Battle for the money
Newsroom reports:
The marriage of convenience has turned into a nasty divorce. Billy Te Kahika’s NZPP and Jami-Lee Ross’ Advance NZ joined forces in July and campaigned under the Advance NZ banner. They received less than 1 per cent of the vote and on October 25, Ross announced that Te Kahika had quit as co-leader. …
“On November 6, Billy and NZPP received a letter from Jami-Lee stating that the policies that the parties co-wrote were in fact owned by, and the copyright of, Advance NZ and NZPP had no right to them whatsoever.”
Stace says many of the policies that are listed on the Advance NZ website were taken directly from the NZPP website’s “What we stand for section,” which had existed since June 2020.
Not sure you can own a policy!
Sure you can claim copyright over the exact text, but parties are allowed to have similiar policies.
In the same letter Ross warned Stace and Te Kahika not to use his colour scheme on their website, or social media pages.
“In particular I am referring to the use of the following which I’ll refer to as “the JLR branding”: the unique cobalt blue layered flag effect background with lightning bolt and the red and blue rectangular block name design with the Advance NZ star design.
“The JLR branding now forms part of the unique Advance NZ “get up”. It was commissioned by me in 2019 and enjoys protection under our copyright and fair trading legislation as well as protection against passing off at common law.” I authorised the use of the JLR branding by Advance NZ and it has become a valuable asset for our party in which we have built up considerable goodwill and reputation.”
Laughing out loud at the assertion that the JLR branding is a valuable asset.
Stace says he emailed Ross on November 13 asking for half the funds in the account to be transferred to NZPP’s own BNZ account.
When he didn’t hear back from Ross, Stace says he asked police to investigate because he believes under the memorandum of understanding, Advance NZ owes NZPP close to $30,000.
When Newsroom approached Ross for comment we were emailed a copy of a letter sent to Stace, later that day, from Advance NZ’s lawyer, Graeme Edgeler.
Edgeler dismissed the idea that NZPP is owed any money.
Looks like most of the money may end up being spent on legal fees 🙂
Stace said he started to notice a change in Ross when the result of the election became clear. Advance NZ got 0.9 per cent of the vote, well short of the 5 per cent needed to enter parliament. Ross had earlier chosen to withdraw from the contest for Botany, the electoral seat he held as a National MP, saying he wanted to concentrate on lifting Advance NZ’s party vote.
“As soon as the election ended Jami-Lee started growing a beard like Billy. He started using phrases like Billy uses. I’m a private investigator and I notice things.
LOL. Is he suggesting JLR is going to make Billy TK disappear and start impersonating him.