Editorial: Why Labour must repay taxpayers

Opinion

Labour, in league with lesser parties in Parliament, appears determined to do itself a lasting dishonour by retrospectively validating its use of state funds to produce its election pledge card. The public has already seen this response for what it is: a disgraceful device to save the party a bill for $446,000.

The public has heard the Prime Minister's explanation - that the pledge card was an expense permitted by the Parliamentary Service Commission and for the Auditor-General to make a contrary ruling now would be akin to "a referee changing the rules after the game". The public has listened and the party's plight does not sound any different from that of taxpayers who have claimed deductions on the best available advice and it turns out on legal scrutiny that they have to pay the money back.

If Labour and a number of small parties force legislation through Parliament to validate this sort of spending retrospectively, it stands to be as memorable as the seven-minute passage of members' superannuation enrichment some years ago. Incidents such as these remain in memory for a lifetime, to be recalled whenever it is claimed that politicians are a self-serving breed.

Helen Clark should realise the public does not care what the Parliamentary Service Commission may have approved in the past. The Auditor-General is plainly right. The pledge card has been a very good electoral device, but to claim that it is the kind of information the public should pay for is stretching credibility beyond breaking point.

It may be hard to write a cast-iron definition of what is policy information and what is election advertising but it is rather like the difference between art and pornography. It may be hard to define but everyone knows the difference when they see it.

The pledge cards, which Labour has issued for every election since 1999, contain a set of more or less specific policies the Prime Minister promises to fulfil if the party is given another term in power. The policies are concise and modest enough to be carried out with reasonable certainty. As election material goes, the card is clear and informative, but it is election material - circulated for no other purpose.

Sophists will say that every piece of information published by a political party has the intended purpose of helping it win the next election, but unless an election is looming, party material tends to be calmer, more detailed and discursive, and directed towards people with a particular legitimate interest in an issue or legislative proposal. That is the sort of information parties receive public money to provide. Plain pitches at election time are supposed to come from a party's donated funds.

The Auditor-General is not alone in finding Labour's pledge card a misuse of the public fund. The Electoral Commission believed the card took the party over the permitted spending limit, and the Solicitor-General, whose opinion was cited by the Auditor-General, believes the spending on the card not only breached Parliament's rules but was unlawful.

The rules were set after the last election, which destroys Labour's claim that this spending goes back too far for any party to be able to pay it back. The Government's real concern is that the party simply cannot pay the bill; it gives itself away with an attempt by some ministers to turn the case into an argument for full public funding of election campaigns. That would be the ultimate in self service. The party should have recognised the pledge card for what it plainly was. Its only honorable course now is to raise the funds and pay the bill.