Deputy speaker Coren Aldwin has been cleared of breaching the Assembly’s code of conduct, ending an eight-month inquiry into hospitality he accepted from a regional port operator and did not declare.
The standards committee found the three dinners, valued together at $410, fell below the declarable threshold in force at the time and involved “no identifiable attempt to influence” Aldwin’s chairing of port-related debates. Its report, published on Wednesday evening, is unanimous.
But the committee reserved its sharpest language for the rules themselves, describing the disclosure regime as “written for another era” and recommending that all hospitality from registered lobbyists be declarable from the first mark, with publication within fourteen days.
Aldwin, who stepped back from chairing duties during the inquiry, said he welcomed the findings “without triumph” and would support the tighter rules. “If eight months teaches anything, it is that clarity protects everyone — members most of all,” he told reporters.
The recommendations go to a vote in the autumn session. Transparency campaigners called them overdue; the pressure group Open Ledger noted that Coravia’s declarable threshold has not changed since 2009, over which time “the price of dinner has doubled and the price of influence has not”.