The Hong Kong Trip

The Herald reports:

Auckland councillor Cameron Brewer wants a council review into Len Brown’s affair with Bevan Chuang widened to investigate a trip the mayor made to Hong Kong.

Mr Brown has not officially declared the trip in January this year, sparking criticism from Mr Brewer and in right-wing circles.

The mayor travelled alone on the Hong Kong Government-funded “special visitors programme” trip to look at infrastructure projects and governance issues.

Bevan Chuang, the Hong Kong Chinese woman he had a two-year affair with, told the Herald she did not accompany him and was in New Zealand at the time.

Mr Brewer yesterday said the review had to examine the Hong Kong trip at least to assess any relevance it may or may not have to the matters under investigation.

“If the mayor is so squeaky clean, they should be encouraging Ernst & Young [the company doing the review] to investigate the trip if only to kill off the ongoing speculation once and for all,” Mr Brewer said.

He said Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown took part in the same Hong Kong Government programme in 2012, gained approval from the council and reported back.

There is nothing at all wrong with the Mayor of Auckland travelling to Hong Kong to look at infrastructure projects and governance. What has caused interest is that for some reasons the trip has been kept a secret. There was no mention of it to the Council, and no report back. Even if they didn’t pay, you expect a report if the travel was in your role as Mayor.

Also it appears that when asked about the last trip to China in a Local Government OIA request, the Council didn’t acknowledge the trip at all in its initial response.

Mr Brown yesterday refused to say why he did not declare the Hong Kong trip in an annual return listing any third-party travel costs in the council’s pecuniary interest register. …

Last night, his office said the 2013 declaration had yet to be finalised and his travel to Hong Kong would appear in the 2013 declaration of interest early next year.

The boards I am on require the register of interests to be updated at each meeting.

 It took a posting on the right-wing Whaleoil blog for the mayor’s office to confirm the trip, from January 20 to January 26.

Councillors will be surprised that they only find out about the Mayor’s travel by reading Whale Oil.

What is surprising also is that there was pretty much zero publicity about the trip, while Wade-Brown’s trip had several media items about and references to it.