Darnton vs Clark

The Green Party has paid back the $87,082 of misspending that they were responsible for in the Auditor-General’s report.

“While we still believe that our spending was inside the rules as they were generally agreed to at the time, we want to start the new year with a clean slate and get on with the much more important work that Parliament should be focussing its attention on,” Ms Fitzsimons says.

It is important to note that the Green Party will not have breached its spending cap under the Electoral Act even if this amount is included in our total election expenditure.

Not everyone can say that, can they. And, as pointed out at Not PC, there’s still $1,054,325 to come, mostly from the ringleaders of the rort.

Labout party president Mike Williams is preparing the ground for Labour to break its promise to repay the public money they stole to pay for their pledge cards.

Labour president Mike Williams said yesterday that the party was still raising funds to pay the money by the end of June. But that could be reassessed if NZ First was successful.

“If the decision of the Auditor-General is turned over by a NZ First action, we will reconsider the matter.

“We haven’t paid anything back yet because we haven’t got it yet. We are over halfway there but we have got a lot of fundraising to do.”

The NZ Herald article suggests that Labour MPs have been urging NZ First to take this legal action. Now it should go without saying that Labour MPs were given an opportunity to have the legality of this spending decided in the High Court by me and they chose to scuttle that by rushing through retrospective legislation to kill the case the week before they were due in court.

And then, to appease the overwhelming majority of the public who demanded that they pay back the money they stole, they promised to repay the money. Now that the noise has died down, the promise to repay has evaporated. These are the disgusting people who claim to represent you.

UPDATE (Lunchtime): In a major backpedal, Mike Williams has just announced that Labour will pay back the stolen cash regardless of the outcome of NZ First’s court case. They must have done a quick focus group and found out that people still cared.

He earlier told the Herald that his party might reconsider the matter if a New Zealand First attempt to overturn the ruling by the Auditor-General was successful.

That comment is understood to have infuriated Prime Minister Helen Clark.

This must really stick in the throat of Williams who, as party president, would have known that the spending was illegal and would surely have urged Helen Clark and Heather Simpson not to go ahead with their rort.