United Hutt donations a 'misinterpretation' of disclosure rules

Friday, 10 October 2025

Glenda Barratt, Prabha Ravi and Tony Stallinger were all tied up in the original complaint about the United Hutt group’s 2022 election returns.

The police have closed an investigation into the electoral returns of a group of candidates running for Hutt City Council seats in the 2022 election, saying they misinterpreted disclosure rules and there was no evidence of deliberate concealment.

Labour Party member Wayne Paaka complained in December 2022 alleging that the 12 candidates affiliated with the United Hutt group in 2022 broke rules by not listing donations over $1500 and not recording all its expenses.

An incorporated society, United Hutt Inc, collected the donations and distributed them amongst the United Hutt candidates, who only declared the incorporated society as donors on their returns, effectively excluding any information about the group’s financial bakers.

Tony Stallinger and Glenda Barratt were the only United Hutt candidates to be elected as councillors; they are running for re-election as independents. Prabha Ravi, another former United Hutt candidate, is campaigning to become mayor and districtwide councillor as an independent. All three had stood by their electoral returns.

Letters sent mid-September by Detective Senior Sergeant Martin Todd to candidates running for this year’s Lower Hutt election said that United Hutt’s case was a “misinterpretation” of the law and there was “no evidence of an intentional concealment”.

“We … want to ensure that going forward, candidates in the 2025 local body elections are aware of the requirements and obligations in relation to disclosing expenses and donations,” the letter said.

Paaka said he had taken the complaint as far as he could go.

For years, the complaint circled through different authorities: the Hutt City Council passed it to the police, who forwarded it to the Electoral Commission, who handed it back to the police, who sent it to the Serious Fraud Office, but it ended back with the police again in August.

United Hutt Inc dissolved this March, according to the Incorporated Societies Register. Its last financial statements, filed in 2023, said it received almost $93,000 worth of donations.

Stallinger, a former Hutt City Council chief executive, said he never saw the complaint and the police never spoke to him about it: “They have never obtained any information from me so I don’t know what they’re basing their decision on,” he said.

Ravi said there was nothing to change in her 2022 return because she did everything by the book.

The council’s 2022 electoral officer Bruce Hodgins, who also holds the role for this year’s election, said he was yet to consider whether to ask the United Hutt candidates to amend their electoral returns from three years ago.

He previously said those returns were not in the spirit of the relevant legislation and lacked transparency.