The Act Party Successfuly Hid Their Pedophile President

Former Act Party president Tim Jago, charged in January 2023, was granted name suppression. His lawyers argued was needed to avoid harming the ACT Party's electoral chances ahead of that year's election.

On 26 August 2024 a jury found him guilty on all eight indecent-assault charges which involved offending against teenage boys he mentored in the 1990s.  However, his name suppression only lapsed 5 months later, on 31 January 2025, well over a year after the election, when he abandoned his appeal against the district court's decision to decline ongoing suppression.

When a survivor's wife warned ACT in late 2022 that Jago was a predator, party leader David Seymour personally referred her to an employment lawyer rather than police; he later defended that response as reasonable, while the government's Chief Victims Advisor called it a mistake.