KEY POINTS:
A gaggle of drag queens are rehearsing their routine at the Finale cabaret bar on K Rd.
It's Tuesday afternoon, and most of the lights are off in the former nightclub with its front door that sits between a pizza bar and sex shop.
A man stands at
the back of the cavernous space counting the weekend's takings. The cash tins on the bar rattle as he stacks the $10, $20 and $50 notes.
That man is Tuariki John Delamere who, as government minister and associate treasurer, once had a finger on New Zealand's purse strings.
A decade on, he is doing the sums for Finale - his family's venture into drag cabaret.
Yet Delamere seems uncomfortable by the stage as Felisha and the girls go through the steps to I Need a Hero: "One, two, three, bang - 'I need a hero' - and around, two, three ..."
He is much happier by the bar, especially when the conversation turns to the Serious Fraud Office and the charges of running an immigration scam of which he was acquitted at a trial in the High Court at Auckland last month.
He becomes increasingly effusive when he talks of the one-man counter-attack he's bringing against the SFO and their director, the immigration department and their top officials, maybe even Minister of Immigration David Cunliffe.
He began his battle with an allegation of blackmail by immigration officials which one of Auckland's top detectives threw out this week. So, he says there will now be a complaint about the police's handling of the allegation, followed by a private prosecution.
People tell him to let it go, but he just can't. He says he's been a victim of a vendetta and rampant corruption.
It is - Delamere says without any apparent exaggeration - "me against all the might of power and the state. And it's my turn to take it to them now."
The downtown offices of the Tuariki Delamere and Associates Immigration Consultancy are more what you might expect of a former minister.
There's a boardroom and a picture of the farm he once owned near Whakatane and its view of Mt Tarawera. There are trinkets and mementos from overseas visits and photos with foreign dignitaries.
One picture is of the so-called "tight five" of New Zealand First Maori seat MPs just after they barnstormed their way into parliament back in 1996.
"We were like kings back then," says Delamere.
They were heady days. Winston Peters held the balance of power after the first MMP election and his brinkmanship swept the party into power and Delamere into the National-led cabinet - the first politician in almost 70 years to go straight from Civvy St to a cabinet post.
Delamere was riding highest of the tight five and was soon being talked up as the first Maori prime minister.
The buzz was summed up by a North & South magazine cover feature by journalist Warwick Roger in 1997 that touted Delamere as the "chosen one".
But by the next year his political rise started to slowly unravel. He fell out with Peters but stayed in with the Jenny Shipley-led government as immigration minister when the coalition fell apart.
Then Shipley axed him as minister three days before the election after it was found he gave special treatment to Chinese investors prepared to put money into Maori projects.
He lost his seat and the Delamere buzz was over as quickly as it had begun.
The media's re-examination of his rise found an abiding propensity for controversy dating back to his days as an athlete, when he did a forward somersault in the long jump - a cheeky circumvention of the rules that saw the innovation quickly outlawed - but not before he had equalled the distance of the then-Olympic champion.
It was an analogy writers were unable to resist with its elements of dash, ingenuity and finally a fall to earth. For a time Delamere went about his work quietly, immersing himself in the immigration consultancy and the drag cabaret.
The immigration business dovetailed nicely with a love for China he says was borne out of a visit there while a minister. He set to work making contacts during more than 20 visits and fell in love with the culture, learning both the language and the writing.
Things went very well says Delamere, who estimates that he helped 3000 mainly Asian people gain residency here in the past five years using his knowledge of the immigration process - particularly since he had passed some of the legislation himself.
One such amendment - the business migration clause where immigrants needed to have $1 million in the bank to get into New Zealand - soon became the clause the Serious Fraud Office tried to hang him on.
In April 2004, his offices were raided. The SFO case was simple: that Delamere was exploiting a loophole of which he had intimate knowledge because he passed it.
It was described as a classic money-go-round.
There was a single sum of $1 million in a bank account which was lent to seven different immigrants long enough for them to get in the country. They got their rubber stamp, Delamere and the man with the million dollars - his Chinese friend and business partner Yan Jiang - received a cut.
Delamere's defence was equally simple: it was within the law.
He claims the SFO hid evidence, refused to interview people crucial to the case and went easy on Jiang.
The jury took less than two hours to acquit him of 14 charges of fraud and forgery, with six others withdrawn.
Delamere clearly revelled in the battle.
He says he prepared a thousand pages of questions and analysis for lawyer Paul Dacre. The Rolls-Royce of prosecutors, Auckland crown solicitor Simon Moore, was brought in to run the case for the SFO. Delamere says he "thoroughly enjoyed" his time "sticking it to them" in the witness box and claims to have given the SFO an "absolute arse-kicking".
