Their meeting in an Auckland café on 11 November 2011, two weeks before election day, was seen as a symbolic endorsement of Banks as the National Party's favoured candidate for the Epsom electorate.
In March 2012 Ambrose wrote a letter to Key and Banks expressing regret that he had released the recording to the newspaper, and the police decided to issue a warning rather than prosecute.
To have the Prime Minister (a National Party Member of Parliament) have tea with the ACT candidate was intended to endorse Banks' candidacy in the electorate.
[6][9] Ambrose maintains he inadvertently left the recording device on the table, and was unable to retrieve it when media were ordered to leave the venue.
[10] National Party campaign chairman Steven Joyce said that the recording appeared to have been deliberately arranged by the Herald on Sunday, and described it as "UK-style News of the World tabloid tactics".
[12] Labour leader Phil Goff called the recording a "dodgy conversation between two people trying to manipulate a minor party".
[14][15] This view was shared by University of Canterbury journalism lecturer Jim Tully, who also stated he believed the contents of the conversation should be released in the public interest.
[16] Key defended the decision to involve police, calling the issue "the start of a slippery slope": What happens if a couple of high profile New Zealanders have a conversation about their son or their daughter being suicidal - a Sunday paper reports that and that child takes their own life.
Political experts including Joe Atkinson and Jon Johannson credit the tea tape scandal for the re-entry of Winston Peters and his New Zealand First party into Parliament.
[31] A Massey University study released in November 2012 suggested newspaper coverage was favourable towards National and John Key prior to the scandal.
More than three years after the initial scandal, cameraman Bradley Ambrose sued John Key for $1.25M, claiming three separate acts of defamation in the days and week following the recording being made.