Greens Do the Right Thing
The Green Party announced yesterday that they would be paying back anything the Auditor-General says they owe in his final report. More importantly, Jeanette Fitzsimons also said that the Greens would not be supporting any retrospective legislation.
Our decision to pay back any spending eventually found to be outside those rules does not constitute an admission of guilt – merely an acknowledgment that once there is a final legal ruling we will respect it.
As Bernard Robertson said in this month’s Law Journal editorial,
If a government can knowingly and deliberately break the law and then ram through retrospective validating legislation then it can do anything. We have a government composed of people who simply do not recognise the concept of government under law.
Well done to the Greens for standing up against this abuse of power.