At the top of the news we had some of the remarks from Patrick Faber's accusatory press conference this afternoon.
One of the things we asked about was the effort he made to get back into the party's good graces one week ago when he removed the Facebook posts that were in violation of the National Party Council's directive.
He did that the day after a letter had been sent to Ian Jones - informing him that he would be the new candidate in Collett - and that he would be endorsed.
Faber says one thing had nothing to do with the other - he simply moved the posts because he felt he had until the end of October to do so:
Patrick Faber, Collet Representative
"When is the deadline given to the nominations committee to deal with that? October 30th. We're not even there yet. In fact, their work should not have begun until the September 30th deadline, but they were quick to want to ban Faber, as they are now to quick to want to ban Faber. There was no timeline given at all."
"It is beyond that. It is not even a cause where natural justice has been done. If the NPC decides that people ought not to post things up there, what's the penalty for that? the penalty for that is that you should not be able to run? Where did it say that? who gave the nominations committee any right to decide that somebody can't run, because they put up some posts and they are in breach of something else that has happened with the party. So, every little breach that somebody commits disqualifies you from making a candidacy for this party? That's nonsense."
Notably, Faber disputes that Jones got the letter on Friday - 24 hours before he took down his posts.
