Ministerial spending records to be released

Ministers who whipped out the work card for their expenses when they shouldn't have will face the music tomorrow when spending records are made public.

Thousands of documents which took officials four months to gather will show what ministers used their credit cards for during the six years Labour was in office, and for the current Government, are to be released under the Official Information Act.

Internal Affairs spokesman Allen Walley told NZPA the cost of the release was in excess of $50,000 and three staff had worked full-time on it since requests came in February, when the first release of credit card records for the National Government were made public.

The information had to be accessed, copied, collated and have privacy checks done.

About 14 sets of seven cartons of documents - there are 7000 individual documents - are being delivered to Parliamentary press gallery journalists at 9am.

The release will cover from April 2003 until February this year, taking in the whole of the Labour Government's last term in office.

Prime Minister John Key is in charge of Ministerial Services but has intentionally kept out of the loop about the expenses.

"I didn't want to be in a position where I was accused of having some forerunning or inside information about what was in those reports. I thought it was better just to stay away from it," he told reporters today.

After the first release of statements Phil Heatley resigned in February from Cabinet after admitting he misused his credit card.

However he was reinstated after an Auditor-General's inquiry found that while he spent $1402 of taxpayers' money wrongly he did not intentionally break the rules.

The Auditor-General is currently working on a wider report about expenses.

Mr Key was asked today if he thought Labour had anything to worry about.

"They've had nine years of being in office. They were very critical of us when Phil Heatley had his minor misdemeanour, so one assumes that if they are going to be that critical their records are going to be squeaky clean."

NZPA understands any serious breaches or repeat rule breakers within Labour ranks would be treated seriously and individuals could expect a call from senior people in the party.

Mr Key said the "general feedback" he had from Ministerial Services was that his Government ran a tighter ship over expenses.

"We'd tightened up on things, we were much more cautious, the whole issue of expenses is much more in the public domain these days, and of course I opened up the review of expenses in conjunction with the Speaker as a new level of transparency in this Government."

Labour declined to comment today but had already received the files to prepare for the public release tomorrow.

Mr Walley said a set of documents had been given to both Labour and National and of 21 former ministers who were no longer MPs, 11 had requested their information.

- NZPA