Why Primary Teachers and Principals (and the Secondary Teachers too) Rejected the MOE Offers

I was last week quite surprised by Acting Education Minister Tracey Martin being surprised by primary teachers and principals rejecting the MOE offer to us.  

Thanks to the amazing Green Grub's lady for this graphic.  Check out Green Grub's Facebook page.

When Mrs Martin came to the NZEI President's Dinner at the NZEI Annual Conference on Sunday night, she told my friend Dianne (from SOSNZ) that she did not understand why teachers had turned down the offer.  Dianne told her it's because teachers are exhausted from the workload.  The work is never ending, and teachers can be their own worst enemy, but they do it for the kids and because there is this never ending demand to accelerate learning. 

Teachers can not wait three more years for this government to get a bit more money to solve these issues.  We are at crisis point now.  We have limited relievers now and teachers are coming to school sick or classes are being split to allow teachers to take sick leave.  

We have students who are not getting the help they should get because teachers are so overworked that they do not get through the referral system in a timely manner and then there is often little funding or no room for that child on the roll of the RTLB or RTLit or there is no speech language therapist available or whatever.

We now have teachers cutting down to 0.8 or less so they can get through the workload in the working week so they can reclaim their weekends for their families.  Some have quite teaching to do relieving so they can be more present in their families.  What is there to attract them back into full-time teaching when the workload is astronomical?  My friend Dianne was offered a full-time teaching job for next year last week - her son cried because "Mum will always be working now".

There has been a 40% drop in people entering initial teacher training in the last five years (unsurprising after the National led government constantly running teachers down over their time in government).  Coupled with the high rate of attrition of teachers within their first five years of teaching leaving our profession for good or heading overseas to greener pastures, we do not have the younger teachers required to replace the aging population of teachers heading towards retirement in the next ten years.  It is predicted we will be up to 1800 teachers short.

As I lay awake this morning (thank you hacking cough), I read a response by Labour MP Marja Lubeck to a comment on a Facebook post by Education Minister Chris Hipkins (currently on paternity leave) he did after attending the PPTA Conference in Wellington yesterday.  

Ms Lubeck also seemed perplexed about why we had rejected the offer and proceeded to lay out what Labour has done in the Education space in the last year.  While these were all things we wanted, not one of them addresses our primary teacher or principal claims.

I wrote this response to Ms Lubeck:

Marja Lubeck Labour List MP, those are all great things, but getting rid of National Standards was not about workload, that was about pedagogy; about not labeling children as failures and "weighing them like pigs".

Democratising the Education Council was important to us because we should have a say in the body governing us.  However, this does not improve my workload.

Providing new classroom spaces does not improve my workload.  However, can someone organise a heat pump to be installed in my prefab; we sweated through term 1 and huddled around a tiny fan heater in terms 2 and 3.  I'm not looking forward to sweating out term 4.

I'm stoked ECE received more funding after years of freezes, however, this will not improve workloads in ECE, primary or secondary sectors - it will just allow centres financial breathing room.

What will improve my workload as a primary teacher?

* release time: currently CRT (Classroom Release Time) for primary teachers is two days a term or, as written in the Primary Teachers Collective Agreement, ten hours per term.  This does not give me enough time to complete all the reading and maths assessments I need to do for my class.  Consequently I need to complete the remainder during time I should be teaching - therefore my class end up doing "busy work" to try and manage them while I try to assess kids.  This is not ideal for the child being assessed or my stress levels.  This also means I get no time to do planning.  Currently I spend three hours minimum after school each day to do my planning, collate assessment, respond to whānau, make resources.... and I am often back at the weekend for at least three hours.  And then there are the meetings...

* Retention and recruitment: where are the incentives for young people to stay in our profession?  Where are the incentives to join our profession?  Why would a young person choose a job that pays possibly $50,000 but requires you to work 60 hour weeks and subsidise the education system out of their own pocket when they could work at 40 hour week elsewhere and not being using their own money to get the job done?  Where's the incentive for teachers who left our profession or cut back from fulltime to 0.8 so they could have family life to be full time teachers or relief teachers?

* A SENCO in every school: our most vulnerable kids are missing out.  Recently half of one of my CRT days was spent on working on an RTLB referral for one child.  That's 1/4 of my CRT time for the term on ONE CHILD.  Is that efficient use of my time?  It's still incomplete.  I haven't had time to go back to it.  Meanwhile a child goes without help.  A fulltime SENCO would have it sorted well and truly by now because that would be their focus.

Teachers are burning out.

I've already left the profession once due to National Standards.  I came back because of the promise of a Labour led government.  If nothing changes in regards to workload, I will be yet another teacher forced to leave the profession again in order to preserve my own health and wellbeing.

Many people will say we need to go a bit easier or this will be a one term government, that the cupboard is bare and they need time.  We don't have time.  Teaching is at a crisis point of a lack of teachers and the others burning out.  Children have missed out for too long already due to austerity in education.  I worked bloody hard in 2017 to get a change of government, and I will work bloody hard to ensure they are still the government beyond 2020... but our teachers and our children can no longer wait.  

