Precious declaration says
Yours is yours and mine you leave alone now
Precious declaration says
I believe all hope is dead no longer
Tick tick tick Boom!
Unexploded ordnance. A veritable minefield.
A National caucus with a large number of unknowns, candidates who perhaps received little in the way of vetting as the party jumped from 33 MPs in the previous parliament to 48 MPs in this one.
When you consider that a number of their previous MPs retired or were given unwinnable list positions, retiring them involuntarily, that has made for an awful lot of fresh arrivals.
A few did blow up during the campaign, once someone bothered to check what repugnant, misogynist things they’d posted to social media. They were replaced, but inevitably some real stinkers must have been elected.
Just lying in wait before exploding onto the front page unexpectedly. Like today.
It turns out that the MP for New Plymouth, who was elected to parliament in October 2023, didn’t declare any of the donations he received when he announced he was running in 2022. Oh and oopsie daisy, he forgot about $10,000 he received in 2023 too. Bugger, don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Someone asks if you’ve got anything to declare and you take a punt and only admit to 14% of what you ought to, simply failing to mention the other 86%. I don’t imagine Customs would be amused if you did that when you entered the country.
Although whether they’ll still have enough staff to make such checks after all of these coalition cuts is another matter.
Still it does pay to keep these things in perspective:
Poor old Christopher Luxon eh? He probably woke up this morning thinking that if he was going to have to throw anyone under the bus today it would probably have to be his sensei John Key. Over the allegations of insider trading that folks on the left enjoyed so very much yesterday.
So the PM put his “I’m the Boss” hat on and immediately stood MacLeod down from the Environment and Finance select committees he was on. But it’s not really much of a punishment is it?
I imagine the coalition parties would prefer not to have to talk about their donations at all, given just how large they were at $16m. Not to mention where they came from, and the prospect of nosey journalists connecting the dots and highlighting what such sponsors might be getting for their money.
The thing is if an MP like MacLeod only declares 14% of his candidate donations then just how big is the total amount the party and it’s candidates received?
In fairness to National and Christopher Luxon, how could they possibly have expected this was going to happen? I figured I’d take a cursory glance at the information that was publicly available. Surely the minimum a professional organisation like the National Party would do to vet potential MPs?
So who is David MacLeod?
Taranaki born and raised, David spent 22 years on the Taranaki Regional Council (TRC) before deciding to run for parliament.
Although he himself is Māori David voted against a Taranaki Māori Constituency in 2011. A decade later he changed his mind after the proposal was supported by all eight Taranaki Iwi, but still said he personally thought such Maori Wards were flawed.
Ok so far so good. Maybe even a future replacement for Tama Potaka if he flips out and does something crazy, like standing up for his stated principles. Low risk sure, but a bit of succession planning is always good.
Hmm I wonder how the succession planning for Mr Luxon is going? It hasn’t been looking too flash in the polls lately, has it?
While he was at the TRC David did generate a bit of controversy, with other candidates unhappy at him appearing in ads promoting the council's achievements right before the local body elections in 2019.
Rival candidate Alan Murray, who missed out to MacLeod by just 132 votes, said the advertising breached the Auditor-General's guidelines about pre-election publicity - which is, “a local authority must not promote, nor be perceived to promote, the re-election prospects of a sitting member”.
Although Murray’s complaint was not upheld the Office of the Auditor-General suggested that the TRC reconsider its stance on pre-election advertising.
In 2011 MacLeod was elected as the first Māori director of the co-operative Fonterra. From Wikipedia: “His election to the board was controversial because although he occupied a farmer-representative position he was not a farmer, and because the Taranaki Regional Council he chaired had recently invested in Fonterra bonds.”
Can anyone else smell that?
When he announced his run for central government in 2022 MacLeod identified “Taranaki roads, increasing the number of immigrants available to the workforce, and the oil and gas industry as areas he was keen to work on when in parliament.”
So far so good. Māori, but opposed to Māori Wards, essentially a form of co-governance. Energy sector friendly, up for moar roads, and using immigrants to suppress wages - with credentials like those David could have opted for any of the coalition parties.
