Election 2023: Police complaint laid by would-be National MP against own party after claims it ‘broke the law’

Would-be National Party candidate Uini Smythe with Papakura MP Judith Collins.

A police complaint has been filed this morning by the would-be National MP who says she came under pressure to disclose a conviction protected by law.

Uini Smythe visited the Otahuhu police station just after 8am to lodge the complaint, telling a detective that the Clean Slate Act had been breached during the National Party’s candidate selection process.

Smythe alleged this week the National Party “broke the law” during the process to select its candidate for Takanini by encouraging her to disclose a historic drink-driving conviction covered by the Clean Slate Act.

She had spent nine months asking the party to investigate her allegation its Takanini electorate chairman Daniel Newman - an Auckland councillor - told her the pre-selection committee wanted her to disclose the conviction.

National Party president Sylvia Wood said “all rules and relevant legislation” were followed during the selection process.

This morning, Smythe said she had decided to lay a complaint with police after hearing National Party leader Christopher Luxon while listening to NewstalkZB’s Mike Hosking show.

Smythe had sent her complaint directly to Luxon after five months of raising it with the National Party, telling the party leader that Wood was “MIA and unresponsive”. Luxon did not respond but his office forwarded the email to Wood who again contacted Smythe.

Hearing Luxon on the radio left Smythe frustrated again that he had not responded to her email. “How can you stand up there and talk about the country and how you’re going to talk to the people and you can’t be bothered with my correspondence? That’s when I thought, ‘no, that’s it’.”

She said she entered the police station to say she wanted to make a complaint about the National Party and met with a detective to whom she described the set of events and provided copies of the correspondence. She said she would be following the visit with a written complaint.

Smythe, an assistant principal and doctoral researcher, had been involved in the National Party for a decade - including helping develop policy - when she decided she wanted to stand for Parliament in 2020.

Uini Smythe in a photograph taken for election material, should she have been chosen to contest the Takanini electorate.

She told the Herald she was aware doing so meant she would have to reveal her “terrible error of judgment” around 2013 when she attempted to drive a few minutes home from an end-of-year party and she was pulled up by police, failing a breath test.

She said she did so during the pre-selection contest, in which she was unsuccessful. When 2023 came around, she said she was relieved at not having to do so again because the Clean Slate Act had effectively wiped it from public view.

The Clean Slate Act came in during 2004 and removes minor convictions from public view after seven years, making it an offence for such offending to be disclosed by others. It also makes it an offence - according to the wording of the law - if someone “requires or requests that an individual … disclose, or give consent to the disclosure of, his or her criminal record”.

Smythe alleged Newman had contacted her by phone after the pre-selection committee meeting this year before which she had appeared. She said he conveyed a request from the committee that she disclose the conviction at the upcoming delegates’ meeting at which candidates are selected.

From that, Smythe said it was her opinion that someone from the 2020 pre-selection committee had communicated her conviction to the 2023 group leading to it making the request through Newman.

Smythe’s husband, Richard - former electorate secretary for Judith Collins - supported her version of events having heard her tell Newman on the phone: “I don’t have to divulge my drinking conviction by law.”

Wood met with her last Friday to tell her Newman denied making the request after Smythe had emailed to say the lack of response after months of correspondence had her considering approaching media and complaining to police. In an email following the meeting, Wood said: “Daniel is adamant he did not advise you to disclose the conviction covered under the Criminal Records Act 2004.”

National Party president Sylvia Wood and leader Christopher Luxon, followed by Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell after questions over his selection. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Smythe told the Herald today that Wood had also said no other members of the pre-selection committee had been interviewed during the investigation. She said she expected Wood to have done so as it would have established whether her conviction had been discussed.

The Herald has asked Wood if others on the committee were interviewed by her. She has not responded.

Luxon was asked about Smythe’s complaint on the campaign trail yesterday but declined to answer saying it was a matter for the National Party organisation and not the parliamentary wing, which he leads.

Lawyer Dan Hughes, a partner at legal firm Anthony Harper, has argued one of the few cases involving the Clean Slate Act and said the judge in the case ruled it didn’t simply allow someone to deny having a conviction but that they were “deemed to have no criminal record”.

“If that interpretation is correct, then the ‘clean slated’ conviction cannot be relied on in the context of any official decision-making process and would need to be disregarded.”

He recommended those interviewing people for positions limit questions around convictions to asking: “Have you ever been convicted of any crime other than one concealed by the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004?.”

AUT University law professor Kris Gledhill, who has written on the act, said if someone from the 2020 meeting passed on their knowledge to those at the 2023 meeting then “that person might well have committed the offence”.

Asked whether the alleged request from the committee expanded liability, he said it was generally taken that the reference in law to a “person” includes an “unincorporated body”.

“Of course, if we could all believe in rehabilitation, then revealing a past conviction would be a matter of revealing it, explaining it and trying to move on.

“But the very fact we have a Clean Slate Act means that many people don’t believe in rehabilitation or water being well and truly under the bridge.”

David Fisher has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He first joined the Herald in 2004.