Colin Craig: Sexual harassment finding upheld - again - as he says a return to politics is possible
3 May, 2021 10:51 PM
7 minutes to read
Colin Craig arrives at the Auckland High Court for a defamation hearing in 2018. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Colin Craig arrives at the Auckland High Court for a defamation hearing in 2018. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig has failed to overturn a High Court finding that he sexually harassed his former press secretary. The Court of Appeal has rejected Craig s latest attempt to unseat a High Court finding in a defamation case he took against former staff member Rachel McGregor, which prompted a counter-claim alleging he had defamed her.
All have either sued, or been sued for defamation, by Craig. The decision upheld the High Court s ruling, which said Craig’s conduct was “intentional, sexualised conduct directed at a workplace subordinate”. The court’s decision said Craig was also unable to claim MacGregor had defamed him, because her claim of sexual harassment was true. “Mr Craig knew Ms MacGregor’s attacks were true as he was aware of the solid foundation of her sexual harassment claim, that he acted inappropriately and that he settled her sexual harassment claim,” the decision said. “He also knew his statements in reply were false and misleading.”
Colin Craig, his former press secretary, and the fall-out - Rachel MacGregor speaks. (Video first published in 2018)
Former Conservative party leader Colin Craig has refused to rule out a Supreme Court appeal in his decade-long legal fight against his former press secretary over sexual harrassment claims. Craig told
Stuff he would “talk it through with my lawyers” after hearing the Court of Appeal had thrown out his bid to overturn a 2019 High Court decision that found he sexually harassed Rachel MacGregor for years, while she worked for him. In its decision released Tuesday, the Court of Appeal reconfirmed Justice Hinton’s ruling that Craig s letters to MacGregor were “highly inappropriate” for an employer to send an employee and had “clear sexual content”.
It’s a constitutional issue. The fact that He PuaPua was ever even written (with taxpayer funding) is concerning to much of the 85% of the population who do not have Maori DNA and fall into any of the other 170+ ethnicities living in NZ. It’s not a race-based thing to most people at all, it is a question of democracy and representation. If someone wanted any other non-elected group (say a church membership consisting of 15% of the population) to take up 50% of NZ Governance it would be resisted very strongly. This is how the He Puapua concept and related Maori soverignty issues appear to much of our working people who just want to get on with life and don’t feel they have personal responsibility for things that happened 200 years ago. Certainly our ever-increasing communities from places such as China, India etc may not feel they should lose their percevied democratic rights due to the 200 year ToW.
A SDRC spokeswoman said there was no other damage to the equipment.
Online site PetrolSpy indicates the average price of diesel fuel in Warwick is set at 131.9c/L, using the individual rates across the town’s 10 service stations.
The 400L of fuel allegedly stolen from the machinery would set the council back more than $500 using these average costs.
Residents with any information about a crime should contact Warwick Police on 4660 4444 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
MORE WARWICK NEWS: