Barry Soper: Senior Political Correspondent on David MacLeod's undisclosed political donations

The police have been referred to an investigation into National MP for New Plymouth David MacLeod's failure to report $178,394 in donations. 

MacLeod - a backbench MP - unveiled this last month, and was stood down from the Environment and Finance select committees. 

Senior Political Correspondent Barry Soper told Heather du Plessis-Allan “There’s a lot of question to be answered – you can’t just say ‘look, I’ve forgotten.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barry Soper, senior political correspondence with US. Now, how Barry,
good afternoon either. Yeah, this has got a lot worse
for David MacLeod, like not unexpectedly.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
No, it was the Electoral Commission that filed with the
police to have a look at the undeclared donations. And
he was by far the wealthiest person standing in an
electorate when he got one hundred and seventy eight thousand
dollars in twenty twenty two. He claims he when he

(00:28):
filled out his form that he thought that you only
had to declare the donations from last year, from election year,
which to me, I just can't understand how anybody would
think that. I mean, the donations were for the election campaign,
and you know it's as plain as the nose on
your face. Really, He of course has been stripped from

(00:48):
both the Environmental and Finance Expenditure select Committees, and that
Greenpeace take on this is interesting. Russell Norman. He put
out a statement a short while ago. He said that
one of McLeod's undeclared donations came from a major shareholder
in the Sabard Mining Company TTR that may benefit significantly

(01:08):
from the fast Track bill. Now he McLeod is in
charge of the fast Track Bill, so you know there's
a lot of questions again to be answered by David McLeod.
You can't just say, look, I forgot the police will.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Have to answer the questions with the police wonting.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well, he will have to yes, most certainly, I would
think be interviewed by the police.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, so do you know whether the Maori Party have
now asked written to the Police Commissioner and the Police
Minister and the Prime Minister asking the police to investigate.
Can the police investigate off the back of that letter?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
No, the Prime Minister can't direct the police north from
the Police Minister. Right, So the Maori Party, for start,
they've got that wrong. You don't tell a politician to
interfere with what the police would be doing. But the
police have had a complete and they can extend the

(02:03):
investigation beyond that complaint and look at exactly what's been
going on here, and I suspect given the public interest
in this, that's exactly what they would do. Now. Essentially,
I see Brian Tummockee has been dragged into this and that,
as you said, it was rather a weird statement put

(02:23):
out by John Tammaheady, who's the president of the Maldi Party,
and he said that essentially the message to Brian Tummocky
and Destiny is that you and your cult were bounced
out of the Mona ray Marai and he he said,
we'll never allow your cult to take over any m

(02:44):
Now here's a helpful idea. Leave politics and concentrate on
bothering God and the devil and equal parts and leave
Maldy alone.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Finish the sentence.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
That's what he said, and leave Maldy alone.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
He ends with he goes to your cult members who
were to pps, right, because that was the pe pps.
To your cult members who were terminated at manyere women,
I shame on you. To their fearless money grinder Alan Holts,
it's best to keep your power to drive for the
Employment Tribuneal Comma fool, Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I mean, it's so obnoxious and the whole the whole
statement on John Tommy Hery is rambling. What they're saying though,
is look put up the evidence. If you haven't got
the evidence, you know, keep your trap shut well. Now,
now there's several agencies looking into this. They'll be looking
at evidence, and I would imagine if any of the

(03:38):
census forms were copied, you won't see a sight of them.
They'll be well and truly shredded by now. So I
think he feels John Tammerherdy he's on fairly comfortable ground
by saying show us the evidence.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Very What did you make of Chris Luxon saying he
hadn't had any heads up from the Australians that this
was going to happen today read the deportations.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, terrible really, because both Chris Luxen and Winston Peters
had been talking to the Australians about this and the
indication from alban Easy was that look, they'll be looking
at this again with fresh eyes, and then suddenly they
come out making it easier to deport kiwi's from Australia.

(04:21):
And it got me thinking about one case that I
read about, and it was an Australian grandfather who was
deported last December to New Zealand after decades of criminal offending.
But he said he had struggled in this country because
he was a baby in the nineteen sixties in New Zealand.
His parents were an Australian couple who happened to be

(04:41):
staying with somebody. They gave birth to this man who's
fifty seven, and he was deported to New Zealand. He
was a bit of a He certainly got up to
a lot of trouble, there's no doubt about that. But again,
and I come back to it, where did he learn
all his bad habits in life? I called responsibility.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Political suicide for Albert to hold onto them.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, well it's dreadful. We call them our friends and
our cousins. You wouldn't, you wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
You're not going to change their mind if we win them,
it's not going to change anything.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, we've winged at them and I've got to say
I do and made some headway that they would look
at if they had lived there like this grandfather had,
they would take that into consideration. Now that's not taken
into consideration.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
At all because political blowback. All right, we'll have a chat.
You can thank you. We'll rap the political week. That
was you again. It called a past six Berry so
for senior political correspondent. For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive,
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