This government needs to deliver to teachers and children to ensure Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's goal to make New Zealand the best place in the world for a child to grow up in.

New Zealand's "Rape Culture" is alive and well

Today the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) released its report into the Roast Busters controversy.  I wrote about this and New Zealand's rape culture last year when the police announced no charges would be laid due to a lack of evidence in the post Musings on New Zealand's Rape Culture, Domestic Violence and Apologies.

It was quite handy when Stuff automatically told my phone about the release of this report by the IPCA with their breaking news feature on their app.  It meant I didn't have to wait until 6 o'clock to be fully enraged with the rest of the country.  It meant I could reflect on rape culture again; a culture which continues to be mocked as non-existent, when if you are female you know it is not.

And there is plenty in this report to be angry about.  While the report said that all the young women/girls making complaints were treated with compassion and courtesy, I was appalled to read through the article to find the following:

• some of the young men/boys involved were never approached or spoken to by the police.
• the parents of the young men/boys were not approached and informed of the allegations so they could have "that talk" with their sons.
• the police failed to follow lines of inquiry in a timely fashion and sometimes not at all.
• record keeping was poor.
• each complaint was treated separately and not considered as a pattern of incidents.

Naturally the Police have been very apologetic with public "We are Sorries" from the Police Commissioner and the Waitemata Area Commander.  Anne Tolley, as the former Minister of Police responsible when the story broke and when the decision came through not to press charges, expressed concerns and as the current Minister of Social Development says that Child Youth and Family (CYF) would be next under the microscope.  The current Minister for Police, Michael Woodhouse, has said that it was failures by individual officers.

No police officer has lost their job, but they have been moved on to other roles and sectors in the police.  Greg O'Connor, of the Police Association, would have liked the report to look into what else was happening in the Waitemata area at the time, claiming that there had been a large number of cases that had priority at the time and not enough manpower to do it all justice.  Jacinda Ardern said that a lack of resourcing had affected the case.

You can read these documents from the IPCA: the media statement, the IPCA Public Report, and the speech notes by Judge Sir David Carruthers.  You can read more on Stuff (Roast Busters case subject of another review) and at the New Zealand Herald (Roast Busters case: Apology 'just the beginning').

This stood out from the speech made by Judge Sir David Carruthers at the release of the report today:

 

The first aspect, which the Authority publicly reported on in May 2014, considered the information provided by Police to the media about the Police investigations.

The second, which is outlined in today’s report, considered the adequacy of the initial Police criminal investigations and the handling of any complaints or reports received by Police from members of the public between 2011 and October 2013. The findings in the report are the result of a very thorough and detailed investigation.

The report is confined to those Police investigations up until these matters came to media attention in October 2013. It does not cover the subsequent Police reinvestigation, dubbed ‘Operation Clover’. The Police have publicly reported on the results of that reinvestigation, which did not result in the prosecution of any of the young men concerned.

So does that mean we now need another report into the subsequent police reinvestigation called Operation Clover?

Ellis is able to capture the essence of an issue with brilliance.

An urgent debate was called in Parliament this afternoon.  A number of Members of Parliament from both sides of the house rose to speak about this report today. 

Jacinda Ardern, Labour's spokesperson for Justice, listed a number of actions that demonstrated poor policing practice.  Jacinda then went on to outline the history of the case prior to today.  Jacinda Ardern specifically highlighted the lack of co-ordination in dealing with this case.  This was highlighted from the first paragraph in the report.  At the start of the IPCA the police told them about four separate incidents and then found out about three further separate incidents with the same group of young men.  But no one would join the dots between each of the seven cases to see there was a systemic problem with the same group of young men over and over again.

 And Jacinda also questioned, as did the IPCA, the practice of the police in investigating this case, and that the IPCA believes that investigation should have continued as per the policies of the police because the victims involved were children.  Jacinda Ardern questioned that while the police did not have the evidence to lay charges, some old fashioned policing should have happened; the police should have knocked on the doors of the families of these young men and had conversations with their parents.  And Jacinda knows this is an appropriate course of action as her father is a policeman.

Then Jacinda Ardern brought up this piece of legislation:

Section 134 of the Act outlines the penalties for those who have sexual conduct with a young person under 16 years as:
"(1) Every one who has sexual connection with a young person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.

(2) Every one who attempts to have sexual connection with a young person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.

(3) Every one who does an indecent act on a young person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years.

(4) No person can be convicted of a charge under this section if he or she was married to the young person concerned at the time of the sexual connection or indecent act concerned.

(5) The young person in respect of whom an offence against this section was committed cannot be charged as a party to the offence if the person who committed the offence was of or over the age of 16 years when the offence was committed.

(6) In this section,—
  (a) young person means a person under the age of 16 years; and

 (b) doing an indecent act on a young person includes indecently assaulting the young person.  
Why is this piece of legislation so important?  The victims who made complaints to the police were all aged under 16 in six of the seven cases and each young man involved in the assaults that took place knew that they were aged under 16.  The fact that these children were under the age of consent consequently means that the evidence for a violation of the law was there because there is no consent when a person is younger than 16 because sexual connection is unlawful below that age.  Therefore the investigation should still be actively open and work should be continuing to secure the necessary evidence.  See more in this video of Jacinda Ardern during the debate.

