A former controversial president of the Canberra Liberals turned pig farmer is behind bars in New Zealand after using more than a thousand cubic metres of concrete to reclaim land from a harbour next to a North Island farm, in a supposed bid to create a memorial park for his family.
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Tio Faulkner is due to be sentenced next month in the Tauranga District Court on six charges, which include unlawfully reclaiming and disturbing the foreshore in the Bay of Plenty, and two charges of discharging faecal bacteria into the harbour, The New Zealand Herald has reported.
- Before and after: the area where Tio Faulkner was convicted of reclaiming land. Pictures: Supplied
But the country's high court rejected a bid to release Faulkner after he was remanded in custody ahead of sentencing. Faulkner had claimed the court had no jurisdiction to detain him because he was both Maori and an Australian citizen.
"I am very grateful to [the judge] for giving me this experience behind bars, and I'll be thanking her for that, because it will add to my memoirs," Faulkner reportedly said during his application for freedom.
Faulkner is a former staffer in the Legislative Assembly office of then ACT opposition leader Zed Seselja. He resigned in 2012 after he was at the centre of an office entitlements scandal involving alleged breaches.
An independent inquiry ultimately exonerated Mr Seselja of ''overpayments or other entitlements inappropriately extended to staff'' because of the mismanagement of staff records.
Mr Seselja was accused of paying Faulkner a taxpayer-funded salary to be the director of electorate services while Faulkner in fact worked at the Liberal Party's headquarters.
It was revealed Faulkner had not submitted time sheets for 22 months and his employment arrangements became the subject of the inquiry.
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The review, by former royal commissioner Ron McLeod, strongly criticised Mr Seselja's office for a ''serious failure'' to comply with staff attendance records, finding a lack of ''sensitivity to the level of accountability expected [in] the management of publicly funded resources''.
Faulkner resigned as president of the Canberra Liberals in November 2013 after three years in the post. He went on to found Marriage Alliance, an anti-same-sex marriage lobby group active during the postal survey campaign in 2017.
Stuff, the New Zealand-based news website, in November reported Faulkner was trying to expand his property into the neighbouring tidal flats in 2019, using broken concrete to build a three-metre high platform.
However, an aerial survey by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council identified the structure and located a piggery with 20 pigs, whose effluent was leaking into the harbour. Faulkner reportedly provided council officers who inspected the property with handwritten trespass notices.
Faulkner has reportedly claimed in court the structure on the tidal flats was lawful because he had usage rights over Maori-owned land.
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Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
