Wherever Chris Hipkins looks lately he finds himself having to clean up a mess that happened on his predecessor’s watch, writes political editor Jo Moir.
When Chris Hipkins got handed the key to the ninth floor Beehive office he wouldn’t have expected it to come with a closet full of skeletons.
In the space of a week, two of Labour’s rising stars have caused headaches for their leader, with Michael Wood resigning before he was sacked and now Kiri Allan coming under fire for relationship issues in her office.
The pair were the only two seriously considered as contenders for Prime Minister alongside Hipkins, and have long been tipped for bright futures from early in their political careers.
But that expectation appears to have led to promotion and political demise in equal parts.
With expectation comes ambition and that ambition was rewarded by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern in the form of promotion.
The promotion bred a sense of self-importance for Wood that meant he didn’t see fit to do what was asked of him by the Cabinet Office on more than a dozen occasions.
For Allan it’s less clear what the specific allegations are but at the least she’s overseen an office environment that made staff feel uncomfortable enough to make complaints and in at least one case, finish a secondment early.
MPs who do well in politics are acutely aware their personal success is inextricably linked to effective working relationships with their staff and good pastoral care in a high-stress and robust environment like Parliament.
They’re the MPs who fill up their valedictory speeches with acknowledgements and praise for those in the background doing the actual work — their staff are always there in the public gallery at their final farewell out of respect for a boss who treated them well.
Allan finds herself the subject of complaints about the working relationships she had with her staff that were so bad they were fed up the chain to bosses in three separate departments, according to Stuff.
After becoming an MP in 2017, she was first made a minister by Ardern following the 2020 election and has quickly climbed up through the ranks and was promoted even higher in Cabinet by Hipkins earlier this year.
Allan has been the subject of speculation and rumour when it comes to how she runs her office and deals with staff, but Hipkins said he hadn’t received any complaints since becoming Prime Minister.
He couldn’t recall the particular incident with a Department of Conservation staffer last year, who finished a secondment early because of concerns about working relationships.
That’s something senior ministers tend to know or at least hear about, but on Wednesday Hipkins noted he often heard rumours and didn’t make a habit of investigating every single one.
Hipkins told media in Beijing he first heard about it in recent weeks when questions started being asked and then just a few days before he headed to China he had a separate conversation with Allan where she asked for some leave from Parliament to deal with mental health issues.
Hipkins says her leave is for reasons separate to the staffing issues but wouldn’t go into the details of why he’d given her time off, only to say it would be inappropriate for him to comment on a personal matter.
Allan’s break from Parliament, which is sitting this week, follows two other incidents this year that have required the Prime Minister to have to express continued confidence in her.
In April she was forced to apologise after speaking at a farewell event at RNZ for her partner, where she criticised the state broadcaster’s treatment of Māori staff.
Not long after it was revealed by 1News that she failed to declare a potential perceived conflict of interest with the Cabinet Office.
After receiving a political donation from then-Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon she subsequently took on responsibilities for Human Rights Commissioners when she became Justice Minister, but didn’t note the conflict.
A rising star since 2017, but in just three short months Allan has been the subject of headlines over and over again and Hipkins has spent more press conferences than he would care to remember answering questions about her slip-ups.
While the RNZ error of judgment was during his tenure, the conflict and staffing issues were not, nor was Wood’s failure to deal with a conflict of interest, and add to that Stuart Nash’s passing on of confidential Cabinet information to donors.
As far as loose ends go, they’re all ones Hipkins would have preferred Ardern to have dealt with before turning the light out and shutting the door.
Allan is expected to return to Parliament on Thursday where she will face questions about the management of her office.
Given Hipkins is part of a ram-packed schedule in China it’s highly unlikely he’s had a decent debrief with Allan about exactly what complaints she is aware of, and more importantly if there’s any more to come.
Hipkins flies from Beijing to Shanghai on Thursday morning as he inches his way closer to home, due back on Saturday.
His first port of call could be checking the Beehive closet to see if anything else has fallen out.
