New National MP Sam Uffindell has admitted hitting and bullying others when in his teens, on top of Monday's revelation of an assault of a fellow Kings College boarding pupil when he was 16, that led to him shifting to St Paul's Collegiate.
Uffindell made the comments at an emotional standup news conference in Parliament after Stuff reported that Uffindell had told National's electorate selection committee, but not National delegates or Tauranga voters or leader Christopher Luxon, that he assaulted a fellow pupil in 1999 at Kings College.
Uffindell said he had apologised to his victim last year and was remorseful. He said he deserved a second chance. However, the victim told Stuff he felt used when he discovered in the media that Uffindell was going to run for Parliament soon after being contacted by Uffindell with an apology.
Luxon told a news conference earlier he had only found out Monday about the assault, and would have preferred the electorate committee had told him, National delegates and Tauranga voters before the by-election. Uffindell never admitted it during the campaign in public, saying when asked about his biggest mistake that it was not to return to New Zealand sooner. Asked at a campaign event what he would tell his younger self, he said he should have a different hair style.
Uffindell was also asked by the Bay of Plenty Times during the campaign about being suspended from St Paul's Collegiate, but he declined to specify what actually happened.
"I was a bully at school, and I’m not proud of that at all," Uffindell said, adding he had been a "16-year-old thug" at high school, but was not trying to hide his past.
Luxon said he had only heard of the one incident and that he supported Uffindell staying on as MP on that basis.
"He is genuinely regretful and he’s shown tremendous amounts of contrition and empathy for the victim. He is not the same person that he was 22 years ago," Luxon said.
“He has my support. But clearly he needs to be able to build back trust with the voters in Tauranga," he said.
My view
In my view, former National Leader John Key would not have tolerated Uffindell staying on as MP for more than a minute or two after finding out Uffindell and the selection committee kept the information from voters, delegates and him.
This is now a test of Luxon's judgement. It is not tenable for Luxon to say he and Tauranga voters should have known before the by-election, but to leave Uffindell in place until the end of next year, particularly with the political risk of more skeletons emerging from the closet.
This is a test of whether Christopher Luxon is as much of a smiling assassin as John Key. If he chooses to leave Uffindell in place, it is another sign that Luxon lacks the deft touch and political instincts to repeat Key's success. Key axed Pansy Wong within two days of hearing in 2011 of her travel entitlement irregularities. Aaron 'don't you know who I am' Gilmore lasted less than a day after it emerged he had been less than clear in his explanation of wrongdoing to Key in 2013.
Key was also ruthless in removing Kate Wilkinson and Phil Heatley as cabinet ministers because they had not performed in National's first term from 2008-2011.
I think there's a chance Luxon ditches Uffindell before the end of the day to cauterise the political damage to less than a day's worth of ugly headlines and revelations. If this drags on for many days, it will damage National. Luxon should also be insisting on the immediate resignation of Peter Goodfellow as a National Party board director.
Goodfellow was President when Uffindell was selected and stepped aside as President last weekend after a series of poor candidate selections in recent years, including Todd Barclay (2014-2017), Jami-Lee Ross (2011-2020), Todd Muller (2014-22), Andrew Falloon (2017-2020), Hamish Walker (2017-2020), Jian Yang (2011-2020), Aaron Gilmore (2013-13) and 2020 Upper Harbour candidate Jake Bezzant. Due diligence did not discover issues with bullying, sexual harassment, mental illness, sending pornographic images, leaking private data, training Chinese spies, being entitled and allegedly impersonating an ex-girlfriend online, respectively.
90 Comments
Boris Johnson and David Cameron both admitted to using cocaine and were members of the Bullingdon club at university. They still got to be PM of the UK.
He his toast, not so much for gang bashing a kid, but for dodging the truth now. To say he contacted his victim 20 years later out of prolonged remorse and not because he was cleaning house as he prepped for a political career beggars belief. All it will take now is someone to recall Unffindell bragging about his getting kicked out of school. Luxon will cut him now before that comes out.
5pm edit: Looks like I overestimated Luxon, he has decided to stand by Uffindell.
The voters of Tauranga knew none of Uffindell's school years boorish behaviour before the by-election ... they have been duped into thinking he is squeaky clean ...
...Luxon , it's time to staunch the flow of bad news : follow Kings Colleges lead , ask him to leave ...
Quelle surprise!
