Uini Smythe, teacher and academic, who hoped to contest Takanini for National this year.
A National Party candidate has been locked in a nine-month battle with party hierarchy and is now considering going to police after she says she was urged to make public a drink-driving conviction that was legally protected by the Clean Slate Act.
Assistant principal and doctoral researcher Uini Smythe said she made a “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.
It was a conviction she disclosed when she first ran as the National Party’s candidate in Takanini in 2020, fronting up to the confidential and gruelling pre-selection committee.
But when this year’s election loomed, Smythe said she was relieved that the conviction fell within the provisions of the Clean Slate Act which removes minor convictions from public view and makes 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”.
And that’s just what Smythe said happened after this year’s pre-selection committee meeting.
She said she had got home from the pre-selection meeting at the National Party headquarters on Great South Rd in Auckland and received a phone call from National Party electorate chairman Daniel Newman, an Auckland councillor.
Newman was one of a few members of the pre-selection committee who had heard her 2020 bid when she mentioned the conviction, she said.
Smythe said: “He rang me and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve made it to the next level’ but the committee requests two things that you must disclose’. One of those things was my drink-driving conviction.
“I said, ‘By law, I don’t have to disclose that to anyone. By law, you’re not even supposed to ask me’.”
Smythe, who has worked on policy development for National, said the request was framed as one from the whole pre-selection committee which - in her opinion - showed it had been disclosed by those who knew of it to others who did not.
The other issue she said Newman asked her to disclose was her role as a Board of Trustees member for a high school which had been in the media because of the actions of a former teacher. Smythe said she was not a board member during the time it was an issue.
The next stage of selection was a three-day process in which she made her pitch for candidacy against others who were also up for the nomination.
During that process, in front of up to 100 people at times, she was asked directly by Newman whether there was anything in her past “that could put the party at risk”. She said there was not, assured the Clean Slate Act had effectively wiped the conviction.
Smythe was not successful and the Takanini seat is being contested by Rima Nakhle, the chief executive of a privately owned emergency and transitional housing business.
She told the Herald the conviction was around 2013-14 and was a “lapse of judgment” she deeply regrets. “It doesn’t define who I am.” It was an error that she said had huge impact, including raising it with the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand when she renewed her registration.
Smythe said she emailed the National Party the day after selection to say she believed her privacy had been breached. It was a complaint that was escalated to National Party president Sylvia Wood resulting in months of back-and-forth correspondence.
During that time, according to the email trail provided by Smythe, Wood said she had carried out an investigation and did not believe “the risk question put to nominees in the Takanini selection process breached your rights under the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004 or that it created an unsafe environment for you”.
The email made no reference to the pre-selection meeting or the phone call in which Smythe alleged Newman had urged her - on behalf of the committee - to disclose.
When Smythe pressed Wood, she was told Newman confirmed he had “required the disclosure” of the Board of Trustees matter but her email made no reference to her drink-driving conviction.
Smythe responded, saying it was “puzzling” the pre-selection committee’s direction relating to the Board of Trustees matter was acknowledged but there was no reference to the conviction covered by the Clean Slate Act over which she had complained.
More than a month later, after receiving no response, Smythe emailed the office of National Party leader Christopher Luxon saying “the National Party possibly breached my privacy and broke the law” and sought his assistance because Wood had become “MIA and unresponsive”.
Wood replied, saying she had “nothing left to add”.
In a further email to Wood - with Luxon copied in - Smythe said she was “feeling frustrated and aggrieved now with … you dismissing my questions without answers”.
She told Wood: “I feel disappointed that the National Party fails to respond with the same integrity and honesty they expect of their nominees and candidates. I still contend that my privacy was breached and the National Party broke the law during the Takanini candidate selection process.”
Without a “satisfactory response”, she said she would consider speaking to her lawyer, police and the media.
It was an email that was quickly met with an invitation to meet with Wood who wrote: “Hopefully we will be in a position to implement policy and programmes in the next government and your views and participation would be welcome.”
That meeting took place on Friday and left Smythe feeling as if she were being pandered to because she had said she would escalate her complaint.
“After seven months, she finally told me on Friday that Daniel denied it.”
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.”
Smythe’s husband, Richard - former electorate secretary for Judith Collins - was present at the meeting and told Wood he was present when Newman had called.
He told the Herald he was sitting on the bed getting changed when his wife’s phone rang. He then heard the words: “No, I don’t have to divulge that. Then I could hear Daniel’s voice. I could hear him say there were two things to divulge.
“Uini said she was happy with the Board of Trustees (issue) but I don’t have to divulge my drinking conviction by law. That’s what I heard her say.”
He said Smythe finished the phone call and told him Newman had asked she disclose the Board of Trustees matter and the drink-driving conviction. He immediately told her - as she had said - “you don’t have to divulge that”.
He said he knew it to be that case with the Clean Slate Act shielding his only conviction - using offensive language in public 40 years earlier.
Richard Smythe said his wife was so upset he searched up the law on the internet so she could see that she could not be compelled to disclose the conviction.
“For Daniel to have rung, that means - in our view - they must have discussed it after she left,” he said. Her decision now to speak to the media was one of principle, he said.
Uini Smythe said the phone call from Newman in which she alleged he conveyed the committee’s wish that she disclose the conviction meant the group was in breach of the law.
She said she had decided to speak to media because she believed in personal responsibility and had practised it by owning up to the conviction in 2020 but following the law and the shield it afforded in 2023. By speaking out, she accepted her political hopes were over and would focus her energy in to completing a doctorate and her particular interest in special education.
She said in her opinion the party’s actions showed no acceptance of responsibility for its actions. “I think they underestimated me and thought I would go away. Now they have discovered I am not going away.”
She said she was still considering going to police and making a complaint relating to what she believed was a breach of the Clean Slate Act. The law shows those found to have breached it face a maximum fine of $10,000.
The Herald approached Newman who said: “I don’t have any comment on matters that are confidential to the party so I’m not going to provide comment to you.”
Wood said in a statement: “The National Party is confident all rules and relevant legislation were complied with during the Takanini selection. We have no further comment to make.”
Rick Barker was the associate justice minister who introduced the Clean Slate Act to Parliament for its final reading in 2004 with a speech that said it was for those “individuals who can put behind them mistakes they have made in the past and get on with their lives”.
He told the Herald it shouldn’t be any different for members of Parliament. “That’s what the intention was - to allow people to turn their lives around. It’s either clean slate or it’s not.”
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 is based in Northland and 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.
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