WELLINGTON - National believes that Labour has under-reported its election campaign expenditure and is considering lodging a complaint.
Election expense returns to the Electoral Office put National's expenditure at $2.13 million, compared with Labour's declaration of $1.03 million.
The maximum that can be spent for a party vote campaign is $1 million, plus $20,000 for each electorate the party is contesting, within a 90-day period.
That meant National's maximum was $2.3 million, because it did not contest Wellington Central and Ohariu-Belmont, and Labour's maximum was $2.34 million.
National Party president John Slater said the two expense declarations could not be compared.
"We have erred on the side of conservatism. I don't think we have got a fair comparison, particularly when you look at the declaration by Alliance of $750,000 and Labour being only about $300,000 above that."
He believed Labour did not include any research or polling costs in its declaration, or the use of union work during the campaign.
"It's a question of, are we comparing apples with apples? The law requires a declaration and sets out how it must be done but there is some ambiguity there about what you should declare," he said.
National had also included expenditure outside the 90-day period because under the law, if there were benefits accruing from that spending within the actual period, then it had to be included.
"We've put in all our research. You can't tell me that the Labour Party did not have any research and they are not showing any figures at all for research," he said.
Any research done had to have some benefit because it was the raw material of campaigning.
National had also heard that a "tremendous" amount of work was done by the unions for the Labour Party.
"And there doesn't seem to be any declaration of that," Mr Slater said.
The expense declaration did not have to account for labour but had to account for services provided free of charge, he said.
Labour Party president Bob Harvey and secretary Rob Allen did not return calls asking for comment.
- NZPA