One of the shorter political careers in NZ history, I'll wager.
I doubt that he's high enough up the food-chain for a concerted comeback effort by the party flacks.
Cue a tearful statement encompassing "not damaging the party", "careful consideration of my future, supported by my wife" and determining that "sitting as an independent to represent the people of Tauranga that have placed their faith in me" to neatly sidestep a by-election.
If he was of a 'certain minority race' as you say,the media wouldn't be saying anything as when he beat the guy with a bed leg,he would have been expelled from his decile 1 state school and not given the opportunity to move to another private school.He then would have probably started with low level crime and eventually end up in jail....
"Accountability".
Just what Uffendill talked about in his very first speech in Parliament.
He was the "Accountability" guy. The one who was going to lock up the young ram raiders, and throw away the key.
Seems it is not OK for disadvantaged youth to steal, but it is OK for privileged youth to beat the crap out of much smaller people.
Exactly. I don't buy his contrition. He sounds like a sociopath.
Picking on those at the bottom of society is the standard National playbook that goes down well with their backers.
They should be focusing on the big issues affecting the country, like the commoditisation of housing and how this destroys those at the bottom of society.
I have a group of well-minded, articulate, smart and compassionate friends and associates who would be a tremendous asset to this country and people should be falling over themselves to shoulder-tap them. The country would be greatly enriched by their presence as legislators.
Unfortunately, as they were not private school kids or student politicians, they are invisible to the system that could benefit from their presence. Furthermore, the type self-selecting bastardy who are attracted to public office makes it rather unappealing for normies or people who actually want to make a difference or change things, and so they just lose all interest.
Not me though. I shouldn't be trusted to run an HO scale model railway, let alone a country.
hands up everybody who voted labor- knowing that Mallard had "Defamed" a political staffer.
hands up everybody who ignored the Jamie Lee Ross and Simon Bridges debacle.
hands up everybody who voted labor knowing they were protecting a young labour member accused at a political camp of overbearing and aggressive behaviour.
hands up everybody who has no skeleton in their closets.
Both national and labor have issues around bullying and inappropriate behaviour within their "current political ranks" - let alone an offence committed in ones youth and yet we still happily vote for them time and again.
For a lot of voters all of the above is frustrating but the reality is it wont change anybody's votes- people care about inflation, house prices, health, education. immigration and most of us just want Labour, National, ACT and the greens to get on with fixing those issues rather than dredging up each others past.
Do people deserve second chances? I'd say yes (until you demonstrate clear tendencies towards unshakeable recidivism). Particularly when their transgressions were while they were young, dumb, and full of goodness only knows what.
However, it doesn't change the fact that it's a shocker look for National, and for Luxon to keep him on - if only for reasons of political perception (edited for clarity). The political issue is distinct to the "youthful indiscretion" issue.
Your first paragraph - that’s what I thought initially, but once I read of the severity of the behaviour I changed my mind.
The age he did it is another factor for me. I saw plenty of awful stuff at school but it was mainly 14 and 15 year olds. Once you are 16 you are legally an adult, right?
He needs to go.
It's 17 for legal purposes isn't it?
His behaviour is right up the bad end of the scale in terms of bullying (I was bullied a fair bit at school ... worst I ever had was being tied off the ground to a lamp post and having my bike and school bag tossed in the river - but I never got "done over" with weaponised furniture).
As you say, the more I think about it the more I'm in two minds. I've seen some of the people who bullied me go on to be good members of society, decent family men etc and wouldn't like to see them out of a job because of something they did to me - or others - the best part of two decades ago.
At the same time, we should ideally hold our public officials to a higher standard.
[Sam, ] ...specialising in financial crime and sanctions, including five years with Westpac, four years with Macquarie and time at Commonwealth Bank and the Singapore office of Deutsche Bank, where he worked as Vice President with responsibility for financial sanctions in the Asia Pacific region.
Does anyone have any more insight into this part of his CV? Are these roles about evading and minimizing the rules or actually enforcing them? I would think all those banks have been involved with their fair share of shady behavior. I think his accomplishments at these banks would speak more to his character than his teenage years.
My first impression of him was to dislike him because he had worked for Deutsche Bank and it never recovered. Is this wrong?
