Election spending fight may spark legal challenge

The Greens' taxpayer-funded energy pamphlet.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the Auditor-General's view that much taxpayer-funded party advertising at the last election was unlawful could be challenged in court.

The Solicitor-General suggests the advertising is unlawful and that opinion is cited in an Auditor-General's draft finding.

Mr Peters was back at work yesterday after a week's recuperation from illness in Brisbane.

Like Prime Minister Helen Clark, he said his party had sought prior approval from Parliament's administrators, Parliamentary Service, for advertising expenditure.

"That's the procedure we religiously followed.

"I think it is somewhat difficult now to find a new ruling has come out, a ruling which is capable of legal challenge, I might add, and which has changed the rules."

Asked if he would support legislation to retrospectively validate any spending deemed unlawful, Mr Peters said: "This is a decision by the Auditor-General which is not immune to a challenge."

Any party could seek a declaratory judgment from the High Court.

He did not think his party would do so, because it was not greatly affected.

But his defence would be that Parliamentary Service had approved everything.

Parliamentary Service general manager Joel George refused to comment, saying it was only a draft report.

He would not say what value of advertising it approved for parties or individual MPs in the three months before the election on September 17 last year.

Therefore, it is not possible to say whether the expenditure might have tipped the parties or individuals over their statutory spending limits.

The Auditor-General has sought copies of all parliamentary funded expenditure within three months of the election - the starting point under the Electoral Act from when expenditure is defined as election spending.

But parliamentary rules about the advertising's content apply whether or not it falls within the three months.

The rules prohibit funding material "for the purpose of supporting the election of any person or the casting of a party vote for any political party."

The Green Party has been a regular user of the funds, and not just in its party newsletter; one of its many pamphlets calls for a "PowerShift to a Green Energy Future", and says: "To lead the way, a Green Government would" [it then lists nine key energy policies].

National was a regular user of such funds under past leaders, though Don Brash has been more circumspect.

Yesterday he disputed Helen Cark's claim that the Auditor-General was changing the rules after the referee had blown the whistle.

"At last it looks like the country has found a referee who will stand up to her and say the rules are the rules - the Auditor-General."

Labour's $446,000 pledge card is likely to be the highest item of expenditure that the Auditor-General will deem unlawful.


FROM THE PUBLIC PURSE

* Bill English's campaign against the Government's foreshore legislation.

* Green Party energy pamphlet.

* NZ First's foreshore poster used last election.

* Act's yellow bus.