A former controversial president of the Canberra Liberals will spend more than three months behind bars in New Zealand, after he was sentenced for illegally dumping concrete waste and rebar into a protected harbour in an effort to extend his property while also allowing excrement to flow into the water from a pig farm.
But Tio Faulkner has already filed an appeal in the country's high court challenging the conviction, claiming he is not subject to any New Zealand law as a Maori man, Open Justice has reported.
Faulkner was on Thursday sentenced to three months and three weeks imprisonment. He was found guilty of six charges following an eight-day trial, where he represented himself, last November.
The Bay of Plenty Regional Council laid charges in 2019 after council workers discovered the material dumped into the protected area of the harbour. Faulkner did not comply with council abatement notices, and continued to dump material into the waterway.
The high court rejected an earlier 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 was remanded in custody after refusing to meet with a corrections officer to discuss whether he had enough money to pay a fine if he was ordered to do so.
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.
- Before and after: the area where Tio Faulkner was convicted of reclaiming land. Pictures: Supplied
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.
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 reportedly claimed in court the structure on the tidal flats was lawful because he had usage rights over Maori-owned land.
