OPINION: Is that you, Doug Stamper, gazing out from the pinched, downward face of National Party President Peter Goodfellow? Eyes like nuggets of black coal, Goodfellow couldn't do a better impression of Frank Underwood's fixer if he tried.

The news that Goodfellow "brokered an agreement" with a woman who says she was bullied and harassed by Jami-Lee Ross - an agreement that ensured her silence, most probably through some kind of monetary penalty if she breaks the confidentiality clause - actually made the bile rise in my throat.

I ask you, National - what was the price of this woman's silence?

Commonly known as Non-Disclosure Agreements, or NDAs, these private contracts are regularly used in the corporate world in cases of sexual harassment, assault or bullying. A better term for them is gag orders. There's now a growing international consensus that, as the contracts keep the names of abusers and the nature of the abuse secret, they are harmful to the public good.

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* National Party president Peter Goodfellow 'signed confidentiality agreement' with woman

* Toxic relationships with Jami-Lee Ross reported

* Simon Bridges says phone call recorded by Jami-Lee Ross doesn't stack up

* National Party chaos: The day Jami-Lee Ross burned his bridges

* Explosive allegations before disgraced MP Jami-Lee Ross quits National Party, forcing by-election

The British Equality and Human Rights Commission called for a nationwide ban on non-disclosure agreements for sexual harassment cases in the workplace in April 2018. In the United States, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, women have been breaking their NDAs to encourage debate on a similar ban.

Every single day for the past eight months, I've spent immersed in stories of sexual harassment, assault, and bullying in New Zealand workplaces. I've been able to get survivors legal help, counselling, put them in touch with the police's expert sexual assault investigators. Stuff's #metoonz team has spent hundreds of hours painstakingly researching their cases.

KEVIN STENT/STUFF National Party president Peter Goodfellow brokered a non-disclosure agreement with a woman who said she had been harassed by disgraced MP Jami-Lee Ross.

Many, many of the women our team works with have signed NDAs, often against their better judgement, and sometimes, under duress. These women have endured the same kind of vile and despicable behaviour that has now been linked to disgraced MP Jami-Lee Ross. In the cases where a woman's harasser has kept his job, like Ross did until now, they know other women may be at risk.

They want to speak out. They want to help. They don't want it to happen to anyone else.

They get in touch with our #metooNZ team and then they panic. What would it mean for their finances, for their family, if they were taken to court and forced to pay back the amount they received when they signed that bit of paper.

It might have been $5000, or $15,000 - a paltry amount received in exchange for burying the assault or the harassment forever - but most Kiwis don't have that kind of dough, plus legal fees, to spare. Taking on a company of any reasonable size would be an unaffordable fool's game for most.

KEVIN STENT/STUFF Jami-Lee Ross has been expelled from the National Party caucus.

Do not underestimate the lengths to which the corporate world will go to silence a victim in order to save the perpetrator and the company's good name. And it's not always the private sector; our team investigated one woman's story of sexual harassment by a prominent public official. She was prevented from speaking by an NDA that piled a hefty penalty on top of her exit package. She signed on the understanding that, at least, a full and thorough investigation into her complaint would be completed, and that some good might come from her experiences for others in her workplace. After she signed, the investigation was quietly dropped.

Now National - not a greedy corporate with the appeasement of shareholders in mind, but a vital part of the democratic process in New Zealand - has done it too.

In doing so, it has betrayed all Kiwi women.

KERRY MARSHALL/STUFF National leader Simon Bridges says the recommendations from the Government's tax working group amount to an "assault on the Kiwi way of life".

It's important to note Labour can't claim to be squeaky clean on these matters either - it waited too long to address the allegations of sexual assault at its youth camp in February, and refused to release the full results of the subsequent investigation.

But at least Labour didn't try to bury the issue altogether, and then promote the alleged perpetrator to a higher office. At the time of the Labour camp revelations, National's Judith Collins claimed the "culture of secrecy" bred abusive and coercive behaviour. Well, now it's the turn of National's senior leadership to examine its own culture.

If Simon Bridges knew of the allegations about Ross and did nothing, that shows just how far a politician's personal integrity can fall in the climb to power. Less than a decade ago, based on his experiences in the courtroom, Bridges used his maiden speech in Parliament to argue for a fairer deal for rape victims in our justice system. It's something he promised to fight for throughout his Parliamentary career.

And if you did have the audacity, Peter Goodfellow, to call it a "gentlemen's agreement", well that shows you have no self-awareness at all. If that was a nod to clever semantics - your little joke - then I'd have to conclude that you really are evil.

In an interview with Stuff's #metooNZ project in May, we asked Dean of Law at Canterbury University, Professor Ursula Cheer about non-disclosure agreements. Here's what she had to say:

"In high profile cases, confidentiality agreements may be seen by the public as gagging orders and morally bankrupt, only made to protect the institution and the offender."

Morally bankrupt sounds about right. Women's stories of harassment are already silenced by the attitudes and biases so prevalent in our society. The fear of you and your gag orders, Peter Goodfellow and your ilk, silences them all over again.

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