Acting Solicitor-General’s Letter
Front page on the NZ Herald this morning is the story Official Contradicts MPs on Election Costs.
A legal letter from the Acting Solicitor-General contradicts political parties’ claims that they had approval for taxpayer-funded election spending.
…Labour leader and Prime Minister Helen Clark says the issue is essentially a dispute between the Parliamentary Service and the Auditor General.
The letter basically says two things. Firstly, that the Attorney-General should not be being sued in respect of the Parliamentary Service. This is immaterial - it all comes back to Crown Law anyway. Secondly, that the Parliamentary Service simply adminsiters payments and has no power to vet what it’s paying for.
Great to see the defendants squabbling amongst themselves.
[UPDATE 22/08: Link to the letter removed.]
Presumably, if the Parliamentary Service just rubber stamps any cheques they get, you could bill them for anything at all - like tiling your house, thus avoiding the temptation to do it under the table.
August 20th, 2006 at 12:09 am
So what happens now Bernard ?
With Parliament trying to legislate and make the wrongdoing right, are you still going ahead with your case ?
Now that the Statement of Defence has been lodged, is the judicial conference taking place ?
August 20th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
We’re still waiting from the Statement of Defence from Crown Law on behalf of the Parliamentary Service. Once that’s in there’ll be another judicial conference and I’ll know more about the rest of the proceedings after that.
Rest assured that the case is most certainly still going ahead.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:51 am
[…] The letter from the Acting Solicitor-General that caused last Friday’s Herald headline has been removed from this site. […]