Mayor Hubbard wastes police resources

Tuesday 22 Feb 2005

Rodney Hide - Press Releases - Other

ACT leader Rodney Hide today said he was pleased the police had concluded that ACT stalwart Brian Nicolle committed no offence under the Local Electoral Act 2001 when he was campaign manager for former Auckland City Mayor John Banks.

"There was never any doubt about it. The shame is that Mayor Hubbard chose to attack Brian Nicolle during the campaign, involve the police, and to continue his personal vendetta after the campaign when clearly no law had been broken.

"Candidate Hubbard declared himself caught up in `New Zealand's version of the Watergate scandal'. This was because newspaper articles about him were distributed to letterboxes.

"He had his lawyers write to the police on 28 September 2004, 12 October 2004 and 14 January 2005 trying to make the case. There was no case. But police had to spend valuable time on the Mayor's complaint at the expense of dealing to real crime.

"The police wrote to Mayor Hubbard 11 days ago on 11 February 2005 explaining there is no case to answer. They concluded that there was no offence and that `no further action will be taken by the police on this matter'.

"I would have expected the Mayor to announce publicly his error and apologise to Mr Nicolle and to the police. I would have thought that was the least Mayor Hubbard could do," said Mr Hide.

ENDS

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