Clark Talking Rubbish on ZB
Helen Clark was on Paul Holmes’ programme this morning on Newstalk ZB, and there a couple of things that need to be corrected.
First up Clark claims that “that spending is allocated to parties to promote their policies.” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That spending is allocated to parties to help them run their parliamentary offices - paper clips, not propaganda.
The Members’ Handbook of Services explicitly states that “‘Parliamentary business’ does not include party political, promotional or electioneering material for the purpose of supporting the election of any person.” The upcoming Auditor-General’s report is expected to reiterate this.
That money is for running the office, not running for office.
Clark also claims that it’s “too late” to be told now that the spending was illegal because the Parliamentary Service “deemed it to be a proper expense.” Suffice it to say here that the Parliamentary Service is also a defendant in this case.
She has a crack at National for spending all their money at the start of the campaign and says that “others budgeted to spend their money in a more even flow.” Just a small nit-pick here. They didn’t budget to spend their money they budgeted to spend public money, which is illegal, which is the whole point.
Clark whines several times that calling the spending illegal is “changing the rules after the event”. Given that the rules for this spending are laid out explicitly as noted above and that the rules governing appropriation of public money were set down in 1688 this is pretty hard to swallow. If three hundred years warning isn’t enough we have to wonder if she thinks that any rules apply to her. Time for a wake-up call.
August 7th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
She also whined on that the Nats were so awash with EB and other anonymous cash that they spent their parliamentary allocation early (i.e. before the 90 days kicked in).
Diary Note1: Don’t ever … ever let the facts get in the way of a good story
Diary Note 2: Keep repeating the lie even when it is proven to be one. Some idiot might believe you
August 7th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Greens now repeating the mantra “they are changing the rules on us”. The ranks are closing. Watch for the release of a new Govt policy on GE
August 7th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Not just the Greens - Rodney’s claiming that too.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Look at that, there’s some kind of crazy press release about this very issue!
August 8th, 2006 at 1:04 am
Well spotted.
August 9th, 2006 at 8:04 am
The allocation can be spent on ‘communicating to the electorate members views on issues of the day’ - whether the pledge card was a current issue or one that was made an issue by issuing it is the issue, I guess.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:58 am
[…] A few days ago, Clark was whining that the Auditor-General was “changing the rules after the event”. (See my original post.) I pointed out at the time that he was doing no such thing. “Changing the rules after the event” is, however, something Labour is quite adept at when it benefits their own. When Harry Duynhoven broke the electoral rules in 2003 his seat should have been declared vacant. Since Labour ministers can do no wrong, retrospective legislation was passed and the constitutional niceties such as a by-election were brushed aside. […]
August 17th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
You will have fun including in the next round that Helen Clarks clear ignorance of the law may be a sign of her weakness as a politician but it does not constitute an excuse. Even the most sympathetic of judges would have difficulty in agreeing that a Prime Minister who does not understand the law after the fact and makes such a dreadful error ( for the PR benefit) did not understand the law in the first place and thus is more likely to have breached it.