Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on National's Andrew Bayly claiming he was ‘misled’ before quitting Cabinet

Andrew Bayly is fighting to clear his name and claims he was misled about the allegations against him before he resigned as a Cabinet Minister.

Bayly, the MP for Port Waikato, stood down as ACC and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister after he “placed a hand” on a staff member’s arm during what he described as an “animated discussion” in February.

Bayley says the fact that no complaint had been made against him was contrary to what he was led to believe at the time - and he's determined to set the record straight.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper confirmed Bayly's now taken legal advice. 

"There was never a formal complaint laid against Andrew Bayly, but he was led to believe that there was some serious complaints made against him."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon, Heather. Right.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
So the former minister wanting to clear his name is
Andrew Bailey.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Yes, indeed, and I've seen a lot of correspondence between himself,
a King's Council, the Department of Internal Affairs, and you
know a lot of material I've read as a result
of this, and essentially we were led to believe, and
certainly Andrew Bailey was led to believe in February that

(00:27):
he had committed some serious offense in his office in
terms of grabbing one of his staff members by his
upper arm and shaking him. What Bailey would say, and
I've talked to him this week about it. He says
that he simply grabbed him of the upper arm and
said we can do this, and he was talking about

(00:48):
an area of policy. Now, there was never a formal
complaint laid against Andrew Bailey, never, not one. Did he
know that, No, he did not know he was led
was one he was led to believe. And he doesn't
blame the Prime Minister's chief of Staff, but he was
led to believe by the chief of Staff that there

(01:08):
was some serious complaints made against him. And he was
also led to believe, not by the Chief of staff,
but by various letters from the Department of Internal Affairs
that in fact it was one against three that three
people had given essentially the same evidence against him, and

(01:32):
yet nobody, not one of them, had made a formal complaint.
So what Andrew Bailey is saying is that now he
believes that he offered his resignation too quickly. He did
have a telephone call with the Prime Minister Chris Luxen
and with his chief of staff, and he essentially offered
his own resignation. He said he wasn't pressure to do it.

(01:55):
He offered his own resignation because he thought he was
fighting a losing bat. Yea.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
He from my understanding, he offered his resignation because he
thought no one would believe his story versus three people.
It wasn't that he was accepting that he'd done something wrong.
It was just that he thought, I can't win this
pr battle totally.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
And so you know, he really feels misled by the
Department of Internal Affairs. Certain and how.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Long how many days did this play out over? It
was several days, several days, and over several days, no
one who was dealing with him, from the Prime Minister's
chief of staff to the Department of Internal Affairs, told
him there was no formal complaint, and when he asked
to meet the person he had touched right, thinking that
was the complainant, he was told that person was on
stress leave and he was unable to meet with it.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
That's right, But he did talk to the person. On
the day he resigned, he talked to the staffer in
his office, who it was naturally assumed who had complained
because his upper arm was touched by Bailey and the
staffer and in the presence of his own senior political
advisor in the office said to him on a telephone
call that no, he didn't lodge a complaint, and he

(03:05):
wouldn't have lodged a complaint. He in fact enjoyed working
with the ministry in the past few weeks. So he
was a new appointee to the office.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Barry, if he has been led to believe it's a
very serious situation that requires resignation, and has been led
to believe that there's a full wall complaint and has
been barred from meeting catching up with the person he
believes had complained about him, can you not deduce from
this that he was essentially misled into resigning.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Oh well, you know, it's hard to escape a conclusion
like that because.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Because because the thing came after Remember Andrew Bali had
already been in trouble for the loser sign at the VENs,
So this was the second thing that had happened.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
In so final warning basics.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Politically, you could say it would have been easier for
him just to resign to make the issue go away.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
And I think that's what he felt in the end. Anyway,
he didn't want to embarrass the government, so he decided
that he would pull up. But what he wants to
do now, of course, this man has a formidable background
before he came into politics. What he wants to do
is clear as name. He said, every time anybody googles
his name, it comes up that he essentially resigned from

(04:08):
cabinet under a cloud. Well, there was no cloud really
to speak of in terms of a complaint, and that's
the important thing here.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
So what does he want? Does he want his job back?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Well, I think if he was off at his job back,
I'm sure he would take it.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Well, does he want an investigation?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, in fact, his King's Council asked for an investigation
of the Commission of the Public Service, Sir Brian Roach.
But Roach said no, he didn't think it was necessary,
even though the King's Council said that a case like
this would never stand up in a High Court if
it got that far if he wanted to fight it.

(04:43):
So no inquiry. But the Department of Internal Affairs has
been told, along with other departments, to look at how
they deal with complaints, and I would imagine to make
sure that those are who are complained against I know
exactly what the complaint is and whether in fact a
complaint had been filed.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Have you heard from the Prime Minister's office on this.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
No, I've talked to them, but of course the Prime
Minister's overseas, so he'll no doubt have something to say.
I think he's having a news conference around midnight tonight.
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