The Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance says Auckland
Councillors’ acceptance of free concert tickets from Eden
Park ‘stinks’ and is the sort of behaviour you’d expect in
third world countries, not a council about to vote on Eden
Park’s future.
Ratepayers’ Alliance
Spokesman Sam Warren said:“These gifts were clearly a
breach of the Council’s own Code of Conduct. The Code
instructs councillors to avoid accepting gifts that give
rise even to a perception of impropriety or creation of a
conflict of interest.”
“The councillors
were given tickets because they are councillors, at the very
same time they’re considering the future of the stadium.
It’s beyond belief that anyone is defending
this.”
“Councillors aren’t concert reviewers. These
gifts were clearly ‘kick-backs’ by Eden Trust’s management
to buy goodwill with councillors. It should be
illegal.”
“The idea that councillors were given
tickets to the events, but somehow avoided speaking to the
stadium’s lobbyists targeting them—who coincidentally were
in the very same corporate boxes—is similarly fanciful.
The fact that the risk was identified means that staff knew
full well that risks of impropriety were real.”
“Not
since Len Brown’s appointment of his mistress into a paid
Council ‘ethnic advisor’ role have we seen such sleaze
around Auckland’s Council chamber. The councillors who took
the gifts should be paying every cent back, or at least
preserving the integrity of process by recusing themselves
from Thursday’s
vote.”
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