MP spending rules likely to be revised

Speaker Margaret Wilson is foreshadowing a rewrite of Parliament's funding rules after the Auditor-General's report on election spending is delivered next week.

She believes the definition of what constitutes "parliamentary business" will need to be re-examined not just in terms of how it applies before an election, but for the entire parliamentary term.

That would include day-to-day travel, accommodation and operational expenses as well as advertising and communications more commonly associated with elections.

She believes that as a consequence of the Auditor-General's recent interpretation of the rules around pre-election spending by MPs, "everything is tainted".

"If you are going to do it for one aspect you may as well do it for the lot, it seems to me, so we can start afresh and everybody knows as clearly as they humanly can what the rules are."

She would want to seek the advice of cross-party MPs on the Parliamentary Service Commission to clarify the spending rules "not only for communication but for everything - just to be squeaky clean".

She did not indicate whether she would prefer to see the rules liberalised to account for the present spending behaviour or tightened and to limit what happens now.

Auditor-General Kevin Brady provisionally found that most parties last election used parliamentary funding on electioneering. It is meant to be restricted to "parliamentary business".

Parliamentary Service and MPs have been loosely applying the rules to allow taxpayer funding for almost anything that does not explicitly seek a vote for a person or a party.

Many MPs have protested that an activity that is acceptable outside the three-month campaign period, for example advertising for a public meeting, was considered unlawful inside it.

Mr Brady's rulings, however, are based on a Solicitor-General's opinion which recognises that the timing of an activity in relation to an election is an essential element of determining whether it is electioneering.

He has also applied a tighter test to the rule that prohibits taxpayer funding "for producing or distributing promotional or electioneering material by mail or other means of communication for the purpose of supporting the election of any person or the casting of a party vote for any political party".

Margaret Wilson, who is responsible for Parliamentary Service, said she did not want to be put in the position of having to decide what activity was technically within the rules and what wasn't "because that's a political judgment".

In an interview with the Herald, Margaret Wilson also confirmed that she had been behind the decision to drop Crown Law as the legal counsel for Parliamentary Service in a legal challenge to taxpayer funding of Labour's $447,000 pledge card last election.

She also described Crown Law's view that Parliamentary Service had no discretion in whether it funded party advertising as "contestable" - that view has been an embarrassment to Labour and other parties because they have sought refuge in the argument that expenditure was approved by Parliamentary Service.

The Speaker said it was not necessarily appropriate for Crown Law, the Government's lawyers, to be representing part of Parliament.