Auditor-General Contradicts Clark
Yesterday, the Prime Minister claimed that the Auditor-General had privately given his backing to retrospective legislation to fix up Labour’s pledge card shambles.
Labour has proposed retrospective legislation to validate any illegal spending, but the Greens yesterday said they would not support such a move.
However, Miss Clark today said Mr Brady himself had privately expressed support for that course of action.
“The Auditor-General has said privately to at least one party leader that the appropriate course is for Parliament to validate,” she said on National Radio.
Apparently not. The NZ Herald reports* this morning that Kevin Brady has denied saying any such thing.
In a rare move, Mr Brady yesterday denied Helen Clark’s suggestion that he had privately told an unnamed party leader that this was the course to take.
“I would never say that,” Mr Brady said when contacted by the Herald.
That it’s a “rare move” is presumably what the Prime Minister was relying on when she made her comments. It’s not usually done for the Auditor-General to call political leaders liars but I guess sometimes, when they’re taking your name in vain, you just have to.
And this is not the first time that Helen Clark has talked crap about the Auditor-General that he’s had to correct.
*Interesting side-note. When the story first went up it had the headline “That’s Not True, Auditor-General Says”. It has since changed to “‘No View’ On Law Change”. A grumpy phone call?