New Zealand court discharges Australian diplomat’s husband after drunken spitting assault

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - A New Zealand court on Thursday discharged the husband of an Australian diplomat without convicting him, months after the man pleaded guilty to assault for drunkenly spitting on a teenager during a street altercation on the night of a rugby match in Wellington.

The man was granted permanent name suppression. Judge Paul Mabey, presiding at the Wellington District Court, said he didn't accept the man's arguments that the potential harms to him justified the discharge, but the magistrate agreed that his wife's diplomatic career could be curbed by an assault conviction and the publication of his name.

The man could be barred from travel abroad to her future postings, the judge said, and the family could be split up if the Australian High Commission decided he could not remain in New Zealand to preserve the bilateral relations between the countries.

The charges arose after an episode last September after the man attended a rugby match between New Zealand and Australia in the capital. He was drunk when he arrived at Wellington's main nightlife area, where he approached a group of teenagers and became aggressive when they didn't want to engage with him, the judge said.

A member of the group punched the man, who responded by spitting on a young woman. He was arrested by police officers who happened to be passing.

The case has provoked widespread news coverage in New Zealand and Australia along with cell phone footage of the man's arrest, in which he verbally abused a police officer and claimed he had diplomatic immunity. He had such immunity, conferred by protocol to the partners of senior envoys to New Zealand, which he later waived voluntarily.

He pleaded guilty to New Zealand’s lowest level of assault charge in January. It is punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to 4,000 New Zealand dollars ($2,400).

"For the avoidance of any doubt at all, he is not here to be sentenced for abusing the police or rashly claiming diplomatic immunity," Judge Mabey said.

"He was right to say he had that immunity,” the judge added. “He was completely stupid to say it at all."

But the magistrate said he would discharge the man because of his wife's suggestion that the Australian diplomatic service would be unable to ignore the husband's conviction and the widely-distributed cell phone video of his arrest when considering her future.

"If I were not to suppress his name, his offending would be inextricably linked to his wife and she would suffer considerably," the judge said.

He rejected a bid by the man's lawyer to suppress the country his wife represented in New Zealand.