Gunn on assault charge while saying vote prediction a joke

Liz Gunn outside court today. Image: NZ Herald
Liz Gunn outside court today. Image: NZ Herald
Political hopeful and former TV presenter Liz Gunn, accused of assault after a scuffle with security at Auckland Airport, remains upbeat about the election and is holding out for special vote results.

The New Zealand Loyal leader said her prediction the party would get two million votes made at a public meeting during the recent campaign was said in jest. 

Gunn reappeared in Manukau District Court alongside co-accused Jonathan Clark today, facing charges after a scuffle at the airport's international arrivals hall earlier this year. 

She requested further security footage to be released from the incident, which led to her being charged with assault, trespass and resisting arrest.

Speaking outside court today, Gunn clarified her comments that recently made headlines, in which she predicted her party would win two million votes in the October 14 general election.

“The two million votes [comment] was a tongue-in-cheek thing.”

She described it as a wry way of explaining her aspirations for the party and said she was visualising a dream so it could become truth.

“In the context of the meeting, everyone laughed."

At the start of the month, Gunn took to the stage at a New Zealand Loyal event and said society was being ruled by “at the very least utter bullies”.

“People are deriding me for saying two million [would support the party], wouldn’t it be funny if just quietly well over a million have actually voted for us. Let’s see what they do with the numbers.”

The party’s highest electorate result so far was in Northland, where more than 1170 voters backed the presenter turned anti-vaccination campaigner.

However, the party’s results in each of the electorates were dwarfed by National, Labour, Act, New Zealand First and the Green party which all received thousands or in some cases more than 10,000 more votes than New Zealand Loyal.

“It’s a tentative result,” she said of her party’s results.

Gunn said she thought there were at least 700,000 special votes to be counted at a “conservative estimate.”

The Electoral Commission reports there are 567,000 special votes still to be counted.

She said she had received several phone calls and messages from her voters who said they had placed special votes.

“I advise people to let the dust settle. We still have a lot [of votes] to count.”

She described today’s court hearing as “very administrative.”

Gunn appeared in court in March, charged with assault, trespass and resisting arrest after an alleged scuffle with a security guard at the airport over filming the arrival of an unvaccinated family arriving from Tokelau.

She pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.

Gunn missed her following court appearance in June, citing illness.

Today in court she and her lawyer raised concerns over missing CCTV footage of the incident and that police were holding an SD card that belonged to them.

Gunn spoke directly to the judge, saying she had “major rotator cuff damage” to an arm after the incident and the current footage of the incident available obscures the injuries she suffered.

“It would be a major miscarriage of justice” for the proceedings to go ahead without more reference footage, she argued. 

She is expected to reappear on January 17 next year.

Gunn, who was called under the name Elizabeth Cooney in court, told The New Zealand Herald outside she was tired of being labelled as a conspiracy theorist.

“The public are over that, the term conspiracy theorist.”