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Kerre Woodham: This would never have happened had Nat's processes been better

Author
Kerre Woodham,
Publish Date
Wed, 10 Aug 2022, 12:29PM
Sam Uffindel. Photo / NZ Herald
Sam Uffindel. Photo / NZ Herald

Kerre Woodham: This would never have happened had Nat's processes been better

Author
Kerre Woodham,
Publish Date
Wed, 10 Aug 2022, 12:29PM

What a bloody mess.

Hopefully, with Peter Goodfellow gone, National can get their house in order once and for all. This ridiculous hoo-ha over a new electorate MP should never have come to pass and would never have come to pass if National’s systems and processes were better when it comes to selection.

Party leader Christopher Luxon sounded as exasperated as he probably gets when he was talking to Mike Hosking this morning.

It beggars belief that Luxon and his deputy Nicola Willis would be left playing catch up after revelations Uffindell had been expelled from school for beating up a younger student.

And then once those revelations were made, of course, it became a pile-on.

The allegations Luxon was referring to in the interview are from a woman who flatted with Uffindell, who said he was an aggressive bully who once pounded on her bedroom door, screaming obscenities until she fled through the window.

She said that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Her father came to Dunedin to help her move out of the flat the next day and gave the flatmates a piece of his mind.

I would prefer to see any allegations of bad behaviour handed over to the police and let them decide whether a threshold has been crossed. We are all imperfect people.

Parliament is made up of people just like us; imperfect.

There is not a pool of perfect, blameless souls from whom we can select to make up our Parliament or our police or whatever it might be, and in a way I'm glad there's not.

I would prefer people to have lived a bit of life, made mistakes and known what it's like to be humbled. I'd rather people like them were running the country and creating policy.

Would I seek out the company of a man like Sam Uffindell? No, I wouldn’t. 

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