Now in defiance of his own policy

The NZ Herald reported:

Manukau Mayor and Super City mayoral front-runner Len Brown broke nearly every rule in the book when he put $810 on his council credit card for a dinner at a Manurewa restaurant last September.

The council credit card policy bars card-holders from submitting only an eftpos receipt to verify spending, but that is all Mr Brown provided after the dinner at Volare Restaurant.

He also breached rules requiring him to explain the purpose of the dinner, list who was present, provide an itemised breakdown of the dinner, a GST receipt and a tax invoice.

But Len Brown declared, according to the Sunday Star Times:

At the committee meeting he refused to say who he took to the Volare function.

“Will I give you the names? Never. I want to tell you that, I feel so intensely strong about this,” he said, saying the privacy of the attendees needed to be respected.

This is rank stupidity. Either Len Brown is getting very bad advice, or he is not taking it. According to the Herald it is Council policy to list who was present. The right to privacy disappears when you get paid for by the ratepayers.

How can you be Mayor of a Council and say publicly you refuse to follow their rules – that effectively you are above the law?

The SST has information that strongly suggests the function was not a fundraiser as described by Brown:

On Monday Brown told TVOne’s Breakfast co-host Paul Henry it was “a totally appropriate occasion. It was fundraiser in support of a young singing artist in our community”.

He added: “This is a bona-fide purchase of a table in support of a fundraiser for one of our excellent young musical talents coming through.”

Sounds clear, but:

But the event on September 27 last year was a dinner featuring professional Australian-based opera tenor Geoff Knight, a former member of the Highway 61 motorcycle gang who is aged in his forties.

In 2008 it was reported Knight was “already performing internationally, most recently a four-month stint with Rockdale Opera in Sydney, singing the lead tenor role of Captain Fitzbattleaxe in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Utopia Limited; and earning comparisons to the great Italian tenors”.

The evening was organised by the restaurant’s owner Daniel Nahkle. The cost per head was $70 which included “a sensational five course set menu”.

Speaking from the Gold Coast today, Knight said he was invited to sing at the evening by Nahkle and was paid “a small donation” for the night which “I split with the pianist”.

He said it was around a few hundred dollars.

So if the Mayor’s table was one of 15 tables, then they contributed around $20 to the young (in his 40s) Australian based singer and $790 to the restaurant for the five course dinner.