Amalgamation vote: Lobbyists deny $750k campaign spend

A Better Hawke's Bay Chairman Rebecca Turner says the figure the pro-merger group has been said to have spent is ridiculous. Photo / Supplied

Amalgamation campaign spending has been called into question with A Better Hawke's Bay (ABHB) denying its war chest has been lined with $750,000.

The lobby group's chairwoman Rebecca Turner claims that their spend has been nowhere close to that figure.

"It's nothing like what has been said on the Facebook pages," she said of the $750,000 that has been bandied around on social media.

"That is exactly the figure I saw.

"It is a fraction of that. Like, literally a fraction of it.

"I think it is absolutely ridiculous that anybody can even think about putting a figure like that on to it."

The figure was put into play when Central Hawke's Bay Mayor Peter Butler was asked how he saw the make-up of the new governance structure if amalgamation was to go ahead.

"It would be very difficult to say.

"If the ABHB people have spent this three-quarters of a million that is being talked about, if this rumour or story is true that this is what they have spent and the poll goes their way, how much then are they going to spend to get their mayor and their council in power?"

Napier MP Stuart Nash said the campaign has always been about big money versus communities.

"It was a proposal that was put together by a very small group of unelected but rather wealthy business people, who had no mandate from anyone at all to do what they were doing," he said.

"To be honest I have never ever participated in any campaign where the opposition's resources are so significantly larger than mine.

"The money they are spending is just so far, it's just so much more than my team and I could ever hope to spend.

"And in a way for these referenda, going forward, there needs to be a spending limit."

How much exactly ABHB has spent exactly is still in question, with Ms Turner saying she isn't privy to say what has been on the pro-campaign because she has not added it up.

"And to tell you the honest truth these were donated funds from people who actually wanted this campaign to work, be positive to go ahead," she said.

"So people just out of the goodness of their hearts have given us money to be able to carry the campaign out.

"I haven't done an add up as to how much everything has cost but it is absolutely nowhere near any ridiculous figure I have seen on facebook or wherever it was."

Ms Turner also lobbed her own salvo back at the anti-campaign saying ABHB has not used any ratepayer funds - unlike the anti-campaign.

"We have had support from people right across the region who have given donations, time, passion and their own skills to this project.

"We've had people sponsor single hoardings," she said.

"The portrayal of ABHB as wealthy elite, and as 'out for themselves' with vested interests, is absolute rubbish, a conspiracy dreamt up by the negative campaign.

"The personal attacks have been completely detrimental, and said more about those slinging the mud than those copping it."