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Labour MP Trevor Mallard is rejecting claims the profit he's made by on-selling tickets to Wellington's Homegrown festival this weekend amounts to scalping.
Ticket's for this Saturday's sold-out event, which showcases New Zealand music including Shihad, Kora, Fat Freddy's Drop and The Feelers, had a face value of $95.
However, the Hutt South MP sold four tickets on Trademe on Sunday for $656, or $164 each.
The winner of the auction, Whitireia music student Laura Signal, 19, told the Dominion Post she was surprised to discover Mr Mallard was the seller.
She picked up the tickets from his Naenae office, where he came out and gave her the package personally.
"... He kept saying: 'It's not what it looks like; it's not what it looks like', to random passers-by,'' Miss Signal said.
As a member of the Labour Government, Mr Mallard initiated the Major Events Management Act 2007, which tightened the rules around on-selling tickets to major events and allowed scalpers to be fined up to $5000.
In an opinion piece for the Herald at the time the legislation was passed, Mr Mallard said: "As for the proposed ban on scalping tickets for prices more than their face value - I think most people desperate for a ticket to a Rugby World Cup game would be frustrated, along with the event organisers, to see tickets being on-sold at levels designed only to make huge profits for the seller.''
However, Mr Mallard rejected his sale amounted to scalping, saying he had intended to go to the concert but now had another engagement.
He said he started the auction at face value, but allowed it to run its course without a "buy now'' option because he knew the tickets were worth more.
On the listing, in response to an offer to buy the tickets for $500, Mr Mallard wrote, ''I will let the auction run. And i think your price is cheeky.''
Last year, his account also sold four tickets to the Homegrown event in two separate TradeMe auctions, and in 2009 two Homegrown and two Wellington Sevens tickets were sold. The bidding history for these auctions can no longer be viewed.
Mr Mallard is not the only one to have made money off this year's Homegrown. Several other completed auctions on Trademe saw final bids soar _ two tickets sold last Friday for $490.
Homegrown is not covered by the Major Events Management Act and event organiser Mark Wright said on-selling was an issue every year once tickets sold out.
Mr Wright told the Dominion Post on-sellers were "profiteering off the work that my team and I are putting in to it'' and there was little he could do about it.
- Paul Harper of nzherald.co.nz