Read the full transcript of the conversation below.
Jami-Lee Ross has released an audio clip of the phone conversation between himself and Simon Bridges.
In the recording, the former National MP is heard asking Mr Bridges what to do with a $100,000 donation.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Ross attended a Wellington police station and filed a complaint against leader Mr Bridges.
- Jami-Lee Ross talks to media after making police complaint
- Opinion: Jami-Lee Ross has left Bridges' leadership hanging by a thread
Shortly after the audio was released, police confirmed that a compaint was recieved at Wellington Central station regarding the disclosure of donations under the Electoral Act.
In a statement, police said that information will be reviewed by a detective senior sergeant.
A timeframe was not given as to how long it will take for the next steps to be determined from a police perspective.
Any complaints regarding alleged Electoral Act offences are taken seriously, police said.
The full transcript of Jami-Lee Ross' released audio:
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Good thanks buddy, how are you?
SIMON BRIDGES: Good, buddy, good. What've you been up to? Anything exciting?
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Just been meeting with a few people this afternoon: Malcolm Alexander, your good friend, and Stephen Selwood.
SIMON BRIDGES: Yeah, they're both my mates - they've never really done me any favours, but that's the way it goes.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Hey you know at Paul Goldsmith's function you saw those two Chinese guys, Zhang Yikun and Colin? You had dinner at their home?
SIMON BRIDGES: Yes.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: They talked to you about a $100,000 donation?
SIMON BRIDGES: Yep.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: That is now in.
SIMON BRIDGES: Fantastic.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: What would you like done with it? It's currently sitting in a Botany electorate account.
SIMON BRIDGES: Yeah that's good, I'd need to say - By the way, on that, just before we get to that. I promised them that we would have dinner at my place, that you should come. I mean, we might as well make a bit of fun of it. The only thing that would be good is if they brought the wine, because they've got better wine.
When I move into my new house so that's probably…we've got to sell ours. It could be earlier but it's probably around September so we should make good on that 'cause otherwise I've lied to them, 'cause I've said it a couple of times now. We should definitely do that.
Look, I just think we want it for the advertisements and the like, you know? We want it for the things that we're gonna need to do over the next year or so, sort of outside of the - not outside of the party but you know, like I say we want to do some more attack ads - say we want to do another regional fuel one, say we want to do an industrial relations one. We just want to keep doing those things, right?
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Yeah.
SIMON BRIDGES: So look, I'll tell you what. I had cancelled it because I'm at a Chinese function and I'm gonna be bloody tired. We could meet this evening briefly. We could talk about this.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Okay, if you want. But we've all accepted that you've got stuff on. I'm not calling about that.
SIMON BRIDGES: Nah, I'm just trying to think.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: I'm just aware there's - the money's fine sitting there in the Botany account. I don't know what your arrangement is with Goodfellow or not, that's all.
SIMON BRIDGES: I need to talk to him. I'm actually seeing him tonight, I wonder if I should..
JAMI-LEE ROSS: I don't think we can-
SIMON BRIDGES: I should wait and get the right words.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: I don't think we can raise tens of thousands and completely keep him out of the loop.
SIMON BRIDGES: No, no we can't.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Maybe if you're just honest with him about it.
SIMON BRIDGES: I think that's right. Look, I'll raise it with him but we should probably just think it through. I mean, it can be in the party but I do just wanna make sure we've got that money to do those sort of things, right? Don't you think?
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Donations can only be raised two ways – party donation or candidate donation. Party donation has a different disclosure which is fine, and the way they've done it meets the disclosure requirements – sorry, it meets the requirements where it's under the particular disclosure level because they're a big association and there's multiple people and multiple people make donations, so that's all fine, but if it was a candidate donation it's different. So making them party donations is the way to do it. Legally, though, if they're party donations they're kind of under Greg's name as the party secretary, so –
SIMON BRIDGES: So we need to tell them, I get that. I get that. I'm going to tell him – I think he'll accept it, I just need to explain to him what it is I want it for. Uh, unless I get him to come along to, unless I get him to – leave it with me, I might talk to McClay as well, see what he's got up his sleeve. Cause Peter is going to be at this meeting with me in Wellington, that's all. If I then brought him after that – good work though man, that's a lot of money.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Yeah they're good people. Now there's no catch or anything to it. You may recall at the dinner they did discuss candidacy, and another Chinese candidate.
SIMON BRIDGES: Two MPs, yeah.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Colin Zheng, the younger one, he's put his name in for candidates college and so I assume he'll get through candidates college and we'll just make some decisions as a party further down the track as to what we want to do with candidates.
SIMON BRIDGES: I mean, it's like all these things, it's bloody hard, you've only got so much space. Depends where we're polling, you know? All that sort of thing. Two Chinese would be nice, but would it be one Chinese or one Filipino, or one – what do we do?
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Two Chinese would be more valuable than two Indians, I have to say.
SIMON BRIDGES: Which is what we've got at the moment, right? Your problem there is you end up in a shit fight because you've got a list MP – you've got two list MPs – it's a pretty mercenary cull – sitting MPs, all that shit. And then we've got the issue of – we could end up getting rid of some list MPs if we want and bringing in some of those new ones, and if you do that you're just filling up your list even further with ones that you've gotta sort of look after – I mean I reckon there's two or three of our MPs, not picking up obvious ones like Finlayson or Carter, but actually we just want them to go. You know? Like Maureen Pugh is f**king useless.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Yeah, I know. Carter, Finlayson, Nicky Wagner – they don't really need to hang around.
Simon: Yeah, but then, we get, yeah, yeah, we don't want them to go this year though.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Oh, no.
SIMON BRIDGES: We don't want them all to go, we want to do it well and we just want to think it all through. Look that's really good, well look thanks for that, I'll consider when I have a [INAUDIBLE] and send you a text, I'll do that in the next half an hour if we're going to.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: OK, all good.
SIMON BRIDGES: Hey that's awesome, man. Talk to you soon.
JAMI-LEE ROSS: Cheers, bye.
SIMON BRIDGES: Cheers mate, bye.
Newshub.