However he was soon showing signs that he felt the rules didn’t really apply to him…
MacLeod confirmed on Monday he had been ordered to take down the many signs promoting his candidacy for the New Plymouth seat because he was now breaching electioneering rules, which came into effect under the Proposed District Plan on May 13.
He also confirmed none of the dozens of signs he had put up throughout the city now complied with new minimum lettering sizes, which would also affect most signage around the district, including other political candidates.
“The council has been very understanding around what the new rules mean,” he said.
Naw, isn’t that nice of the council. To be so understanding?
I mean what was David supposed to do - read the rules? As if that was going to happen. Why bother, it’s not like they apply to him.
News that he was breaching the updated bylaw, which prevents any electioneering signs being displayed until nine weeks before voting day, caught him by complete surprise.
“It was a surprise, we didn’t know anything about it,” he said.
The information above was available on his Wikipedia page, it took all of five minutes to see that there might be a few red flags. That maybe you’d have a quiet word with MacLeod, just letting him know that the rules do in fact apply to him and his adherence to them would be closely scrutinised.
You know, to avoid any unpleasant surprises down the line.
Perhaps Luxon enjoyed the praise from MacLeod when his candidacy was announced, “I like Christopher Luxon’s almost CEO attitude because he wants people on capability, on merit, and it’s not about that fact of having to be there for two terms before you can think of being a minister”, assessing him as a harmless suck up, not a scandal waiting to happen?
This morning David had to face the media. You can see the press conference here:
According to David it was his mistake, but it’s all been a misunderstanding. Despite the fact that all the other MPs in parliament seemed to manage without getting too confused. If not I bet they’re checking pretty thoroughly right about now!
Was David simply negligent in not filling out the information properly or did he take the rules lightly, as he has in the past? You can kind of accept that MacLeod believed the 2022 donations were declared elsewhere, but there’s no excuse for signing a declaration that omitted a 2023 donation of $10,000.
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It’s hard to compare like for like with the various scandals that take place but to my mind the most recent comparable example would be Michael Wood with his Auckland Airport shares. A dumb mistake with no intent to defraud, and one for which Michael paid a very high price indeed. I mean everyone makes mistakes, right David?
Partisan hat aside I accept David at his word that it was a genuine mistake, but I can’t help feeling that a sense of privilege and superiority lead to it occurring.
If it was you filling out a tax return, for example, you wouldn’t simply forget about $10,000 income you received that year, not to mention your entire income for the previous year.
You’d take it seriously, wouldn’t you?
Jeepers he's lucky he's not a Labour, Green or Te Pati Maori MP or worse one of those who happens to be a woman, or of a certain ethnicity - he'd be burnt toast, goneburgers by lunchtime, chop chop Nicky, no longer an MP and the media would be frothing and fighting to see who could get the daggers in first. The media seem pretty quiet all round on dodgy MP's when you consider that this coalition is being held together by a number of Anti-vaxers, a number of Climate Change deniers, a number of gender persecutors, one MP who wants to kill off our native Fauna as quick as he possibly can if there's a buck from fast tracking mining going to his back pocket and at least one MP who wants to bring back the Nuremberg Trials and presumably hang a certain ex ( World Famous and well loved by some here in Aotearoa ) PM. Interesting to see that another ex National PM ( also World Famous but for the less desirable qualities of turning NZ into a Tax Haven and appearing in the Panama Papers ) might have had his fingers in the till/ cooking the books - who would have thought. Funny how they are often Sirs or Dames also. Magnificent managers of the economy they tell us. Flippery Suckers they are to be sure.
I remember remarking at the time of his avalanche of billboards that he must have received a lot of donations to be able to afford them and now we know that we are talking about $200,000+. That's the sort of money the parties on the left are now up against as neoliberal business interests pour money into the right in order to buy elections and receive resultant favourable treatment. It would be interesting to know how the National Party spent all this money in New Plymouth and avoided the spending restrictions in the 3 months prior to the election. It will also point to whether there were deliberate attempts to hide the amount of money pouring into their coffers with planned spending outside the restrictions. As an aside, this fellow was on the Finance Select Committee. Further evidence of how National's claim to be good with money is just a myth?