Audrey Young: On a tightrope between the legal and the political

Speaker Margaret Wilson has a chance today to provide a way out of the election-spending debacle and to allow all parties to save face.

Auditor-General Kevin Brady is expected to largely maintain his view that millions of dollars of taxpayer funds were unlawfully spent in the three months before last year's election, with a slight downward adjustment to the amounts involved.

He will not recommend any action, having said long ago that it was up to Parliament to come up with the remedies.

But if the Auditor-General is smart, he will acknowledge the damage done to the reputation of politicians generally and accept their pleadings there was no intention to rort the taxpayer.

Margaret Wilson is likely to disagree with the Auditor-General's findings that the expenditure was unlawful, citing inconsistency in the application of spending rules from election to election.

She is also likely to defend the reputations of MPs against the perception they had their sticky fingers in the till.

But she would also be advised to acknowledge and condemn the attacks on the integrity of the Auditor-General by some leaders - without having to single out Prime Minister Helen Clark or United Future leader Peter Dunne.

Being a former law professor, her instincts will be to take an entirely legalistic approach to the Auditor-General's report, which would be unwise.

If she is politically smart, she will also recognise the reputation of Parliament will be damaged if she is seen to take no action on the finding of the watchdog of the public purse.

Parties are unlikely to be directed to pay back any money but she could apply some moral persuasion in advising them to make careful political judgments when weighing up whether to reimburse the Parliamentary Service. Labour will feel compelled to repay at least the cost of its $447,000 pledge card.

While not agreeing with the Auditor-General's findings, the Speaker could recommend validating legislation as a way of accepting his findings of unlawful expenditure, a measure Labour insisted early on would be necessary.

Then having blamed the whole sorry situation on the state of the rules and the difficulties for Parliamentary Service in interpreting them, she will turn the spotlight on all spending rules for all parliamentary business and do what all politicians do whenever they are in a fix - order a big review.