Labour shifts the goalposts

Labour will propose retrospective legislation to validate taxpayer-funded election spending that the Auditor-General is expected to find unlawful.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen said yesterday that he would discuss in Cabinet on Monday the notion of what he called "validating" legislation rather than "retrospective". Retrospective law is usually highly contentious and governments try to avoid what is considered to be sloppy law-making and an admission of failure.

The proposal is expected to lead to wider questions about whether the state should openly fund political parties instead of by stealth or ignorance of the rules.

Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said the party was always "pretty cautious" about retrospective legislation. "It has got to be really well justified - but nor can the auditor's report stand as it is because it is clearly unfair."

She had been told privately that Auditor-General Kevin Brady would be recommending validating legislation. In a draft report, Mr Brady accepted an opinion by the Solicitor- General that much of last year's party spending was unlawful.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has raised the prospect of a legal challenge to the final Brady report. A related case has already been lodged in the High Court at Wellington by the leader of the Libertarianz political party, Bernard Darnton of Lower Hutt.

And any retrospective legislation proposed by Dr Cullen is likely to cover any negative outcome from that case as well.

Mr Darnton is seeking a declaratory judgment that the payment of Labour's pledge card from parliamentary money was unlawful.

Labour MPs are the first respondents and the Parliamentary Service is named as second respondent.

His statement claims there was no statutory authority for the service to pay the $446,000 for the pledge card.

The appropriation to fund the card stated that party and member support was to be used to support the leader's office, research operations, whips' office and members' parliamentary operations. The card did not fit that definition, the claim argues.

Auckland lawyer Alan Dormer, acting for Mr Darnton, said that while the Solicitor-General's opinion was slightly different from his own case it was "very comforting".

In a preliminary judicial meeting over the action, Labour was represented by Hugh Rennie, QC, and the Parliamentary Service by Acting Solicitor-General Cheryl Gwyn.

Mr Dormer said it would be possible to draft legislation to deny his client his day in court.

"Have we really sunk so low that we are going to have political parties ripping off the system and then passing legislation about it just to stop the High Court looking at it."

National is the only party known to oppose the legislation at this stage. Leader Don Brash has been on the case all week but he stepped up his language yesterday.

"Labour has been pinged for something like half a million dollars and the bastards don't want to pay it back," Dr Brash said on Gore's Hokonui Gold radio station yesterday.

"Helen Clark says 'Oh, the rules weren't clear. Let's pass a law making what is illegal legal'. Robert Mugabe [Zimbabwe's president] would have been proud of her."

Dr Cullen said on National Radio that by repaying $10,000 National was "pleading guilty to a very minor offence and hoping to get off on a murder charge".


In the kitty

How parties get public money -

Political parties are allocated funding according to the number of MPs they have.

The money is intended to fund a party's leader's office, research operations, whip's office, and members' parliamentary operations.

The amounts are calculated like this: each party in parliament gets a base amount of $50,000 every year, and then $57,176 for each member of a caucus who isn't a minister - this is known as leadership funding.

An additional $20,000 is also provided annually for each member in a caucus - this is known as party group funding.

The two amounts are bulk funded and parties themselves decide how to spend the money.

Individual MPs are also given money to cover support costs such as postal services, photocopying and advertising.

The annual individual payments are $59,500 for electorate MPs, or $37,900 for list MPs.

There is no cap within the allocations for spending on advertising or publicity.

However, advertising cannot solicit financial support for a political party or candidate at an election.