Michael Woodhouse, the current Minister of Police spoke next.  He began while saying he agreed with almost everything Jacinda Ardern had said, and also said that there was nothing to candy coat the finding of the IPCA.  He then went on to defend Anne Tolley's role in the controversy, saying that she did not have the information available to her because the police had not collected that information, and that this was clear from the IPCA report.  Mr Woodhouse then went on to glorify what had happened to crime statistics under Mrs Tolley's reign as Minister of Police. 

But he kept referring to statistics on adult sexual assault - which I found concerning as you can not call a girl under 16 an adult when she can not consent to sex legally, and particularly as this issue is all about sexual assault.  Michael Woodhouse also spanked Jacinda Ardern and Greg O'Connor on the hand for their criticism about a lack of resources hampering the investigation.  Quite frankly, a lack of resources for the police stands out like dog balls when you look at this case.  Yes, a lot of money was spent on investigating this case, but I believe that the case was dropped because it would continue to cost more money and was not going to be resolved quickly.  You can hear more from Michael Woodhouse below.

I was appalled to hear Catherine Delahunty of the Greens point out yet another failing in the case, that the officers who took the complaints did not even get the name of the boys involved correct when they took down their initial details.  Catherine called for an independent taskforce into how sexual assault is dealt with.  You can hear more of what Catherine Delahunty has to say in this video below, but she is correct when she states that girls and women of today's modern society will continue to fail to have any faith in the police believing them if the police do not investigate their complaints properly.  And this is after Louise Nicholas has been working with the police to change their culture and response to sexual assault complaints!

Tracey Martin, deputy leader of New Zealand First, acknowledged that while many police officers are fathers and mothers, we have major failings in the New Zealand Police and spoke of another case with a young girl facing a similar situation.  It resulted in a "he said/she said" impasse.  She claimed this was not a one party problem and needed cross party support in parliament to make changes to ensure that women (or men) can go to the police and make a complaint with the confidence that they will be believed and the complaint investigated.  Tracey called for the conversation to happen in parliament, for this report not to be forgotten and gather dust.  You can hear what Tracey Martin has to say in this video below.

Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, talked about making changes, even when it is difficult, and called for the support of the House to make changes.  Amy Adams is in the process of establishing the role of a Chief Victims Advisor to all ministers across portfolios so that there would be independent advice available.  Admirable, but this government has a poor record on utilising true, independent advice.  Amy always criticised the perpetrators for their victimising the girls with social media and promoted the bill that she thinks will prevent this or take action against them for using social media.  We have a domestic violence notification every six minutes and half of homicides are related to domestic abuse, and while the Roast Busters case is not domestic abuse related, it is indicative of some of society's attitudes that must change.

Anne Tolley, who was the Minister of Police at the time of the Roast Busters case becoming known and when the police decided not to lay charges, also spoke.  She trumpeted that she was the first Minister of Police to make a complaint to the IPCA and that this report was a result of her complaint - but I'm pretty sure there were complaints made by opposition parties to the IPCA as well.  She was pleased that the girls (aka victims) now know what actually happened.  She emphasised that it was not a systemic breakdown, but failures by individuals. 

Anne Tolley also said that CYF had to take some responsibility too.  And the report makes mention of the knowledge CYF had and how co-operation and information sharing between CYF and the police needs improvement.  The police clearly did not give the right information to CYF, but neither did CYF clarify with the police it seems.  Hear more from Anne Tolley below.

Sue Moroney from Labour also stood to speak and to point out that the Speaker had allowed this debate because of Ministerial responsibility over the Roast Busters issue, and Sue pointed out that no Ministers were taking responsibility for this issue and the culture that exists to allow this issue to continue.  Sue Moroney stood up and spoke for New Zealand women to say we have had enough.  Sue pointed out that the police do not need a complaint to be laid to investigate an incident of sexual assault.  This is written into New Zealand law and is part of the policy of the police.  Sue pointed out that Michael Woodhouse and Anne Tolley were wrong on this point when they said the police couldn't prosecute because there had been no formal complaint.  See more about what Sue Moroney said below.

Louise Upston, Minister for Women, reiterated that the Roast Busters boys need to take responsibility for their actions and have to shoulder the blame.  Louise also echoed Anne Tolley in saying that it was her who referred the complaint against the police to the IPCA, and Michael Woodhouse in regards to the good statistics from the police over recent years.  She also listed a number of programmes and funding under this government.  (I think that Louise Upston may have neglected to mention the fact that her government denied the Christchurch centre that assisted rape victims funding before the 2014 election and they had to shut up shop as a result).  See more of Louise Upston's speech below.

