Maggie Barry has been the subject of fresh allegations of bullying, this time from an anonymous source previously employed within her Ministerial office.
From Anna Bracewell-Worrall at Newshub:
Speaking to Newshub anonymously, the source said Ms Barry would lash out at staff and that she was “totally intimidating”.
“She would attack and belittle your work in front of other people.”
They worked in her ministerial office, and said staff would break down in tears.
The staff member said Ms Barry would treat everyone below her station with “utter contempt” – including referring to officials in her ministerial departments as “hired help”.
The office culture sounds brutal. And there are further allegations of state resources being used for National Party purposes:
The anonymous staffer said Ms Barry’s staff began to internalise criticism. They said “some took so much punishment they came to believe they deserved it”.
“They took the criticism home with them,” they added.
Ms Barry has also been accused of using parliamentary employees – paid for by taxpayers – for National Party work.
She denied that, but the staffer said Ms Barry’s parliamentary press secretary spent “hours and hours” on her newsletter Maggie’s eMessenger.
No formal complaints were laid, as the staffer said they were worried it might harm their chances of getting more work at Parliament.
However they claimed problems were raised with Ministerial Services, which Ms Barry has rejected.
And Jesse Mulligan has publicly commented on the recently released tape which contained Maggie Barry about him.
She was reported to have claimed privately that she doesn’t care what Mulligan thinks and that his conservation advocacy was pathetic. Talk about born to rule.
His response was perfect.
Truth is the stuff on that tape not the worst thing anyone’s said about me. It’s probably no worse than what you or I have said about people we don’t like when we thought our conversations were private. And actually, it’s a good thing for the media to upset politicians from time to time – it means we’re doing our job.
But there’s a bigger issue here. What does it tell you about a Minister of Conservation that she has this reaction to someone speaking up in support of conservation?
I’m someone with a microphone, with a voice. If she can so easily dismiss my ideas as “pathetic”, what chance do you have of being heard when you write her a letter, or make a submission to a select committee, or turn up at a protest?
I have a theory: I think what made Maggie Barry most angry about my piece on The Project was that she could tell it was striking a chord.
She says I was opinionated, but I wasn’t actually sharing my views. I was sharing the views of every scientist, DoC worker and volunteer I’d ever spoken to, who told me again and again that New Zealand’s natural world was on the verge of collapse and the Government wasn’t doing enough to stop it.
Here’s the proof that it was the right message at the right time: more than a million of you watched, liked and shared our stories about conservation last year, and six months later Maggie Barry lost her job.
Then in May, for the first time in nine years, DoC was given some more money for their baseline budget to spend on protecting our threatened species.
And for those who accuse Mulligan of bias again he had the perfect response:
The new Minister is Eugenie Sage. We’ll be watching her closely, and hopefully from time to time, I’ll piss her off too.
However this did not stop the usual suspects from claiming that there was bias on Mulligan’s part:
I am really struggling to understand why Mulligan has attracted such opprobrium. All he has done is hold National Ministers to task and advocate for protection of our environment. Maybe the right think they are awful things.
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