KEY POINTS:
Labour chief of staff Heather Simpson met privately with counterparts from other parties this week to try to get agreement on parliamentary rules for election spending by MPs, but failed.
National is digging in its toes.
It is insisting that MPs' advertising spending rules cannot be separated from the laws for everyone being proposed under the controversial Election Finance Bill before Parliament.
Other parties are saying they are two issues.
National Deputy leader Bill English is concerned that different definitions mean MPs will operate under different laws to other candidates. He says MPs will be allowed to spend a lot more liberally, if it is from the parliamentary budget, than candidates spending their own money and that gives MPs an unfair advantage.
"It never occurred to us that they would have a drift-net provision for the public and free-for-all for the politicians," Mr English said.
The Election Finance Bill gives MPs and political parties immunity if they are spending from the taxpayer-funded parliamentary budget.
That is a major departure from the present situation as, at present, MPs not only have to comply with Parliament's spending rules but are also subject to the Electoral Act.
Under the proposed law, parliamentary spending is immune and the Chief Electoral Officer or the Electoral Commission would not be able to include any parliamentary spending as election spending.
"Everyone should have the same rules in the regulated period," Mr English said. "In the past that is what has happened. Whoever spent money from whatever source is governed by the Electoral Act. But [under the bill] if you spend it from public sources you have got much more latitude." Parliament has to decide soon what to do. An act changing its spending rules expires at the end of the year.
The law was rushed through last year after Auditor General Kevin Brady's finding of unlawful spending of taxpayers' money before the 2005 election by most parties. It not only retrospectively validated unlawful spending, but made it clear that anything that did not explicitly seek support for a person or party was lawful.
