Richard Prebble: Long arm of Auditor-General's spending law

I have been named and shamed by the Auditor-General as one of the MPs who used taxpayers' money to finance his election. I was not even standing, but apparently I spent taxpayers' money on my non-existent campaign. I hasten to assure you that I am repaying the $192 that the Auditor-General says I owe.

I sympathise with MPs who say they did not know that what they were doing was against the rules. I did not even know I was running for election.

The Auditor-General says that a newspaper advertisement advising that I was to address a meeting, before any election was announced, was campaigning. I very much doubt that my speech won over any votes.

I sympathise with those Labour MPs whose pay is to be docked by the caucus. The average backbencher had no say in Helen Clark's decision to spend $430,000 on the pledge card.

The Solicitor-General has examined High Court rulings, including Winston Peters' case over spending on the Tauranga election and determined that if my advertisement had said, "come and hear Richard Prebble criticise government policy", that would have been OK. But as the advertisement said "and hear our alternative policy", it was campaigning. [The wags will say this explains why National did not offend - they had no policy].

The pledge card broke what the MPs thought were the rules. Even Labour's allies, New Zealand First and United Future have not defended it. I am shocked that MPs thought they could take out newspaper advertisements, paid for by the taxpayer, a week before the election and then claim it as parliamentary business.

There are a lot of unhappy Labour MPs. Many believe that their pre-campaign publicity, while Parliament was meeting, was legitimate.

National is just lucky that it did not spend its multimillion dollar funding on newspaper advertisements.

The parliamentary commission questioned Clark's pledge card and the PM's office insisted that it be paid for.

It seems nuts to me that MPs can spend taxpayer money criticising policy but not on saying what their alternative is. The rules will have to be changed.

But I do not agree that the Government has the right to use its illegality as a reason to introduce taxpayer funding of political parties. To spend your money promoting policies you oppose is wrong.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY