Heather du Plessis-Allan: Outstanding misbehaviour from Julie Anne Genter

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

That was some outstanding rage from Julie Anne Genter, wasn't it?

It probably won't surprise you to hear she's not at work today, she's working from home - I would be too, if that was me caught on that camera.

The Greens have launched a disciplinary process, but I'm not expecting much from that, given how relaxed they seem to have been in the past about dealing with allegations against their MPs.

Also, multiple parties in Parliament have now complained to the Speaker, and Gerry Brownlee will make a decision next week on whether he refers this to the Privileges Committee.

Frankly, I think he's going to have to, don't you?

Because that was pretty outrageous behaviour. I mean in most professional workplaces, if you went up to a colleague, got your face about 30cm from them, yelled at them while waving a document in their face and then waved your hands repeatedly, I reckon you'd get a written warning - or a verbal warning at the very least.

But it would be on your record, wouldn't it?

If you flipped the roles, if that was National's Matt Doocey marching over to Julie Anne Genter and yelling in her face instead of the other way around, there would be calls for all hell to rain down on him.

Now obviously, let's deal with reality, let's not pretend women are held to the same standard as men when it comes to threatening behaviour. They aren't - and that's generally because women are not as much of a physical threat to men as the other way around.

Rightly or wrongly, that's just how the world works. And I reckon that will colour the judgement of this particular case.

But even for a woman, that was pretty wild, wasn't it? That was pretty cooked.

Anyway, interestingly, Greens co-leader Marama Davidson was repeatedly asked today if she knows of other instances where Julie Anne Genter has lost her temper - and she didn't really answer the question, so draw your own conclusions from it.

But she was probably asked because Julie Anne does have a bit of a short fuse. She's very passionate about her portfolio, she can get cross pretty easily about it. She walked out of a 1News interview three years ago - when you're with her one-on-one discussing transport, she gets quite shouty, even in public.

To her credit, I like the fact that she's passionate about transport. It's good to have people who actually care about the things that they're in charge of.

But unfortunately for her Parliament, like most workplaces now, has standards. And if we don't want blokes to be doing this to ladies in the House, we shouldn't have the ladies doing this to blokes in the House, should we?

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