Reports of Maggie Barry's alleged bullying probably came from someone within the National Party, it has been claimed.

Former staff members of the North Shore MP told NZME at the weekend she swore at them, used offensive language, discussed their sex lives and made them do party work against Parliamentary rules.

Ms Barry flatly denied the accusations, despite NZME having an audio recording of her calling someone a "duplicitous piece of shite", and documents in which she's described as a "terrifying" person to work for.

Victoria University politics lecturer Bryce Edwards told The AM Show on Monday the allegations are at the mild end of the spectrum, when it comes to Parliamentary bullying.

"There's some swearing, there's some name-calling and stuff. I think you'll see a lot of other MPs that are quite shocked that these allegations have become front-page news, when so much worse goes on."

The real story, he believes, is who might be pushing the allegations into the public sphere.

"Sometimes we just assume an opponent of a politician is leaking stuff or kind of pushing the story forward - maybe someone in Labour or NZ First. But in this case, what I have heard is there is a lot of support for Maggie Barry to replace Simon Bridges as leader, especially amongst the membership. She has huge support.

"There's no doubt that there's people in the National caucus who have an interest in kneecapping Maggie Barry - it might well be someone in Simon Bridges' camp, maybe Judith Collins' camp has pushed the story along. It really is possibly a Nat-on-Nat kind of attack."