An unregistered gasfitter caught installing hazardous systems and using homemade registration stickers on campervans has claimed it is the law, not his work, that is the problem.

John Arthur was sentenced in the Whangārei District Court in 2024 for unlawfully working as a gasfitter and falsely advertising himself as a registered professional.

His fraudulent activities were reported after two incidents of work he conducted on motorhomes in Te Awamutu and Whangārei.

In September 2022, he installed a gas water heater into a motorhome owned by the McKean family of Whangārei.

The heater failed after two days and when the McKeans phoned another technician to check the work, it was found to have serious safety risks.

That technician told the McKeans the risk for an explosion was high.

In November 2022, Arthur installed gas systems into a motorhome in Te Awamutu after falsely claiming he was licensed to do so.

By 2023, he was also found to be falsely offering gasfitting services at a Northland marina, issuing fake inspection sheets and using a falsified registration number.

Arthur was convicted and ordered to pay $8000, which included reparation to the victims. He appealed his sentence almost immediately.

‘I felt pressured’

At his appeal hearing in the High Court at Whangārei on Tuesday before Justice Mathew Downs, Arthur claimed he was pressured by his lawyer and the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board (PGDB) to plead guilty.

His previous counsel, Jarred Scott, was called in to give evidence at the hearing.

He told the court Arthur was advised of his options and that he would receive a “lesser sentence” if he pleaded guilty.

Arthur then questioned him about that advice.

He said he had spent 40 years in the automotive industry and wanted to know if Scott would have given different advice had he known about Arthur’s experience in gas work.

Scott replied he knew that at the time, as was mentioned in a phone conversation.

“Nothing’s changed since giving you the advice in the first place,” Scott said.

Justice Downs asked Scott whether Arthur had mentioned he was unhappy about pleading guilty.

“Effectively, he didn’t like that he was guilty,” Scott responded.

Lawyer for the PGDB, Wilson Main, told the court he was aware Arthur was unhappy to plead guilty but his issues were around law changes.

“I couldn’t see a viable defence,” Main told the court.

John Arthur was doing work on campervans deemed to be dangerous. Photo / 123rf

Crown lawyer Sam McMullan said the key features of the case were the fact Arthur was not a registered gasfitter and the work he carried out on the McKean’s campervan was dangerous.

“You weren’t registered to do the work though, were you?” Justice Downs then asked.

“That’s the whole area I’m approaching with the Minister of Energy, the Honourable Simeon Brown,” Arthur said.

“I described everything that had gone on and how to rectify this situation his voice was ‘this is just common sense, get together with the gas board and have a conversation’.”

“Listen to my question,” Justice Downs said. “You weren’t registered to do the work though, were you?”

“I was registered as an automotive gasfitter, sir,” Arthur responded.

“Were you registered under the Plumbers and Gasfitters Act 2006?”

“No.”

Bogus registration cards

Arthur had been told from the outset, in order to defend the charges relating to dangerous work, he needed to get an expert, which he said he could not afford.

Arthur said he was trained in 1985 in the automotive gasfitters trade and didn’t like that there was a new board telling people what to do.

He gave an oral submission that he had created his own sticker system with identification numbers of the work he had done kept in his cloud storage.

“It’s alleged you were displaying bits of cards with registration numbers that were bogus,” Justice Downs said.

“All that information is stored on an iCloud,” Arthur said.

Justice Downs said he was struggling to see what the iCloud had to do with the numbers.

“Why are you showing these people a document with these numbers on it?” Justice Downs asked.

Arthur said no one had listened to him through his court case and if he could have a meeting with the gas board, all could be explained.

Justice Downs said that he could not organise that as the hearing was related to the charges Arthur was convicted of.

Arthur said if the conviction remained, he requested to be resentenced with a discharge without conviction.

“I’ve already paid the price,” Arthur said.

Justice Downs has reserved his decision for two weeks.

Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.