Hannah Swedlund paint-bombed the PM’s office to protest the Israel-Palestine conflict
The Auckland District Court has denied a request made by barrister Hannah Swedlund for a discharge without conviction after she was charged with vandalising National Party officials’ electorate offices – including that of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon – in 2023, reported the NZ Herald.
Judge Belinda Sellars set a non-custodial sentence including conviction and a reparation order. Despite Swedlund presenting letters of support from her employer, a senior lawyer, and Green Party MP Ricardo Menendez March, Sellars pointed out that the barrister was aware of the illegitimacy of her actions and tried to hide them.
Swedlund was arrested in February 2024 on charges of six counts of intentional damage in the wake of a spate of vandalism incidents that started in November 2023. The activist group Tāmaki for Palestine defaced the US Consulate and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade offices in Auckland with red paint and the stencilled phrases “Ceasefire now” and “Save Gaza Free Palestine”.
In a press release, the group said that the red paint symbolised the blood on the hands of US and New Zealand officials. Subsequently, it went on to paint-bomb the Auckland offices of Luxon, Judith Collins, Simon Watts, Paul Goldsmith and Daniel Bidois; the group also targeted a sign by David Seymour. In January 2024, Collins’ office in Papakura was vandalised once more, an act the group boasted about on Instagram.
Swedlund’s car was identified in CCTV footage taken in the vicinity of Collins’ office. She was also implicated by Microsoft Word when a Tāmaki for Palestine statement released as a Word document showed her as the author.
Moreover, her phone revealed that she was part of a Tāmaki for Palestine chat group on encrypted messaging app Signal and that she had taken minutes for Tāmaki for Palestine meetings on the encryption app Cryptpad. The meeting details revealed the group’s vandalism plans as well as methods on hiding evidence and individual identities.
In addition, police discovered red paint at the home Swedlund shared with flatmates Kieran Martin McLean and Kieran James Lynch, along with homemade signs attacking the National Party and the Israeli ambassador. McLean and Lynch were also arrested.
The charges were eventually reduced to wilful damage, with all three pleading guilty.
In a statement published by the Herald, Sellars described Swedlund as “a high academic achiever with a very strong social conscience” and “an accomplished and well-qualified practising lawyer” who concentrated on “causes for the greater good, as opposed to seeking commercial gain from her qualifications”. However, a defendant had to prove that a conviction’s consequences did not match the gravity of the offence in order to secure a discharge without conviction.
Jack Oliver-Wood, Swedlund’s defence lawyer, argued that a conviction could affect the barrister’s legal career – consequences he claimed went beyond the penalty for wilful damage. Sellars conceded that the charge did not count as a high-level offence, but she was “conscious of the fact that as an officer of the court, Ms Swedlund made a conscious decision to engage in sustained, illegal, behaviour”.
“I accept what has been said about the motivations of the behaviour and that it was also designed to make a statement rather than being mindless destruction. I note acrylic paint was used, that it was considered would be able to be painted off. But equally, as I have said, there was also significant planning”, the judge said in a statement published by the Herald.
Sellars left the matter of Swedlund’s career to the Law Society. Crown prosecutor Liesel Seybold said that thus far, the barrister had held on to her practising certificate; Swedlund could eventually apply for her conviction to be rescinded under the Clean Slate Act.