Poto Williams also stood to speak on this matter, asking what victims of sexual abuse need.  They need timeliness, compassion, to feel they have been heard, not to be re-victimised, and that once they have told their stories to the police that the police will take action on their behalf.  Poto Williams believes that these needs have not been fully fulfilled.  85% of victims of family violence are also sexual violence victims.  Poto Williams stood to defend Jacinda Ardern's assertion that a lack of resources for the police hampered the investigation.  She said "Jacinda was being generous, because if not for a lack of resource, then it is about attitude and culture.  An attitude that sexual predation is ok and an attitude that the police do not care.  And a culture of indifference.  And I for one will not stand for that."  That is a fantastic statement, and you can view more of what Poto Williams has to say below.

I note that only one man stood to speak on this issue, the Minister of Police, Michael Woodhouse.  Are all the other men in parliament too scared that they may be tarred with the "apology" brush like when David Cunliffe stood up and apologised for the fact that men are the assailants in the majority of domestic abuse cases at the Women's Refuge conference last year?

A lot of what has been said on the Roast Busters case boils down to consent.  Sex without consent is rape, no two ways about it.  Sex with a person under 16 does not boil down to whether or not all parties are consenting to it because under our law in New Zealand it is classed as Unlawful Sexual Connection and can therefore be prosecuted against.

So the parents of the Roast Busters boys, in fact the parents of any teenager or young adult, should read this blog Consent: Not actually  that complicated by Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess and share it with their kids and use it as a base for discussion about sex and consent.  This blog uses a cup of tea as an analogy for sex.  I shared this blog on Facebook and one of my friends commented that along with getting consent for a cup of tea/sex, you should also check how the recipient likes their cup of tea/sex.

Sharon Murdoch is also an amazing cartoonist who hits the nail on the head.

The whole process of this Roast Busters case has brought up the issue of teenage sex and alcohol consumption, consent and the rape culture that permeates our society.

It also brings up the concept of  "old fashioned" community policing.  My great uncle was a policeman.  At his funeral, his son, my mum's cousin, told how parents would knock on Uncle Bill's door and asked him to "give their boy a kid up the bum" or "scare some sense into the little bugger".  This little community service stopped a lot of idiocy by the neighbourhood boys getting out of control and ruining their future prospects. 

Where has this gone from policing today?  How many girls would not have fallen victim to these Roast Buster boys if the police officers involved had have visited their family homes and informed the parents of these boys as to what they were doing at these parties so the parents of these boys could knock some sense into them?

Again, as a society, we fail these girls if this report is allowed to languish on a dusty shelf in parliament's library.  As a society we have to demand action from our law makers and law enforcement to ensure that victims are supported and protected and further harm is not inflicted.

To not do so would be to fail the standard, and we can't have the police fail their own standards again and let them get away with it.

Labour Leadership - Here We Go Again...

Labour, the other Saturday, plunged to its lowest place in the polls in its nearly 100 year history.  Some polls had warned that Labour was slipping in the polls in the weeks leading up to the election, but internal polling had indicated higher numbers, and the door knocking and phone calling had also indicated positive responses to people supporting and voting Labour. 

 

Combined with National slipping bit by bit in the polls following the Dirty Politics book release and Judith Collins' inappropriate behaviour being fully exposed, how buoyant the Greens had been in the polls and the fact that New Zealand First's policies and people seemed to lean more towards the left than the right, I was confident that the election would be on a knife edge.  I honestly thought a clear winning team would not be evident on the night.

 

Oh how wrong I was, and many others.

 

With National winning 41 electorate seats and 48% of the party vote to get an extra 20 List MPs, it meant they had 61 MPs out of 120.  John Key also moved in the next few days to make doubly sure he had the House in his grasp by opening discussions with his "friends" from the last six years: the Mäori Party, United Future and ACT (who shouldn't be there - but that is another discussion).

 

 

Meanwhile, predictably, Labour was tearing itself apart.  Just like in November 2011, the leader was blamed.  David Cunliffe was vilified for his speech at the end of election night (the one where he celebrated the work of all the party volunteers and supporters - and right that he did, because we worked bloody hard) and his lack of resignation on the spot.  As someone pointed out on Twitter recently, did Helen Clark's election night resignation set the benchmark for the losing leader?

 

 

In the days that followed, Cunliffe was continually criticised for his blaming Kim Dotcom for the failure of the left to thrive, for blaming the Dirty Politics book for sucking up tv air time, for not taking responsibility for his role in Labour plunging to a new low, for not resigning, for gagging his MPs....

 

Then there was the various Labour MPs speaking to the media about why they thought Labour had gone down in the polls and what they think should happen next.  Followed by the 7.5 hour horror caucus meeting on Tuesday and the angst and hair pulling since then, the membership of Labour became even more concerned and, just like within the caucus, people have started aligning themselves with their preferred leader, including several Facebook pages that support David Cunliffe in continuing his leadership of Labour.

 

 

 

And then there were the bloggers, journalists and media commentators who weighed in with accurate comments and the crazy off the mark comments too.

