Green car will help Labour out of red

The car is valued at $45,000 but Labour got it at a discount.

The Labour Party has bought a "green" car to raffle as part of its marathon fundraising effort to repay the cost of its pledge card and other unlawful advertising.

The party got an undisclosed discount on the $45,000 Toyota Prius and the maximum it could raise legally is $180,000, said president Mike Williams last night.

Tickets for the hybrid car will cost $2.

The party's annual conference opens in Rotorua today and raffle books will be sent to branches as part of the drive to raise $824,524.

That is the amount Auditor-General Kevin Brady found Parliament had spent unlawfully on Labour's advertising at the last election.

The party has pledged to repay the money by next June, the end of the financial year.

Mr Williams said he would not give running updates of how much had been raised, but did say that half of the total had been pledged by the caucus.

"That is coming in quite rapidly. I was talking to Pete Hodgson's wife over the weekend and she said he's going to the bank next week."

He expected the bulk of the money to be in before Christmas.

It is understood that the Labour caucus was not keen for Mr Williams to keep running tallies publicly, drawing attention to the unpaid amount and putting pressure on it to pay quickly.

Mr Williams' campaign to raise the other half of the fund is called "the Big Whip Around" but despite the whimsical name, he is still bitter about the Auditor-General's findings.

He said he had been Labour's campaign manager since 1999 and his view of what was an attributable election expense under the Electoral Act had not changed.

He accused Chief Electoral Officer David Henry of changing the rules two weeks before the last election.

That was when Mr Henry wrote to party secretary Mike Smith saying he thought the card should be declared an attributable election expense.

"We rejected it. We don't believe you can change the rules two weeks before an election."

Mr Williams is expected to use his speech tonight to accuse the news media of bias in their reporting of election spending.