One Rule For Maiki, Another For Mates

Maiki Sherman was not perfect, but the standard suddenly applied to her says more about TVNZ’s weak spine than it does about her judgment.

Maiki Sherman has been made the example because someone had to be.

Not because she did something no one in the Press Gallery had ever done before. Not because Parliament is some monastery of manners and clean living. And certainly not because the place has suddenly discovered standards.

She is gone because TVNZ lost its nerve.

Let’s be clear. Sherman had issues. Using a homophobic slur was wrong. Door-stopping an MP in a restricted area was risky. Pressuring someone for comment can get ugly. But sackable? Career-ending? Please.

Parliament has always been a rough joint. It is pressure, ego, booze, power, leaks, shouting, swearing, ambushes and people pretending the rules are sacred only when the rules suit them. The best political journalists have always pushed boundaries. Sometimes they crossed them. Sometimes they were suspended. Sometimes they got told off. Then they got back to work.

That was the job.

The difference now is TVNZ has decided to pretend none of that history exists. It backed Sherman until the heat came on. Then the complaint became public, the old slur story resurfaced, the political pressure built, and suddenly the support vanished.

That is not leadership. That is panic in a suit.

Check the podcast out below.

And the hypocrisy is staggering. Trevor Mallard punched Tau Henare. He was stood down, came back, became Speaker, got sent to Ireland, and ended up Sir Trevor. Ruth Dyson was done for drink-driving and returned to cabinet. Plenty of MPs and senior people have behaved badly in and around that building and carried on as if the system was built to absorb their sins.

Because it was, for them.

Sherman gets no such mercy. No soft landing. No “learn from this”. No powerful mate quietly opening the side door. Just a corporate exit and everyone pretending this is about standards.

It is not.

It is about who gets protected and who gets dropped. It is about whether a newsroom has the guts to back its political editor when politics turns nasty. TVNZ failed that test.

And what message does that send to the reporters left behind? Don’t push too hard. Don’t annoy the Government. Don’t get too close to the edge. Because when the complaint lands, the bosses may smile at you on Monday and cut you loose by Friday.

That is chilling.

Sherman deserved scrutiny. She did not deserve to be thrown overboard by people who knew exactly how Parliament works and pretended otherwise when it suited them.

TVNZ has not cleaned up standards here.

It has simply shown us where its spine used to be.