Kiri Allan has defended the decision not to declare a conflict of interest with Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon when she became Justice Minister, after it emerged Foon donated thousands of dollars to the Labour MP in the run up to the 2020 general election.
Foon, who previously spent six terms as mayor of Gisborne, was appointed by the Labour Government to the role of Race Relations Commissioner in July 2019 by the former Justice Minister Andrew Little.
The following year Allan won the East Coast seat for Labour and donations declared by the MP show Meng Foon and his wife Ying Foon gave $1500.
A company called Triple Eight Investments Limited also provided Kiri Allan a rent subsidy worth $9185 according to the declaration.
Triple Eight Investments has three directors, including Meng and Ying Foon.
Apart from Labour's East Coast branch the Foons' were the biggest financial contributors to Kiri Allan's campaign.
Appearing on Q+A with Jack Tame this morning, Allan was grilled over the donation and whether she should have disclosed it after being appointed Justice Minister.
"Given your relationship with Meng Foon, should you have made a conflict of interest declaration when you became Justice Minister?" Tame asked.
"I wasn't required to," Allan responded.
"The Cabinet office said that I hadn’t broken any rules. I’m happy to disclose any single person. They already have been disclosed in our Electoral Commission disclosures anyway. It’s quite simple to bring those across to our conflicts for Cabinet."
Tame said: "That sounds like no?"
"There’s been no breach," Allan said. "That’s the problem with this story is that there hasn’t been a breach. It’s been all open and above board and I haven’t made any decisions in respect to that particular donor."
Allan said she had forgotten that Foon had donated to her campaign.
"As a politician, you don’t have a real solid recollection of every single person that donates to your campaign. It’s part of the reason why we’ve just introduced a law to make it even more transparent around donations."
Tame questioned this given Foon's donation was the second largest for her campaign.
"I genuinely, hand over heart, swear on my child, I don’t remember all the people that donate. That’s just how these things work," Allan said.
"But what I do know is that I operated in accordance with the law, I over-disclosed, in the interest of transparency, who made donations to my campaign, and did I breach any Cabinet manual rules? No I didn’t. I was a backbench MP, I received a donation, I made the disclosure."
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