KEY POINTS:
The Starship Foundation won't return the $158,000 given to it by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters unless the gift was unlawful.
And there is no suggestion that that is the case.
Mr Peters gave the hospital a cheque on Wednesday instead of repaying the Parliamentary Service the money that Auditor-General Kevin Brady found the party spent unlawfully in the 2005 election.
All other parties that have repaid their share of the $1.2 million identified by Mr Brady have given the money to the Parliamentary Service, the bureaucracy that administers Parliament and that wrongly paid out on party advertising deemed later to be electioneering.
Some of Mr Peters' critics say he should have done the same.
The Greens' co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, said everyone would be happy to see the Starship hospital get money.
"But this is not a generous gesture by New Zealand First to Starship hospital, this is a generous donation by the taxpayers to Starship hospital and let's not be confused about that," she told Radio New Zealand.
Former Starship Foundation board member Wayne Brown welcomed the donation but agreed that New Zealand First still owed the taxpayer $158,000.
"Otherwise I may as well send my tax to Starship. I'd rather send it there than to the Government," said Mr Brown, who stepped down this year as the Auckland District Health Board and is now Mayor of the Far North.
Act leader Rodney Hide said Mr Peters was grandstanding and the stunt was calculated to win public sympathy.
But Starship Foundation chief executive Andrew Young said the foundation was distancing itself entirely from the politics of it.
"This is a donation that Winston dropped off personally."
Mr Young believed the public saw it as a wonderful donation and that the Starship needed the money - "and we do".
If there were anything illegal in receiving the money, the matter would go straight to the board and the cash would be returned promptly.
Mr Brady identified the unlawful election spending in a report last year.
Parliament passed retrospective legislation to validate the expenditure and that meant there was no legal obligation to repay the money.
But all parties agreed to, the last of them NZ First when Mr Peters announced at his party conference in October that it would do so.
The party, however, does not accept Mr Brady's findings and believes repaying the money to the Parliamentary Service would reinforce the notion it did something wrong.
National leader John Key said he would leave it to the public to judge whether Mr Peters had taken the right course of action.
- additional reporting: NZPA
