It is hard to find someone in New Zealand who does not have a strong opinion about Trevor Mallard.
The man just appointed ambassador to Ireland will take up the post with a long list of controversies to his name, after decades as an MP and five years as speaker of New Zealand’s house. Ireland can expect an envoy not cut from the usual bland diplomat mould – someone deeply loyal to his friends but recklessly impulsive with his enemies.
He leaves accompanied by seething resentment from the opposition, which have been campaigning to oust him for much of this term. Even Jacinda Ardern, the leader of the party Mallard has served faithfully since before she was born, has publicly criticised him from time to time, and others in her party express more than just weariness off the record.
And yet Mallard leaves parliament undoubtedly a better place than he found it, both when elected as speaker in 2017 and when first elected in 1984.
Few who are not blinded by partisan rage would fault his efforts to make parliament a far more welcoming space to work in. The stuff that makes for great TV gets the headlines (think babies being passed around or breastfed in the house) but this was just the most visible move. Mallard helped shepherd in rules that let parliament finish earlier on Thursday, so MPs can get home to their families on the other side of the country a night earlier. He changed the interpretation of leave so MPs with childcare emergencies could get out of the house quicker.
But his focus on making parliament a better place to work didn’t stop at the building’s 120 MPs, extending instead to the nearly 1,000 people who work in the wider complex. The parliamentary pool was opened to families. The somber and secure marble-hewn complex somehow became the most dog-friendly office in Wellington, and now features a playground on the front lawn.
His more serious effort to make staff safer in the halls of power was ironically the very thing that would harm his reputation far more than all his previous efforts: the Francis review and his behaviour when parliament’s grounds were occupied in February.
Mallard, to be clear, had drawn many negative headlines in his decades of public life prior to being elected to speaker. The decades in the house hardened him into a vicious attack dog for Labour, imbuing in him some of parliamentary politics’ worst tendencies. He taunted then-opposition leader Don Brash about an alleged affair, took a swing at opposition MP Tau Henare after comments were made about his own personal life. It is a testament to his effectiveness as both a senior minister and as an attack dog that Helen Clark didn’t send him packing from her government, given all the negative press.
Yet it was the Francis review into parliamentary bullying that will create the biggest footnote to his career. The short version of the story is that Mallard wrongly accused a staff-member of rape, but that version elides a lot.
An independent inquiry into parliamentary culture came back with five staffers telling an interviewer they had experienced sexual assault. Mallard was asked about this on the radio, and said that on his read of the report this amounted to “rape” and that the perpetrator was still working in parliament.
This started a predictable media storm and by the end of the day a staffer had been suspended and Mallard said the “danger” had been removed from parliament. In this he linked a specific person – even without naming them – to his reckless mention of “rape” from earlier. But the man had not been accused of rape, and took Mallard to court, successfully winning an apology and a payout.
This incident can tell us a lot about Mallard. It is absolutely clear that he felt a strong duty to make parliament a safer place, and to act on progressive convictions he has held his entire career, not just since the #MeToo movement – his maiden speech from 1984 attacks rape culture.
But it also reveals a reckless impulsiveness at odds with the role. In parliamentary debates you may have to follow your gut and make decisions in a split second, never giving your opponent a point or time to think, but when you’re running the place you really need to be a bit more considered. Despite being married to a journalist and reading the news far closer than most (Mallard was the most dedicated subeditor I ever had), he sometimes seemed incapable or unwilling to consider just how bad some of his actions would seem in the public eye, and what events might follow from his decisions.
When he made mistakes, even for the right reasons, he found it hard to walk them back. This was certainly the case earlier this year, when parliament’s grounds were occupied by a “convoy” of anti-vax and anti-mandate protesters. The protesters had little wider support in parliament – they had signs indicating that MPs should be executed, and were blocking off the streets around parliament – until Mallard saw fit to turn the sprinklers on and start blasting loud and annoying music from speakers.
The protesters turned this into a new cause célèbre and won sympathy from a far wider swath of the political right. The police directly criticised the move, saying it was simply riling the protesters up more. Here was that impulsive Mallard again, eager to stick it to his enemies, somehow losing a PR battle against a group with far more sinister aims than he had. The protest eventually ended in a riot that saw Mallard’s playground partially burnt down.
These faults detract from Mallard’s legacy but should not obscure it. For all his problems, he was a man truly dedicated to parliament. In this age, where many MPs jet off to more exciting careers the moment they realise they have a long spell in opposition ahead of them, that could sometimes be a breath of fresh air. He managed to shape parts of this heaving old institution, but also let it shape him, imbuing in him his deep partisanship and a deep respect for the norms that allow our country to avoid the worst excesses of places like the US.
There are other MPs across the house who share this commitment to parliament as an institution – we should hope that some of them get a chance to be speaker some day too.
