Newshub footage shows political protester Karl Mokaraka's moustache coming off as he heckled ACT leader David Seymour on Sunday.
He's confirmed to Newshub that the moustache was a fake and he used it at the ACT event as he thought if "I go as myself, I probably wasn't going to be able to enter".
The Vision New Zealand candidate is well known as the man who leaned over a fence to disrupt a Christopher Luxon press conference last month.
But it was Luxon's potential future coalition partner that Mokaraka was interrupting on Sunday.
During a speech by Seymour at ACT's election campaign launch at Auckland's Civic Theatre, the man jumped up to make a number of complaints about ACT and encourage him to visit south Auckland more. He was eventually thrown out.
Seymour later questioned how Mokaraka and other hecklers were able to get past security, given the lengths ACT had gone to verify attendees had an interest in the party. Protesters infiltrated Labour's campaign launch two weeks ago.
After the event, when reviewing the footage, Newshub noticed parts of Mokaraka's moustache appeared to come off as he yelled at Seymour.
As the image below shows, when the man starts to heckle Seymour, both sides of his black and grey moustache, which droops diagonally down past his mouth, appear full of hair.
However, as he speaks, he begins to play with the facial hair, almost appearing to pick it off.
On one instance, he raises his hand to his face, but when he pulls it back down, the right side of the moustache looks much shorter.
After doing this, he screams at Seymour: "You are an actor, my friend."
Another frame of the footage, zoomed up on Mokaraka's face, shows a clear difference in length between the left of his face and the right.
Newshub rang Mokaraka to ask if the moustache was a fake.
He confirmed it was and it was made using "eyelash adhesive".
Mokaraka said he intentionally started picking it off during his speech.
"I started taking it off myself. I was trying not to be too serious… I think the theatrics, I suppose it goes with ACT."
Despite the security, Mokaraka said no one appeared to notice him as he entered the venue and claimed he even used his name when registering for the event.
"I was being quite clear and transparent. If that's their fault for not doing all their checks and balances, that's their fault."
Seymour said ACT "worked extensively to maintain security" at the campaign launch.
"We got lists of people who had been identified as trying to disrupt other parties' events. We worked very hard to match the emails to people who had previously been involved with ACT events or signing up to our emails, to see if they might be people who were not really interested until they came to disrupt this event."
He said it was a "very good question" how Mokaraka got through security given his history of disrupting events.
Seymour said those disrupting the event "do not want to have real, healthy, honest debate".
Mokaraka said his main reason for interrupting Seymour and Luxon was to remind them about south Auckland communities as well as to raise his concerns about abortion and euthanasia.
"I suppose all politicians are out of touch with our local communities. I just wanted to bring awareness to these politicians."
Asked what his response was to those who may criticise him for disrupting democratic events, Mokaraka said it was harder to engage with politicians these days.
"You can't touch them. You have to book private meetings. You can't ask questions. It's all staged."
