible achievement by her but one that surely would not have been possible without a deeply flawed National candidate.  Mr Gilmore also missed out on the list and re-entered parliament some months ago, only because of Speaker Lockwood Smith’s elevation to High Commissioner in London.

It goes without saying that, behind the scenes, there were National Party mutterings that it would be better if he could be dissuaded from taking the seat in favour of Paul Foster-Bell, who has now entered parliament in place of Jackie Blue.  He couldn’t be, but it hasn’t taken long for the reasons why there were such mutterings to become apparent.

There is no chance of Mr Gilmore surviving National’s selection processes for the next election and he would be best to resign now.

Mr Key’s dilemma
Mr Key couldn’t help but become embroiled in the affair the moment Mr Gilmore invoked his name at the restaurant but he and his chief of staff, Wayne Eagleson, would have been better advised to delegate the whole matter to National’s Chief Whip, Louise Upston.

In the first instance, this type of idiot behaviour by the most junior backbencher is simply unworthy of the chief of staff’s time, let alone that of the Prime Minister

More substantially, both the Prime Minister and Mr Eagleson are now in the unenviable position of probably having been lied to by Mr Gilmore 

The original complainant, Andrew Riches, has nothing to gain from the affair, being a loyal National Party member, a well-regarded barrister, the President of the Canterbury Young Professionals, the Convener of the Junior Practitioners Committee and until now on friendly terms with Mr Gilmore.

The suggestion he would bear false witness against Mr Gilmore is outrageous and his account appears to have been backed up by other diners  [Mr Riches says left a note to apologise to the waiter after the list MP's threat to have him fired by the PM's office. Mr Gilmore reportedly denied the sacking threat when asked directly by Mr Eagleson.]

Mr Riches is justifiably angry that, by appearing to accept Mr Gilmore’s initial “apology” that implied the whole group behaved badly, Mr Key has inadvertently brought his reputation into disrepute, and he has hit back to defend himself.

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister had little choice but to accept Mr Gilmore’s version. 

He governs with a one-seat majority.  If Mr Gilmore went feral, there would be a risk of the government falling. 

What’s more, the Prime Minister’s office hears of all sorts of allegations against MPs, most of which are politically motivated.  In the first instance, like any employer, it is understandable they give the benefit of the doubt to their own team.  The problem in this instance is that they don’t really doubt it is Mr Riches who is telling the truth, not Mr Gilmore.

Next moves
As of this morning, the Prime Minister and his office appear almost to be begging for a formal complaint from the Heritage Hotel which they could hand over to Ms Upston as a first step towards getting rid of Mr Gilmore.

Any of the next few names on National’s list – Claudette Hauiti, Jo Hayes or Leonie Hapeta – would offer the party more in terms of electoral appeal than Mr Gilmore.

But they do have to move carefully.

Unlike, say, NZ First, National is a democratic party and, as Jim Bolger found with Mr Peters, Bill English with Maurice Williamson and Don Brash with Brian Connell, it is extremely hard to get rid of a recalcitrant MP.  Even in the recent NZ First case, Mr Peters failed to drum the disgraced Brendan Horan out of parliament altogether. 

Mr Key just announcing Mr Gilmore is fired achieves nothing.  He needs to be encouraged to resign.

Of course, he probably won’t.  Mr Gilmore will never get a job as well paid as this one, especially now we know he doesn’t have the high-level finance-sector qualifications that were once claimed.

Right now, for doing pretty much nothing, he earns $142,000 a year, plus free air travel and subsidised Bellamy’s booze. 

Sadly, he’s probably not going anywhere.

matthew.hooton@exceltium.com