He is still sensitive to the scheme described as "exploiting a loophole". He prefers the term "avenue".
What does Delamere say to those who think it was immoral, or just downright cheeky?
"I really couldn't care what those people think - that's irrelevant."
Delamere denies knowing that the policy could be exploited when he left parliament, saying he only heard about it when other immigration consultants were doing it over a year-and-a-half later.
The Herald files tell a slightly different story.
In an interview shortly after his ejection from Parliament, Delamere admitted that the policy "didn't do a heck of a lot for New Zealand" because after citizenship is granted there is no requirement to keep the money here.
Delamere believes he is being persecuted. He doesn't know where it is coming from, except that it is "political".
He says it began after he attempted to expose "a huge cover-up and possible bribery in the business migration unit" of the immigration service.
He describes the SFO as "like the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover", saying it is an unaccountable institution New Zealand does not need.
This week, the Department of Labour, which runs the immigration service, refused to accept Delamere's explanation. "[We] do not accept that such arrangements were legitimate under the policy at any time," says acting group manager of service delivery Simon Smith.
Smith says Delamere's claims that "hundreds" of other migrants used the avenue were wrong, saying the department was not aware of a single other person whose investments were made on a money-go-round basis.
Smith said the seven migrants who Delamere brought in were still in New Zealand, but their future was in the hands of the immigration minister.
The $1 million business investor policy that Delamere introduced was changed in 2005 - the policy now requires $2 million that is invested with the government.
While Delamere can still practise as an immigration consultant, Smith pointed to a new law announced by Cunliffe this week and said once the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act was enacted, he will be "subject to the same laws as other consultants".
SFO director David Bradshaw said he did not intend to dignify Delamere's accusations with any response. Bradshaw said the SFO had won 90 per cent of its cases in the last five years - a record any agency would be proud of.
He pointed to a paragraph in its annual report highlighting the inherent difficulties in prosecuting fraud: "The acquitted white collar defendant tends to be treated as a victim of a flawed or out-of-control prosecution system to a far greater extent than say the acquitted gang member."
Back at the cabaret bar, Delamere admits that some people will see this as a classic fall from grace but nobody has had the conviction to say that to his face.
He knows some will view him as a zealot; he doesn't care.
With the police complaint already thrown out, there is still plenty for Delamere to work on. He intends to lodge a complaint about the SFO accountant with the accounting industry's professional standards body; he wants to bring a civil case of malicious prosecution against the SFO; he'll pursue a defamation case; and he rattles off some other action to do with perverting the course of justice and conspiracy. He also says there needs to be "some kind of inquiry" into the immigration department.
When the similarities of his latest quest are compared with the "rule-bending" of his somersault in the long jump back in 1984, Delamere is off again.
"I wasn't bending the rules at all - there were no rules against it. They added you can't do a somersault afterwards ...
"It was like the Fosbury Flop in the high jump, now everyone jumps that way ... It was all those conservative do-das that stopped me. If I had got the timing right I probably would have got the world record - but they banned the damn thing on me."
Tuariki John Delamere
* Age 55.
* Wife Jo-Ell, three children, five grandchildren.
* Tribe: Whanau a Apanui.
1968: Gains top marks by a Maori boy in School Certificate.
1970: Wins athletics scholarship to Washington State University.
1974: Represents New Zealand as a long and triple jumper at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. In a later competition, does forward somersault while competing in the long-jump - a practice subsequently banned.
1974-78: Serves in the United States Army. Later joins the staff of the West Point Military Academy.
1978: Graduates with a Masters in Business Administration from Long Island University in New York. Returns to New Zealand and works in jobs including selling computer finance and top-level positions in finance and the public sector with Polynesian Airlines and Te Puni Kokiri.
1996: Wins Te Tai Rawhiti (now Waiariki) seat for New Zealand First. Appointed associate treasurer in coalition negotiations with National. Other posts held during term include associate Minister of Health, Minister of Immigration, Minister of Pacific Island Affairs.
1998: Breaks away from New Zealand First after coalition falls apart. Stays on as independent MP.
1999: Loses role as Minister of Immigration after a scandal regarding the application of immigration rules. Loses seat at election.
2000: Becomes immigration consultant.
2003: Sets up family in Finale cabaret restaurant on K Rd.
2005: Appears in court on Serious Fraud Office charges of fraud relating to an immigration scam.
2007: Acquitted of all charges. Says he is victim of a government conspiracy and SFO vendetta.