It has now gone beyond the individual, his ugly brutish behaviour as a adolescent, who he was then and who he is now. As Mr Hickey explains the sorry parade of National MPs, ill suited & ill qualified in term of the responsibility & integrity our nation’s parliament should expect, as a first right. Sure other parties have contributed similar failures but for heaven’s sake from Gilmore to Falloon there has been a continual surfacing of highly undesirable elements in National’s ranks, contributing heavily to their decimation in the last election, and it is beyond comprehension that here they are, once again leading with their chin and recreating exactly the same sordid scenario. Looks like they have learnt absolutely nothing as it is not so much the offence, without meaning in any way to diminish the seriousness, under scrutiny now but the selection process that National employed and the strong whiff of concealment & furtiveness that is about it.
A few times people tried to bully me at school, seemed I was easy pickings being in the poofters class (yeah they used to say that now non PC term). I sat them on their arse. It is the only way to deal with them. Evander Holyfield sorted out Mike Tyson this way.
Put this guy out on his arse too.
Mike Tyson was not known as a bully, though obviously he bit Evander's ear in the heat of the moment. When Evander went through bankruptcy it was Mike Tyson who gave him a large sum of money (7 figure amount), so he could purchase a home and provide for his family.
In a Mike Tyson documentary he was heavily bullied as a child, as he had a lisp and was socially awkward. A local who was a childhood acquaintance of Mike Tyson, told the story of how Mike Tyson kept pigeons on the roof of their tenement block. A child from school pretended to befriend Mike Tyson, to find where he kept his pigeons. A group of children then went and killed his pigeons, Mike found them at the time. Apparently the main bully, stood over Mike Tyson, and the acquaintance yelled "hit him Mike". Apparently Mike Tyson did hit him, and this was the first time he hit someone. He then joined a boxing gym, so he could learn how to protect himself.
There is a difference between bullying the weak, and being a professional fighter. There is a level one needs to psych one self up to, to compete in a ring, when you have to fight some of the best fighters in the world.
I'm talking purely about his behaviour in the boxing ring, he'll always be a legend there. Often it is the case that a bully is the subject themselves of adverse events and are making up for inadequacies. I always wondered about the soundness of Mikes conviction.
Always thought Evander was cheating in that bite the ear fight, he was following through and collecting Mike with is elbow and the ref wasn't picking it up. Certain amount of frustration there.
I take your point though, which is well made.
Yep apparently I was a ‘poofter’ or ‘fag’ at age 13/14 - even though I wasn’t, haha.
seems that many of us have similar experiences. And probably overrepresented on this website, given it tended to be more clever adolescents who got bullied by less clever adolescents (generalisation I realise)
Same experience here. Had the misfortune of being very academic but not being good at sport (still suck today) playing an instrument as girly as the piano, learning a second language and having more girls than boys as friends - so all the "jock" boys to use that euphemism marked my card as such.
To be fair, I think it was drinking wine and not beer at high school parties that really got me in trouble.
From what has been revealed so far it sounds like what he and his friends did amounts to criminal assault and should have been dealt with in that way. Involving the police. Which in my opinion reflects poorly on the policies and procedures of the school involved that they all got off so lightly. When are we going to call out this sort of behaviour and punish it under the law. The timing of his apology smacks of rank opportunism. Perception is reality for many. It just looks and sounds ugly.
Regardless of the pros and cons of the sins of the past, what gets me is that some group of expert political individuals; who supposedly knew all about this, actually thought (1) he was the best they could get to fill the role left by SB and (2) that they thought that if 'it came out' that it wouldn't be the thing it's turned into and (3) the responses that he has offered, obviously schooled by the latter, would be acceptable.
I don't know which is worse - that he thought his past didn't matter, or that the Panel of Political Experts didn't. Whichever it is, if that's the best we have to offer the electorate at the next election, then - all hope is gone.
In my primary school years, one of the things I remember well was confronting a bunch of kids who had isolated a poor unfortunate kid who had a slight but noticeable deformity and were engaged in bullying and hounding him like baying dogs. I was quite big (fat?) for my age and I was joined by two others; one a tall boy and the other of average build .There must have been 7 or 8 bullies. The location was in wasteland behind the incinerator which in turn was at the far end of the grassed football field, well out of sight of patrolling teachers.
We confronted them and Bruce, the tall boy, read the riot act to these low-lives and for a while there was a stand-off and then the bullies melted away.....they had blinked first. It was a great feeling and gave me a virtuous feeling. I have considered myself on the side of good ever since this incident.
