KEY POINTS:
The husband of Cabinet Minister Annette King is the subject of a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner, as fallout continues from the Hawke's Bay District Health Board saga.
Deborah Houston, who blew the whistle on an alleged conflict of interest over a $50 million health contract, said she was "gobsmacked" that Ray Lind, the board's former chief operating officer and King's husband, secretly taped a conversation between them in 2006.
Houston has laid a complaint with the office of Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff. She met Lind shortly after she exposed an alleged conflict of interest but didn't know of the recording until Lind told her lawyer last August. Houston said she was in a stressed and fragile state at the time and wants an apology from Lind.
Lind told the Herald on Sunday he had taped the conversation because he was working 80-hour weeks and needed to have a clear record. He didn't know why he hadn't put the recorder in front of him. "I just didn't think of it." He hadn't told Houston she was being taped as "it was a complex and charged situation". He had given Houston's lawyer a copy of the tape and transcript to counter claims he felt she was asserting that he had acted improperly.
Katrine Evans, assistant commissioner at the Privacy Commission, said it was not illegal to tape a conversation but "covert taping can be very intrusive".
