1. Colin Craig was born on 8 January 1968 and is a New Zealand businessman and perennial candidate who was the founding leader of the Conservative Party of New Zealand.
62 Facts About Colin Craig
1. 2.
On 16 November 2015, Colin Craig announced that he would not be contesting the Conservative Party leadership in lieu of a police investigation against him over his Party's spending during the 2014 general election.
3.
Colin Craig is a conservative Christian brought up in the Baptist denomination, but does not attend a church.
4.
Colin Craig has stated he is not sure that "legislating morality" works well.
5.
In September 2012, Colin Craig had 20,000 leaflets delivered to residents in the Helensville electorate, claiming locals had told him Helensville MP and Prime Minister John Key was "too gay" to be their representative in Parliament.
6.
Colin Craig said no visitors should have to face a "bare-bottomed native making threatening gestures" if they didn't want to.
7.
Colin Craig has been known to take offence at satirical articles directed at him, including a piece on the satirical website The Civilian, which he said published a story designed "to make him look ridiculous".
8.
Colin Craig threatened to sue the site unless they published a retraction and paid him $500.
9.
In November 2013 Colin Craig rejected the scientific consensus on climate change by claiming that humans were not to blame for climate change, instead blaming sunspots and "the circulation of planets".
10.
Colin Craig first emerged as a conservative activist in 2009 when he organised and funded a "march for democracy" to protest government decisions not to adhere to three citizen's initiated referendums:.
11.
In 2010, Colin Craig contested the Auckland Mayoral election, finishing third with 42,598 votes behind Len Brown, mayor of Manukau City and John Banks, but ahead of incumbent North Shore City mayor Andrew Williams.
12.
In 2011 Colin Craig announced the formation of the Conservative Party of New Zealand.
13.
Since the Conservative party's conception, Colin Craig has donated $4 million.
14.
Colin Craig is one of the party's two major donors besides Waikato businessman Laurence Day.
15.
Colin Craig stood as a candidate in the East Coast Bays electorate in the 2014 general election but failed to win the electorate.
16.
When questioned by the media, Colin Craig denied the allegations and offered to discuss the issue with MacGregor following the 2014 general election.
17.
In February 2014, the-then Green Party co-leader Russel Norman alleged that Colin Craig held misogynistic and homophobic attitudes during a speech at the Big Gay Out event in Auckland.
18.
In June 2015, Colin Craig drew criticism from elements of the Conservative Party when he participated in a sauna interview hosted by TV3 reporter David Farrier, which they felt badly reflected on Craig's public image.
19.
Colin Craig was criticised by elements of the Conservative Party for postponing a leadership vote at a scheduled board meeting that month.
20.
On 20 June 2015, Colin Craig announced that he was not ruling out a return to the Conservative Party's leadership if he found sufficient support from the Party's members.
21.
One board member, John Stringer, has accused Colin Craig of lying to the board and other inappropriate behaviour.
22.
On 27 June 2015, Colin Craig was formally suspended from the Conservative Party by the party's newly appointed board which consisted of John Stringer and four newly appointed members.
23.
Colin Craig has not ruled out contesting the Conservative Party's leadership.
24.
Colin Craig's remarks have been dismissed by Stringer, who has become the Party's interim leader.
25.
On 5 July 2015, John Stringer resigned his positions as chairman and board member to preserve the neutrality of the second Board so he and Colin Craig could resolve their differences in court separately.
26.
Documents later emerged that Colin Craig had threatened Dobbs with personal liabilities of the party debts and letters flowed from Colin Craig's lawyers to Dobbs.
27.
On 29 July 2015, Colin Craig announced that he was going to sue several opponents including Conservative Party member John Stringer, the right wing blogger Cameron Slater and New Zealand Taxpayers' Union's president Jordan Williams for alleged defamation.
28.
On 2 August 2015, Colin Craig announced his intention to contest the Auckland mayoral election in 2016.
29.
On 11 September 2015 Colin Craig filed a defamation suit against the Party's former chairman, John Stringer.
30.
On 7 November 2015, Colin Craig was outed as the anonymous "Mr X" who posed as a party whistleblower that was interviewed in the "Dirty Politics" booklet delivered earlier in July.
31.
Colin Craig stood by his assertions in the "Dirty Politics" booklet and vowed to continue his involvement in the Conservative Party.
