Pledge Card spending under Auditor-General's scrutiny

You've probably already seen the Sunday Star story that has all parliamentary parties in a spin:

Election ad spending was illegal, report finds
By IRENE CHAPPLE

Political parties could be forced to pay back thousands of taxpayer dollars after a confidential legal report found the money was illegally spent on advertising during the election campaign.

The finding seems highly likely to have repercussions for Labour's controversial $446,000 "pledge card" and brochure spend, which triggered a complaint to police.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's adviser Heather Simpson narrowly escaped prosecution over the pledge cards when police found prima facie evidence that a case could be made against her. However, they decided it would be unfair to single her out because other parties also used parliamentary funds for advertising.

The pledge cards, paid for out of parliamentary services money, would have taken Labour over its spending limit had they had been included as election expenses...

It's no surprise that all parliamentary parties are bleating about this report, since all those parties have been found to have used taxpayers' money to help buy their way back into parliament. Money allocated by Parliamentary Services to run their offices was used instead to run for office. That money should be paid back. It wasn't theirs to spend on chasing votes.

That all parliamentary parties did the same thing shows the total disregard right across the spectrum for the people who pay their wages, and is no excuse for misappropriating public monies -- and as Irene Chapple is surely aware, that was not the reason police decided not to prosecute Heather Simpson. David Farrar outlines in 'The Free Radical' what the reasons were, all of which I'm sure Chapple is aware of.

And I'm sure she's also aware of Bernard Darnton's impending court action against Helen Clark for her overspending on the Pledge Card, so why she chose not to include that in this story is another mystery.

Yes, the Pledge Cards would have taken Labour over its spending limit had they been included as election expenses. As David Farrar's Election Spending Archives make clear, Labour knew that before the election that they should have been included in their election spending because the Electoral Commission confirmed that in writing to the Labour Party. In fact the Electoral Commission only backed off just before the election when the Labour Party promised the Electoral Commission they would be included, only resiling on this cynical promise after the election.

Unlike her lawyers in the related case of Darnton v Clark, Helen Clark has responded to the report -- which she claims nonetheless not to have read -- by saying that the Auditor-General is changing the rules of the game after the final whistle has been blown.

That is a lie.

Labour knew the rules of the game all the way through. The Electoral Commission told them the Pledge Card spending must be included. They responded by lying about their intentions. And they're lying now to try and avert the mess their original lying has brought them.

I look foward to those lies being exposed in court sometime not too far away. Keep watching DarntonVsClark for progress.

UPDATE: Pledge Card litigant Bernard Darnton has issued a press release on the AG's report:

Lower Hutt businessman and Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton today accused Helen Clark of lying to the public over her comments on the Auditor-General's report on election advertising.

Read it all at Scoop: Clark's Pledge Card Lies

LINKS: DarntonVsClark website
Election Spending Archives - Kiwiblog (David Farrar), temporarily offline
Free Radical 71: The Stolen Election

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Darnton_V_Clark

PIC CREDIT: Labour's real seven-point pledge card - Dave Gee