If there's one type of person I can't stand it's a bully. A leopard doesn't change its spots. Obviously, Uffindell will try to 'come clean' and hope he will be forgiven, but I believe that once a bully always a bully and he has no option but to resign.
Ps: I'm by no means flawless but I'm not a bully and I rate bullying among the worst of human traits.
The problem there though for Luxon is that if he fires him, by doing that he confirms that National’s selection policy is just as shonky and indiscriminate as it has always been. That is, none of the improvement(s) the electorate is looking for have been implemented. That though is the lesser evil of the potential of a growing boil on the neck of the party, and to my mind it needs lancing, and very soon too.
Even without this latest revelation, the fact that Uffindell was the best candidate they could come up with for the safest of National seats says a lot about how shallow their talent pool is. And then that they looked past this potential scandal in selecting him means the next best candidate must have been an absolute plonker.
As someone who was badly bullied as well as had planned attacks and beatings when at boarding school, I am glad stories like this are coming out. This sort of thing was not uncommon in boys boarding schools, especially when schools still had corporal punishment. When people are this age they do know what they are doing is bad and that it could have consequences later in life. Victims are usually too embarrassed to come forward and teachers turned a blind eye. It potentially affects the mental health of victims throughout their lives. I do remember that quite a few of the students were students that had come from other schools after being asked to leave, and many were bad eggs and were bullies.
Boarding schools are horrible places, made worse by the fact that most boarding hostels are run by people who didn't board them selves so are nieave as to what goes on despite being in charge of them. Add to the fact that they appoint 16 and 17 year-olds to be boarding prefects who are given some responsibility over younger students its a recipie for disaster.
Getting him to resign probably punishes the electorate more than him .
this could be used to proactively highlight bulllying etc .
Perhaps suggest he should give 10 % of this years salary to anti violence charities , and tour him around schools to tell students what a dick he was .
Being a bully shows:
1/ insecurity,
2/ inability to think
3/ cowardice.
It also shows what he thought he could get away with and how he thought he could get recognition.
The fact that he got expelled within a matter of days after the incident indicates either: he had a track record of bad behaviour, or that the bullying had been particularly brutal, or both.
While it is true that a person can change attitude and can change their ways, we haven't seen anything that suggests his attempt to apologize more than 20 years after the fact, and only a year before he become more serious about entering politics, is anything other than a cynical attempt at controlling public reaction knowing that knowledge about his thuggishness would inevitably become known.
Leaving aside the specific issue, with reference to removing national MPs who aren’t performing, if Luxon removed every National MP who is so ineffectual that most New Zealanders wouldn’t recognise their name or their face, they would have just a handful left. Browse their list on the website it’s amazing.
Uffindell's position is untenable. Now that its in the public forum he will be for evermore called "the Bully boy" and much harsher names. We could run a book!
All bullies are cowards and deserve no leeway.
What is just as bad is the selection committees actions in backing the bully when toldt and even worse keeping it secret.
National havent learned a scrap of integrity and do not deserve any votes
I haven't seen any comments form the MP that acknowledge and recognise the impact on his victim. It's all about him changing. Have I missed this? Has he actually said 'I know that my actions will have likely had lifelong impacts on the man I did this too."? Because, let's face it, if any of us had been beaten up in a boarding school after lights out, miles away from family, with a piece of wood, at the age of 13, we wouldn't forget that.
I am cynical, but honestly, the timing of apology and what happened next in running for MP in BOP, is so convenient. And that platform he ran on - crime, paying a price for your crime. In his case, changing boarding school. Gosh, what a challenge that must have been.
Lastly, you cannot advocate for ram raiders being prosecuted to the full extent of the law when they are 13/14 yrs and then advocate for letting this incident be excused because he was 'only 16'. Maybe I am old fashioned but I expect more of my MP's. I never beat the crap out of someone with wood or my fist. I did graffiti - and got held to account. No humans were harmed in my teenage misjudgement. He, and his friends, went into a dorm, picked a smaller guy, and beat him up with tools at an age when you know not to do this. A coward, at best. It's pretty late to change colours after that.
No most of us wouldn't, but at every boarding school every year this sort of thing would happen. Doesn't make it right but it is common and no reflection on how people are 20 or even 5 years later. Those who say it doesn't happen probably never went to boarding school.
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