Trial date set for Liz Gunn airport assault allegation

A one-day trial has been set down for this autumn for controversial media personality Liz Gunn and cameraman Jonathan Clark, who were arrested last year following a confrontation with police at Auckland Airport.

Gunn, 64, and Clark, 50, returned to Manukau District Court today for an administrative hearing before Judge Jim Large.

The judge suppressed most of what was said during the brief but contentious court appearance aside from the newly set judge-alone trial date: May 7.

Gunn, whose legal name is Elizabeth Cooney, was charged last February with common assault, resisting police and wilful trespass after attempting to conduct an on-camera interview at the international arrivals terminal without the permission of airport officials. Clark was charged with wilfully trespassing and resisting arrest but not assault.

If convicted, Gunn faces a maximum possible sentence of six months’ imprisonment and Clark faces up to three months.

Gunn is a former TVNZ host turned high-profile anti-vaccination activist and conspiracy theorist who unsuccessfully sought to get her New Zealand Loyal political party into Parliament at the last election. She had been attempting to chronicle the arrival into New Zealand of a family kept in lockdown in Tokelau after refusing the Covid-19 vaccine.

Auckland Airport has a long-standing rule requiring media to get clearance before filming there.

Gunn said after a prior court appearance that she shouldn’t be treated like a paid journalist - instead like someone there to greet friends only with “a slightly bigger camera”. She also suggested that she had not properly been verbally trespassed by airport staff before the arrival of police.

She’s also repeated outside court at recent hearings that she is still waiting to receive additional footage from police, as well as the SIM card confiscated from Clark’s camera. She said she still suffers pain and PTSD from the confrontation almost a year on.

“I often wake between 3 and 5 in the morning - often in agony,” she said after today’s hearing. “I’ve paid a huge price. I can’t swim, I can’t play tennis, I can’t sleep well and there’s a trauma to it.”

Liz Gunn and Mike Hosking hosted Breakfast together in 2001 before Gunn quit live on-air.

Gunn began presenting the Sunday programme for TVNZ in the early 1990s, after a career as a litigation lawyer. She joined Breakfast when it started in 1997 and four years later took over as co-host of the show alongside Mike Hosking, later prompting headlines when she quit live on air. She also hosted a number of shows for Radio New Zealand before leaving in 2016.

More recently, she has garnered a following on social media for her stance against Covid vaccines.

She appeared at the High Court at Auckland in 2022, a prominent supporter of the parents in the high-profile case of Baby W. The parents had sought a court injunction to stop their child from receiving a blood transfusion from anyone who had received the Covid vaccine during a life-saving surgery at Starship Hospital.

In 2021, Gunn suggested that an earthquake that hit the central North Island was Mother Nature’s response to then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement about new vaccination targets, passports, and the traffic light system. She later dismissed the comment as a “metaphor”.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.