 

 

 

On Saturday, David Cunliffe resigned his leadership, taking responsibility for the election loss, and then nominated himself for the leadership vote.  Grant Robertson also put his name back into the hat.  David Shearer had indicated that early last week that he was considering a bid, but as he has been in New York at the UN with Murray McCully the last few days, this has yet to materialise at the time of writing this blog. 

 

 

 

Other names that have been thrown about include Kelvin Davis (who ruled himself out - including to me in a tweet), Jacinda Ardern and Andrew Little (who are playing that coolly, particularly as Little has to wait for the confirmed election results on October 4th to know he really is the 5th list MP for Labour) and, strangely, Stuart Nash (who, while he has run a great campaign to win Napier back, was helped by the fact that Garth McVicar split the vote on the right when he ran for the Conservatives and a new National candidate).

 

 

I note that the commentators and journalists have not aimed similar vitriol at the Greens or NZ First for their performance on Election Day.  Neither of those parties reached their predicted percentage of the votes, in fact the Greens have one less MP than they had in the last parliament.  And I'm not the only one to notice....

 

 

After David Cunliffe announced his intentions on Saturday, Sue Moroney posted this on Facebook:

 

 

I had been wondering Sue's point of view since Tuesday's caucus meeting where she resigned as Chief Whip (which she explained in another post she had done so to concentrate on her portfolio areas).  Consequently I was very pleased to see the above post.  I believe that people become MPs because, apart from their desire to enter politics and serve the country, it is the people behind them, the party members, who do the hard yakka to get that MP into parliament. If you do not recognise those who help you and feed back to them then the relationships you develop during the campaign will not exist for the following campaign.

 

Below is my response to Sue on Facebook:

 

I personally think that DC will have learnt a lot over the last year and that experience of learning on the job is irreplaceable.

It took Helen Clark & co 6 years to win the Treasury Benches after she became leader and she had some big hurdles and an election loss. It took her time to build her relationships as leader and with NZ.

This stuff doesn't happen overnight.

One of the reasons I joined Labour was the ability of the membership to have a say in who leads the party. So I'm pleased that DC and Grant are honouring the process set down by the party rules.

But after that process is over, the factions need to dissolve and the backstabbing needs to end. And not just in caucus.  I've been appalled to see it in the organisation/backroom side of the party too. And what is worse is that it is incredibly obvious, so obvious that people like Patrick Gower and Mike Hosking and Duncan Garner and Paul Henry have had a feeding frenzy on it.

The caustic culture of factions and backstabbing throughout the party must cease. That's why we lost.

 

I then re-posted this to my own Facebook status, because I am tired of the factions destabilising Labour and undermining the hard work put in by the party members and supporters.

 

In August last year I wrote a post called Leadership.... a tale of two leaders: Helen Clark & David Shearer.  In that post I wrote the following:

 

Whoever does have the X-Factor to win the race to being the Labour leader will need to have and do the following in my opinion:

• unite the party - Labour doesn't need to be squabbling amongst themselves for the next year; we need them to show that they can beat John Key and National at their own game.
• be able to do a sound bite with confidence for the 6 o'clock news - it's all about looks in this game.
• be a good debater in the house - put John Key, Steven Joyce, Judith Collins and the rest back in their box please!!
• keep your friends close and your enemies closer - keep your enemies very busy in key jobs so they don't have time to mischief make.  It worked for Helen Clark, and maybe that's why Steven Joyce has so many ministerial responsibilities (just throwing that out there in case JK and Joyce aren't as close as everyone says).
• keep close tabs on what everyone is doing - Helen did, that way she minimised surprises and everyone kept on top of things.
• put out good policy (especially dumping National Standards and getting rid of Charter Schools) and back it throughout the party - you need to show that you can be the next government.
• connect to the New Zealand public at many levels - get out there and meet the people and be involved in as many events as possible.  Shearer did do this, but it has to also mesh with how people see you on the tv fronting issues.
• everytime National does something dumb, use it - honestly, National has had some right regular stuff ups in the last year, but no hay has been made while the sun shines for Labour when these stuff ups happen.  You should be all over those stuff ups like shit on a blanket (to be blunt).
• watch that doco about Helen and learn from her example of how to stick to it, unite the party, and get the public onside.  Pay particular attention to the part about when there was almost a coup against her before the 1999 election.
• meet the standard of being a leader - we need you to do your job because this is a democracy.

Now I believe that David Cunliffe did some of the above (did he read my blog per chance?) such as doing some great sound bites for the 6 o'çlock news, keeping his enemies close (he kept all the leading stirrers in his top 10), getting manygreat policies out there (especially in education, health, housing and the economy), there was better targeting of National stuff ups and some stern debate in the House by David and others (some delegated to various members of caucus, like Hipkins going after Parata and Robertson on Collins), David and been very visible in the public eye at many events of great variety in the last year.... and I saw David take command in the pre-election debates with John Key.

Yes, there were some stuff ups to, like the anonymous donations to a trust and not being able to fully articulate the Capital Gains Tax details (have you seen the Labour 2014 manifesto?  It's so big!), but that is part of learning.  John Key has many brain fades and "forgets" far too many things to make me comfortable at the end of the day, yet his caucus is NOT publicly mauling him for his failings, and the media is so busy focused on David's minor stuff ups they are not taking Key to task on his stuff ups.

