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The Herald reports:

The dinner, at the Volare Italian Restaurant last September, cost $810 and was listed as an expense on the mayoral credit card.

Last night, Mr Brown told the Herald that the dinner was “most definitely” council business, a fundraiser attended by council staff and community members.

Council chief executive Leigh Auton also issued a statement in relation to the Sunday Star Times article, confirming that staff did ask the restaurant to make up a new receipt.

But he stressed that was only so that a GST number was included – as the original did not have one – and in no way was the restaurant asked to exclude any details from the receipt.

Mr Auton said that during a regular internal audit process, council staff had made several phone calls to suppliers to get copies of transaction receipts.

But at no time was anyone asked to “make them up”, he said.

“Yes, a staff member did ask for a copy of a receipt. But at no time was the restaurant asked to fabricate or exclude details, and this has been confirmed by the restaurant owner.

I said in yesterday’s post that this was one of three possible explanations, and it is the most benign of the three scenarios, which is good.

It is still a bit alarming that an $800 receipt was accepted with no GST number, as this is a breach of the GST Act. Also having a new receipt created is also a breach. The proper procedure is to supply a copy of the original GST receipt and mark it as a copy.

While it seems clear there was no wrong doing to deliberately get less embarrassing receipts, I would still ask the question if the Council has a copy of a more detailed receipt, and if so will it release it under the OIA?