Darnton vs Clark

Just four weeks after legislating their way out the Public Finance Act scot-free, they’re at it again.

Legal advice given to Radio New Zealand (Newswire, via Not PC) indicates that the government may have breached the Public Finance Act when giving Fletcher Construction the contract to build the concrete platform for the Auckland waterfront stadium.

Government procurement rules require that contracts go to tender when they have a value of more than $50,000. The platform deal is worth a hundred million dollars. Luckily there’s no need for openness because Trev knows best.

We didn’t overthrow these contemptible bastards when they misappropriated a million dollars. What are we going to do when there’s a billion on the table?

I hope a few Labour supporters own Fletchers shares. They could use their windfall to pay Labour’s outstanding election debts.

Earlier this week I appeared on ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint program. (The interview was recorded a couple of weeks ago.) The segment was called “Electioneering NZ Style“. Listen online or download the MP3 (24 MB). The programme’s about an hour long - my interview starts at 23:20 and runs until 33:40.

I assume that for slagging off the Labour Party overseas I’ll get charged with treason.

In the wake of the resounding success of his online petition to the Governor-General, Blair Mulholland is organising a citizen initiated referendum (CIR) petition.

The petition questions reads, “SHOULD Parliament outlaw any public expenditure supporting the election of individual candidates or political parties?”

If 10% of the people on the electoral roll sign the petition it will force a (non-binding) referendum on the question at the next election. To sign up to receive copies of the petition once the wording has been approved, go to www.thepetition.co.nz.

I’m not usually one to advertise other political parties, but this is good… (Scroll right.)

Apparently, this has been put up at Auckland and Christchurch airports but Wellington didn’t have the stones.

UPDATE (2/11/06): There’s a story about this in the Dom Post this morning. The print edition (p A2) has a full-page-width colour reproduction of the advertisement. There’s a suggestion in the story that Wellington Airport declined to allow the ad because of the pending decision by Pete Hodgson on the Qantas/Air New Zealand codeshare deal which could cut airport profits. If that is the case (and it may just be a journo interviewing his typewriter) then the chilling effect seems to have backfired.

There’s a very useful article on Public Address, In Praise of the Auditor-General, by Jim Evans, Emeritus Professor of Law at Auckland University. The main focus of his discussion is the difference between someone’s actions as a member of Parliament and their actions as a candidate that blows away much of the fog that the Clark government has generated over this issue.

Let me return briefly to the retrospective legislation. If any Member of Parliament or party disagreed with the Auditor-General’s report it was open to them to test the issue in the courts.

Indeed they were invited to!

That the Labour Party promoted, and other parties supported, retrospective legislation to validate expenditure the Auditor-General had held unlawful was appalling.

But the alternative was to was to sort it out in a courtroom without lies, mudslinging, and obfuscation, and clearly Labour just couldn’t work in such an open, honest environment.