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Nick Potts, Laura Signal and Stuart Garner bought tickets for this weekend's Homegrown event from Trevor Mallard and paid a lot more than face value. There is nothing illegal in on-selling tickets. - Source: Fairfax
Labour MP Trevor Mallard has been accused of scalping tickets to a Wellington music festival.
The tickets to Saturday's sold-out Homegrown festival have a face value of $95 each.
Whitireia music student Laura Signal, 19, and her three friends were desperate to attend so they bid for four tickets on Trade Me, paying a final price of $656.
Signal was surprised when the trader turned out to be the Hutt South MP, who used his parliamentary email address for the auction.
She and her friends went to Mallard's Naenae office to collect the tickets from him in person.
"He came out and gave us the package really quickly and he kept saying: 'It's not what it looks like; it's not what it looks like,' to random passers-by."
The students said they asked Mallard about a "buy now" price during the auction, but he replied that he would let the auction run.
In November 2006, Mallard initiated legislation - now the Major Events Management Act 2007 - to protect event sponsors from people making money out of major events with which they had no formal association.
He said at the time: "When there is bulk-buying of tickets to such events simply for the purpose of profiteering, scalping is a ripoff that could deny many people the opportunity to see an event."
Homegrown is not covered by the legislation and there is nothing illegal in on-selling tickets. Homegrown director Mark Wright said was up to Mallard to decide whether he believed it was "appropriate behaviour".
On-selling was a problem the festival organisers faced every year once tickets sold out.
"They are profiteering off the work that my team and I are putting in to it. What can I do about it? We set a ticket price that we see as a fair price."
Mallard told The Dominion Post yesterday that the sale was neither scalping nor dodgy. He bought the tickets last year but now had another engagement.
"I'm slightly surprised if promoters with whom I spend several hundred dollars a year on tickets complain when I sell some I can't use to someone who wants them using a Kiwi-based online auction."
He listed the tickets at face value, but let the auction run above $500 because he "knew that they were worth more".
He believed the students had breached his privacy by revealing him as the ticket trader.
It's legal
Trade Me allows the on-selling of event tickets after a poll showed 81% of its traders in support.
The Major Events Management Act was passed in 2007, and was initiated by Trevor Mallard while he was economic development minister in 2006.
It protects events such as the Rugby World Cup, the World Rowing Championships and the 2015 Cricket World Cup from scalpers and ambush marketing. It is illegal for tickets to be on-sold for such events under this act.
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