A branded van, used by Te Pati Maori candidate Takutai Kemp last year, has raised fresh questions amid concerns over allegations relating to Manurewa Marae.
The late-model, 12-seater van was used by Kemp in her bid for the Tamaki Makaurau seat last year. The vehicle was wrapped in the candidate’s branding and featured prominently in Kemp’s marketing campaign as a mobile billboard.
The now-MP appeared with the van in a Q+A story just before the election.
Subsequent registration checks of the vehicle show that it is owned by the Manurewa Marae Trust Board. Kemp was the chief executive of the marae before the election.
That may be a problem for the marae as it is a registered charity. Charities are restricted in what political activities they can engage in.
Charities Services, which is part of Internal Affairs, told Q+A “registered charities must not support or oppose particular parties or candidates.”
The department’s general manager Charlotte Stanley said: “This includes making a donation to a political party or candidate’s election campaign, endorsing a party or candidate or allowing a party or candidate to use a charity’s resources.”
This comes under section 13 of the Charities Act which outlines a charity’s requirement to have “charitable purposes”.
Internal Affairs told Q+A that case law is key.
1News
Everything about this stinks – worse than a week-old chunk of mutton from a hangi.
The public deserves a wide ranging inquiry to get to the bottom of all the shenanigans. Sadly, though, I think any investigation will go the way of police investigations looking into deaths of Maori toddlers at the hands of caregivers: met with silence and stone-walling.
Where there is smoke, there is fire, and sometime soon someone is going to kick in a door and flood the smoking Te Pati Maori whare with oxygen and immolate all concerned.
Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the BFD - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
"Charities are restricted in what political activities they can engage in." Hmm, really? The recent complaint to Charities Services was summarily rebuffed on the grounds that the lies and misinformation about the Treaty meaning on the Greanpeace website was only a 'secondary' something or other. Dig deep enough and there are likely many so called charities in NZ that are being misappropriated and subverted for other purposes yet allowed to continue and in doing so robbing the public purse under dubious pretences. It is more likely that the Marae fiasco will result in a cover up just like the winebox inquiry did.
Cam keep up the good work mate. All we can do is highlight the truth. The left have total power atm. The pendulum is swinging tho. They will be held accountable eventually.
You're referring to metaphoric immolation, hopefully.
Family First lost charitable status because they promoted political viewpoints in line with their wish to prioritize the status and role of traditional families. That didn't amount to active and practical support for a political candidate or indeed illegal interference in the democratic voting process. But Family First's main problem was that its wisdom regarding families was incompatible with fashionably powerful ideologies and the legislative changes in family, criminal and employment law arising from those ideologies.
Charities that support fake Te Tiriti principles, racist separatism and special rights for Maori to breach electoral and other laws won't have the same problem with the Charities Commission or the Courts that might review the Commission's ideological decisions. Those charities, although clearly engaged in political lobbying and promotion, don't challenge favoured ideologies.
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