Auditor asked to examine Act salary scheme

By AUDREY YOUNG political reporter

The Auditor-General, Kevin Brady, yesterday received a formal request to examine the Act parliamentary party's salary payment scheme.

The request was sent by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

Mr Peters also condemned suggestions that taxpayer money may have funded an Act bus in Wellington as a "mobile electorate office" for constituency clinics while Mr Prebble was the Wellington Central MP from 1996 to 1999.

In his letter to the Auditor-General, Mr Peters said Herald reports "suggest that this is a scheme designed to circumvent the normal system of employment and to get greater numbers of Act staff working in Parliament".

He asked Mr Brady to assess whether it complied with the rules and requirements relating to public expenditure.

The request will take about a week to assess, an official from the Auditor-General's office said.

A request from Parliament's administrators, Parliamentary Service, would also be a major consideration if it were made.

That matter will be discussed next Wednesday by MPs on the Parliamentary Service Commission - including Act leader Richard Prebble.

It is understood a majority of MPs favour calling in the Auditor-General, but such decisions are usually made by consensus and the view of Speaker and commission chairman Jonathan Hunt will carry a lot of weight.

Mr Prebble has said such an inquiry would be a "waste of time" and he would not be concerned about the outcome.

The scheme means Act's parliamentary offices and budgets have been boosted by staff hired as out-of-Parliament electorate agents. They are contracted to work 32 hours a week as electorate agents and eight hours a week at Parliament.

The "electorate office" that the agents were supposed to work from is in Mr Prebble's Pipitea St townhouse.

Some of the staff were never issued with keys and some Act sources say the office never functioned as an electorate office.

A company owned by Mr Prebble and his wife, Doreen, charged Parliamentary Service rent for the office.

Mr Prebble cannot recall how much and Parliamentary Service did not respond to a series of questions yesterday about Act's electorate offices in Wellington.

Mr Prebble said the "nominal" rent was donated straight back into party coffers.

He confirmed that an electorate office had been established in the room of a house he rented in Wellington Central as the local MP from 1996 to 1999. But the rent arrangement was between the landlord and Parliamentary Service. He had no financial interest. He had only one electorate agent at the time.

He initially said that taxpayers, through Parliamentary Service, paid for an Act bus as a second mobile electorate office. But then he said he could not recall how it had been funded.

"I had a circuit and clinics and other MPs did the same thing. It wasn't my idea. I think I got it from Phil Goff who had a caravan. I wouldn't have negotiated any of that but it sure as hell went past the Parliamentary Service and everybody else."

Mr Peters was shocked that an Act bus could have been publicly funded.

"A mobile office doesn't have loud speakers out of every end of it," Mr Peters said. "It was for propaganda purposes.

"It was for campaigning."

New Zealand First had paid for a bus for its 1996 campaign "and it was an expensive as hell".

Parliamentary Service did not respond to questions yesterday about the bus either.

Meanwhile, a computer was seen being delivered to the electorate office this week but Mr Prebble said it had been ordered "some weeks ago".

"You can't order a computer on a Monday and get it on a Tuesday."

He offered on Monday night to give the Herald a tour of the office on Tuesday but changed his mind.

Further requests have been declined.

He has also said that telephone logs would prove the office had been functioning but has not responded to a request to view them.

* The Auditor-General's office said there would be no conclusion on its inquiry into the Pipi Foundation and spending by suspended Act MP Donna Awatere Huata until July at the earliest.