KEY POINTS:
Legislation that would allow Labour and other parties to use taxpayer funds for pledge card-type campaigns at the next election was tabled in Parliament yesterday.
The bill, which National opposes, extends the interim definition of "electioneering" - the issue at the heart of Auditor-General Kevin Brady's report last year ruling $1.17 million of parties' 2005 election advertising illegal.
Mr Brady, based on Crown Law advice, took a wider interpretation of electioneering than most MPs or the Parliamentary Service, which administers their funding.
Under the law parties are not allowed to spend their taxpayer funding on electioneering - it should instead be used for parliamentary business and explaining policy.
Because of the problems raised by Mr Brady's report, Parliament passed legislation validating parties' 2005 spending and putting in place - until the end of this year - a narrower definition of electioneering.
That restricted the definition of electioneering to explicitly asking the public for their vote or a financial contribution.
A spokesman for Leader of the House Michael Cullen said the new legislation would extend the life of that definition, ensuring parties had certainty going into the election.
He said all parties had been consulted on the bill.
But National's shadow leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, said his party would oppose the legislation, which would allow Labour to run another pledge-card campaign from its taxpayer funding.
It would also allow National - the largest recipient of taxpayer funding - to run similar campaigns.
But Mr Brownlee said National was against the bill in principle because it gave a huge advantage to incumbent MPs andparties.
He said it was particularly galling that the Government appeared to be liberalising the rules for party spending when it was moving to clamp down on all other groups' election spending through the Electoral Finance Bill.
Dr Cullen's spokesman said the suggestion of extending the current rules had come from the National Party after agreement could not be reached between parties on a new set of rules.
However, Mr Brownlee disputed that National had suggested it.
Dr Cullen's spokesman said the first reading of the bill would possibly be on Thursday.
Last month Speaker Margaret Wilson released a set of spending rules for MPs.
The rules, which come into effect at the start of next month, are based on the narrower definition of electioneering.
- NZPA
