KEY POINTS:
Inland Revenue canned a KiwiSaver brochure because of fears it would be used for electioneering, despite at the time saying it was pulled for commercial reasons.
National Party deputy leader Bill English tabled IRD emails in Parliament yesterday that showed the brochures were pulled because they were deemed
to be to political.
"I remain concerned that in the current environment it [the KiwiSaver brochure] leans too far towards the promotional," one IRD adviser said in an email.
In response to questions from the media, the IRD decided to say it was producing material as usual and to not reveal the reasons it had canned the brochure.
"I think it probably does add to the 'business as usual' value to say that we had planned a wide flier but pulled back because we made a commercial decision that it was not warranted because of the high uptake," the email said.
The correspondence was in the wake of Labour Party president Mike Williams endorsing a suggestion from party members that they use departmental material to campaign for votes.
He was rebuked by Prime Minister Helen Clark and withdrew the endorsement, saying he was confused at the time.
Mr English said the IRD should come clean and release the scrapped brochure.
One email said: "We should be even more wary about producing material such as the household flier when we know that the Opposition will be scrutinising all such activity extremely closely.
"In my view we should pull back on all such information programmes until after the election."
The IRD also put in systems to monitor unusual requests for large amounts of material from MPs' offices.
The Electoral Finance Act also came up in select committee hearings yesterday.
Solicitor-General David Collins, QC, told MPs that advice and legal action concerning the act had created a significant workload for the Crown Law Office.
This was due to departments taking a cautious approach and seeking advice on the law and whether they would be breaching it.
The office was also involved in two court cases, and another was to begin shortly. Dr Collins said he was also aware of a number of other upcoming legal actions
Justice Minister Annette King was also quizzed about why the Electoral Commission was taking so long to respond to a request for rulings on whether material breached the legislation.
Ms King said the commission was an independent body and questions should be put to it.
She said there had been a request for more funding but as far as she was aware the commission had adequate resources.
An IRD spokesman said that it was its job to keep people informed about their obligations and their entitlements.
"Inland Revenue outlined the information campaign to the Office of the Auditor-General, the Crown Law Office and the State Services Commission to ensure they are in line with laws and guidelines. The agencies had no concerns," the spokesman said.
"We had originally planned for a KiwiSaver information leaflet to go to all households but given the high uptake of KiwiSaver we decided earlier that it did not need to go so widely."
- NZPA