Then there were the media beat ups like the letter David Cunliffe wrote for Donghua Liu in 2003 (do you remember every letter/correspondence you wrote in 2003?), the "apology" at the Women's Refuge symposium (at which Paula Bennett spent the whole time others were speaking playing on her phone) and various other minor incidents during which the media called for Cunliffe to resign.

Which other leader of a political party has had so many media commentators calling on them to resign in one year?  When you think about all the stuff ups John Key has made and have so far been revealed, why isn't he on a permanent holiday in Hawaii right now?

Quite frankly, who would want to be the leader of the Labour party right now knowing that you would be constantly harassed and vilified by the New Zealand media on a daily basis?

And why is this happening?  Well it is obvious that some MPs have not been loyal, and I have to conclude that some party members at various levels and possibly some staffers have also not been loyal.

I said above from my post last year that the new leader would have to unite the party and stop the squabbling.  Well clearly that was one area in which David Cunliffe has not made much progress.  But I believe he can not shoulder all the blame.  The party president, Moira Coatsworth, and the Labour Council should be held responsible for this as well.  They have the ability to censure MPs and could have ensured some were turfed out of contention as electorate candidate for unsavoury behaviour (why do you think 15 MPs 'retired' from National this year?).  But we did not see this happening.  Each MP should also be aware of the party rules and be conscious of the fact that leaky ships do not reach their destinations.

With my own eyes this year I have seen some of the behind the scenes at electorate and regional level of the Labour party.  The jockeying and attempted deal making and backstabbing has left a sour taste in my mouth.  Some candidates were caustic and juvenile in their dealings with certain sectors of the party which meant that some sectors were then very non-supportive of those candidates and sometimes this spilled out into the public arena.  Some potential candidates were treated poorly, and others behaved like spoiled brats when they did not get what they wanted.

We are all human and we will make mistakes in the heat of the moment, but it is how you behave and present yourself after the fact that makes a difference.  And some people did not present themselves in the best light at all.

Leadership for me has been a huge issue in the last 15 months.  It is only when you are led by a less than desirable leader that you realise how lucky you have been previously and what the qualities of a good or great leader really are.  I've been involved in a lot of discussions and collected a number of quotes and memes that speak to me about leadership.  So here I will share some:

On Sunday I came across a guest blog for The Daily Blog on the Labour leadership issue by Anjum Rahman, Loyalty, Leadership and the Labour Party.  Anjum was on the Labour list for the 2014 election.  She is an accountant and a community leader in Hamilton, especially supporting ethnic and immigration issues, but has interests across the broader Hamilton community.  This piece which Anjum wrote stood out to me in particular:

But he (David Cunliffe) was always going to struggle with a caucus he hadn’t won over, and who weren’t prepared to accept the wishes of the membership.  And more than that, there are divisions in the Party that run a lot deeper than the Caucus leadership issue....

So, when there is a disconnect between caucus and membership, there really is only one solution.  Caucus must abide by the wishes of the membership in good faith.  That’s a pretty reasonable request, especially given the membership are the ones who put in so much work on the ground to run campaigns and to keep the Party machinery going, as well as providing significant financial support through fundraising and personal donations.

Caucus members who are unwilling to respect the vote of the membership should seriously reconsider their positions within the Party and as MPs.  For those who are electorate MPs, if they think their electorates voted them in regardless of their being a Labour candidate, let them test that theory by running as an independent in a by-election.  Because frankly, if they are not willing to work positively with the elected leader, then they are a liability to the Party.

The same applies to those in elected positions within the Party hierarchy.  If they aren’t prepared to support the elected leader, then it’s time to step aside.  The Party needs a governing council that is prepared to back its leader and to discipline MPs who have failed to act in the best interests of the Party, particularly those who openly or through leaks, use the media to damage the leadership.

I think Anjum has summed up the feeling of the membership when she wrote this post on Saturday.  Kiaora Anjum for writing a piece so thoughtful and succinct.

It is time for the Labour Party to meet the standard when it comes to leadership and following the wishes of the membership.  Failure to meet that standard will mean another devastating loss to National in 2017, and that would be catastrophic for too many people.

Leadership... a tale of two leaders: Helen Clark & David Shearer

Being a leader is not something everyone is born too.  Sometimes people have natural leadership ability by nature.  Others are nurtured into the role as people around them see their potential.  Some try bloody hard to be a leader, but are dismal.  Some are thrust into the role unexpectedly due to turns of events and are surprised by what they can achieve.

On Thursday evening I attended the Inaugural Dr Rufus Rogers Lecture, at the University of Waikato, that featured Rt. Hon Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008) and current United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) head (since 2009).

I have to say that at the beginning of the night that the ladies and I that I attended with were like a bunch of groupies buying the book, getting Helen's autograph and attempting to get the perfect photo.  Helen, if you're ever reading this, my apologies!