32.
On 16 November, Colin Craig announced that he would not contest the Conservative Party's leadership in lieu of a police investigation over his Party's spending during the 2014 general election.
33.
On 19 January 2016, Colin Craig donated NZ$36,000 to the Conservative Party.
34.
In early April 2016, Colin Craig tabled legal papers seeking more than $NZ13,000 in legal damages from blogger Cameron Slater for publishing his romantic poem The Two of Me relating to the former Conservative press secretary Rachel MacGregor on his blog Whale Oil the previous year.
35.
On 5 September 2016, Colin Craig appeared in the Auckland High Court to face a defamation lawsuit filed by Taxpayers' Union executive director Jordan Williams.
36.
Williams has alleged that Colin Craig had breached a confidentiality agreement with McGregor.
37.
Rankin testified that revelations about Colin Craig's alleged inappropriate relationship with MacGregor had led her to question Colin Craig's suitability to lead the Party.
38.
Colin Craig presented correspondence between Craig and MacGregor and contended that their relationship was consensual.
39.
Colin Craig denied that there was a "dirty politics" strategy against Craig and alleged that Crag had disciplined, harassed, and attacked members that had disagreed with him.
40.
Colin Craig dismissed Craig's claim that he had supplied the text correspondence between Craig and MacGregor to Williams as false allegations that had damaged his reputation.
41.
Colin Craig testified that MacGregor had proposed to marry him but that he had turned her offer down because he was already married.
42.
Colin Craig maintained that he had imposed the interest rate after she had resigned because she had defaulted on a $19,000 loan.
43.
Colin Craig added that MacGregor had admitted kissing Craig on the night of the 2011 general election.
44.
Helen testified that she and Colin Craig had drawn up a set of " working rules" to govern his working relationship.
45.
Colin Craig criticized Craig for proceeding with the a 2015 sauna interview with a journalist without consulting him first.
46.
Colin Craig was ordered to pay $1.3 million in compensation and punitive damages to Williams.
47.
At every stage Mr Colin Craig has wanted to stretch things out.
48.
On 3 October, it was reported that the Human Rights Review Tribunal had, earlier in 2016, ordered Colin Craig to pay Rachel MacGregor $128,780 in compensation for breaching the non-disclosure agreement with MacGregor by giving interviews about her.
49.
However, Colin Craig has not ruled out playing a role with the Conservatives after his legal problems were resolved.
50.
On 6 December 2016, Colin Craig won his bid for his upcoming defamation case against former Party official John Stringer to be heard before a judge rather than a jury as with the Williams case which Colin Craig lost with historic damages.
51.
On 6 April 2017, Colin Craig filed a $240,000 lawsuit against former employee Jacqueline Stiekema regarding defamatory statements she had allegedly made on a Facebook page and other defamatory publications she had made to a third person.
52.
Colin Craig said the case came down to credibility and whom the judge believed was telling the truth.
53.
However, neither the barrister nor Colin Craig ever revealed the conflict of interest nor did Colin Craig correct Slater's inference at any stage leading up to and during most of the trial.
54.
Colin Craig instead chose to sue all three parties for this contention which he knew was false yet allowed Slater to infer without correction until the much later trial.
55.
Stringer and Colin Craig settled "Colin Craig v Stringer" on 30 January 2017 in the Christchurch high court for zero an unrelated but parallel proceeding to the three main trials which largely concern the same issues and the same people.
56.
Colin Craig was criticized by MacGregor, her advocate Ruth Money, and Jordan Williams for abusing the legal process.
57.
At the time of Stiekema's 2012 Employment Court hearing, it was reported that Colin Craig had made remarks claiming that "shortness" was the result of sin; an allusion to the Biblical character Zaccheus the tax collector.
58.
In late 2017 Colin Craig was facing additional strike-out applications including a recall and possible strikeout of his Christchurch high court case against John Stringer, still to be heard.
59.
On 24 September 2018, Colin Craig dropped his damages claim against MacGregor but stated that he was still pursuing his defamation claim against his former press secretary.
60.
Several Craig appeals are pending and the verdict for defamation in Stringer v Craig and Others is imminent from Justice M Palmer.
61.
Colin Craig had previously lost a High Court case against MacGregor in 2019.
62.
Colin Craig had appealed the 2019 decision to the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, which upheld the High Court's decision.