Looming report puts focus on parties' finances

Andrew Little

Auditor General Kevin Brady will report to Parliament next Thursday on election spending, sharpening the focus of parties on how they will handle a finding of unlawful expenditure.

The New Zealand First Party is the most likely to launch a legal challenge to such a finding but will pay back any money first, a senior party figure indicated yesterday.

The Herald understands the Green Party will divide up any amount among its six MPs.

National and the Maori Party have already paid back $10,000 and $53 respectively and Act has signalled it will pay back about $16,000.

United Future MPs may face one of the heaviest debts, if it chooses to repay the money. It has about $40,000 originally identified as unlawful and only three MPs.

Labour is faced with the biggest problem, with $800,000 identified in the original report and, with a caucus of 50 MPs, the biggest internal differences on what to do about it.

MPs' salaries are already tithed at 4 per cent - an ordinary MP pays $90 a week to the party from a salary of $118,000; a Cabinet minister pays $166 a week from a salary of $216,000; and the Prime Minister pays $266 a week from her $347,000 salary.

MPs and party members are bracing themselves for a huge fundraising drive - which is already being presented as a unifying exercise.

The secretary of Labour's largest union affiliate, Andrew Little of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, said assistance for the party was unlikely to come from the official union organisation.

"It will be those who are members of the party or who are otherwise connected with the party, it won't be a union fundraising activity."

He believed wealthy supporters of Labour and MPs themselves would be prevailed upon to help most.

"The MPs themselves will be levied pretty steeply to assist."

But a lot would depend on the amount. "It will take a lot more wine auctions to raise $800,000 than a couple of hundred thousand."

New Zealand First party president Dail Jones told the Herald that the party was in a healthy enough position to repay money, though he wasn't sure what amount might be involved.

Mr Jones said he had told leader Winston Peters that the party had the funds to pay back money "and I think it's fair to say it cheered him up a lot".

Mr Jones said yesterday that if the party wanted to dispute expenditure "we may take the attitude of 'let's just pay it' and go to court afterwards and prove we were right and get the money back".

He said that "as a politician you're mud".

"Everyone hates you. If this report comes out and says we owe X thousand dollars, everyone finds us guilty ... even though there's no court of law, no hearing. So the best way is to pay up and go to court, if we want to, and say we shouldn't have to repay this amount."

Mr Brady, an independent officer of Parliament, announced yesterday that he would report to Parliament next week in his Controller function.

That means he has invoked his powers under the Public Finance Act to require the minister responsible for unlawful expenditure - Speaker Margaret Wilson in this case - to respond to his report, and state what she will do about it.

She has 20 days to report.

But Margaret Wilson will respond on the same day, next Thursday.

It is likely that she already has the report and will be studying it with advice from the Office of the Clerk in Parliament and her private legal counsel, Jack Hodder.

She does not have to accept the Auditor General's report and may simply state why she believes there has been no breach of the law.