But in our defence, Helen is truly a leader we admire.  The first elected female Prime Minister of New Zealand (remember that though Jenny Shipley was the first female PM, she was not elected in the role, but pushed Jim Bolger out of his) despite rocky times in her six years as the leader of Labour as the leader of the opposition, she held on for grim death; she was a solid Prime Minister during her time in the office; and she is genuinely interested in people and engages with them at the most interesting levels.

This I know personally.  The first time I met Helen was in a lift of a hotel in Wellington in the holidays prior to the 1999 election.  The NZEI president had instructed us not to be late back from lunch as Helen Clark and Trevor Mallard were arriving as our guests straight away.  I was born late, and have been late ever since, so it was kind of inevitable that I would be that day, and that I would share a lift with Helen and Trevor.  To make matters worse, I name dropped Helen's sister Sandra, as I worked with her in my first year as a beginning teacher.  Helen was extremely gracious.

The next time I met Helen was during our school camp in 2004.  We were booked to do the education visit at Martha Mine as part of our camp.  We had no idea that the Prime Minister that day was also visiting, along with Basil Morrison (then mayor of  the Hauraki district) and Helen's parents (among others).  The children and their parents were very excited when Helen and her entourage came into the education centre.  It was a big surprise.  Helen went around the room and talked to the children about what they were doing, signed autographs, and agreed to one girl's request for a photograph together.  It turned out, after all the fun things we had done, to be the highlight of the camp for many of the children.

Recently there was a two part documentary about Helen Clark screened on TV3 as part of their Inside New Zealand season.  It talked about the struggles she had in the initial years with low polling for both Helen and the Labour party, but it explained how she held onto the leadership (by releasing her "inner farmgirl") and built the party back up to almost winning the 1996 election, and more so to win in 1999 (by forming a coalition).  Essentially, after surviving a coup from some of her closest friends in Labour, she put most of them in front bench roles, and kept them very busy and very close.

Tonight Helen discussed how she got the role of head of the UNDP, what the role entails and the challenges of the role.  A friend in London had suggested that she apply.  Helen scoffed at first, not believing that she had the required experience... but her friend then pointed out all the skills she had used as the Prime Minister and how those were similar skills to the job available.

Inequality has increased significantly in the last thirty years, and Helen commented that it is a huge issue in addressing poverty and environmental issues.  If you do not address inequality, you can not minimise or eliminate poverty.  The UN had developed the Millennium goals in 2000, one of which was to halve poverty.  This goal has been achieved, but Helen pointed out that was fine if you were in the half that had risen out of poverty, not so if you were in the halve still in poverty.

Unstable nations that have difficulties in maintaining stable government or exist in Helen Clark's agenda.  She made comments on the situation in the Central African Republic (which I had to google as I wasn't sure where it was - it's between Cameroon and South Sudan), Mali, Egypt and Syria.  She talked about the impact of climate change with the increase of extreme weather events, the impact of natural disasters and how as an international community we help with this.

And this is where Helen believes that resilience is a vital value and trait for people to have.  She said that it starts with having strong families and consequently strong communities.  Helen credited her loving parents and family for her values and community involvement, and that helped shape what she has achieved.

Helen set the standard for being the leader of the Labour party.

Thursday was also the day that David Shearer announced his resignation as the leader of the Labour party.  He had been in the job since December 2011 after being elected by the Labour caucus of MPs.

David Shearer came into parliament by winning the by-election for the Mt Albert seat vacated by Helen Clark when she took up her new role with the UN.  Shearer had been working with the UN for the previous twenty years give or take.  Shearer had been "working for the UN, managing the provision of aid to countries including Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq."  (Wikipedia)

Shearer came into the leadership as a "clean skin" so to speak.  He was not tainted with the Rogernomics era of Labour or known for being part of the Clark era.  Due to his background of working in some of the most challenging hotspots in the world, it was hoped that he would bring strong leadership and challenge John Key in the leadership stakes.

What followed was one step forward, two steps back.  Shearer would make a speech or policy announcement that would be greeted favourably (one step forward), but then not follow up, muff a sound bite for the news, be ineffective in the house (two steps backward).  The polls went up and down each time for Labour, but were never convincing, and Shearer's personal polling as preferred prime minister was always dismal.

Rumours abounded frequently about how stable his leadership was, who was about to challenge him and that he was on notice from senior MPs.  Before the annual conference in 2012 the rumour mill was in overdrive that David Cunliffe (who lost out to Shearer in December 2011) would be challenging Shearer for the leadership.  He denied it and pledged his allegiance to Shearer, only to be outted for how far his challenge had proceeded, be lambasted by Shearer and fellow colleagues, and then be relegated to the back benches by Shearer.

However decisive this move by Shearer appeared, his position still did not look solid.  He did not seem to have that "inner farmgirl" to unleash and bring the party in behind him in a united fashion.  In fact the party appeared to have no unity.  Last month when Duncan Garner tweeted that a colleague of his had a letter from an anonymous party source claiming Shearer was on notice was big news.  Everybody across the political spectrum had something to say, including Shearer who told reporters to "read my lips" and "I will be the Labour leader in 2014".  The letter did not materialise and Garner was rubbished as scare mongering and criticised for leaving a colleague hanging.

Yet a month later, it appears that a delegation of senior MPs visited Shearer and let him know that things were not good at all, and please do the decent thing.  Consequently we had Shearer's resignation.  He did it with dignity and it demonstrated that he has humility.

"I have been privileged to lead the Labour team for the past 20 months and I'm proud of the gains we have made in that time.
"But we need to do more. So the time has come for me to hand over to a new leader who can take Labour through to 2014.
"There was no letter, there was no ultimatum, there was no vote. But from the soundings I've taken from colleagues I realise I no longer enjoy the confidence of a number of my caucus colleagues,'' Mr Shearer said.
"After spending the last 20 years of my life leading humanitarian and reconstruction projects overseas, I came home to New Zealand because I'm passionate about this country.
"We have a history to be proud of, but I believe our best years lie in front of us. But to really take this country forward, we need a change of government. We need a progressive government with fresh ideas.''  (NZ Herald 22/8/13)

What followed were wonderful endorsements of his character and humility from across the house, more so from his own MPs who were not united behind him after all.  The compliments about Shearer being a great guy with humility and compassion and a hard worker are all true.  However,  Te Ururoa Flavell of the Maori Party said it aptly when he said it was probably inevitable.  And Hone Harawira (Mana) said he always found Mr Shearer to be "very very friendly and very open''... "I think that was probably his downfall - nice guys don't last long in this game.''

Unfortunately, David Shearer has failed to meet the standard

Now Labour is about to vote in a new leader, using a new system.  The caucus will make up 40% of the votes, party members 40% of the vote and affiliated unions will make up the remaining 20% of the vote.

As I write this, Grant Robertson has put his hat in the ring, as has Shane Jones (according to Twitter), and it is highly expected that David Cunliffe will do the same.  They have until Monday 26 August 10:00pm to put their names forward for contention.  It will be mid September before we have a result.

Grant Robertson is the current deputy leader and has be accused, by John Key, as undermining Shearer throughout their tenure as the leadership team.  Robertson has been the MP for Central Wellington since the 2008 election.  He has worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the New Zealand Overseas Aid Programme.  He then became an advisor to the Labour government from the early 2000s.  Robertson has seemed a very solid party man in his time in the house.

Shane Jones is a list MP for Labour who has been in parliament since 2005 and was the Minister for Building and Construction from October 2007 till the 2008 election.  He has had a couple of controversies, but is considered to be an articulate and knowledgeable MP.

David Cunliffe is the MP for New Lynn and has been in parliament since 1999 and was the Minister of Communications and Information Technology from 2002-2008 and Health Minister from October 2007-2008.  Since December 2011 he has been considered at possible leader, but has also been a divisive figure in the party, with some colleagues apparently starting a club called The ABC Club (Anyone But Cunliffe).  Since his demotion to the back benches in November 2012 he has been seen to be playing the party line.

While Andrew Little (list MP since 2011) and Jacinda Adern (list MP since 2008) have said they won't be entering the leadership race despite a poll showing that they were on the radar of the voting public as a potential Labour leader.  Whether or not they consider themselves too young in parliament experience or life in general, it is probably a wise move at this point.

All the people above have excellent education and credentials.  They all make great politicians and have leadership qualities, but the question is, "Who has the X-Factor?"

Whoever does have the X-Factor to win the race to being the Labour leader will need to have and do the following in my opinion:

• unite the party - Labour doesn't need to be squabbling amongst themselves for the next year; we need them to show that they can beat John Key and National at their own game.
• be able to do a sound bite with confidence for the 6 o'clock news - it's all about looks in this game.
• be a good debater in the house - put John Key, Steven Joyce, Judith Collins and the rest back in their box please!!
• keep your friends close and your enemies closer - keep your enemies very busy in key jobs so they don't have time to mischief make.  It worked for Helen Clark, and maybe that's why Steven Joyce has so many ministerial responsibilities (just throwing that out there in case JK and Joyce aren't as close as everyone says).
• keep close tabs on what everyone is doing - Helen did, that way she minimised surprises and everyone kept on top of things.
• put out good policy (especially dumping National Standards and getting rid of Charter Schools) and back it throughout the party - you need to show that you can be the next government.
• connect to the New Zealand public at many levels - get out there and meet the people and be involved in as many events as possible.  Shearer did do this, but it has to also mesh with how people see you on the tv fronting issues.
• everytime National does something dumb, use it - honestly, National has had some right regular stuff ups in the last year, but no hay has been made while the sun shines for Labour when these stuff ups happen.  You should be all over those stuff ups like shit on a blanket (to be blunt).
• watch that doco about Helen and learn from her example of how to stick to it, unite the party, and get the public onside.  Pay particular attention to the part about when there was almost a coup against her before the 1999 election.
• meet the standard of being a leader - we need you to do your job because this is a democracy.