How much did Labour really overspend?

The Auditor-General had to work out what advertisements by parliamentary parties were legal and authorised as having a parliamentary purpose. Now the way he did this is to use the Electoral Act definition of “election activity” as the test for excluding it from having a parliamentary purpose.

Now what this means is that not only should Labour’s pledge card have been included in Labour’s election return, so should have a further $380,000 of expenditure (assuming the Electoral Commission agrees with the Auditor-General that the expenditure was also electioneering under the Act).

This shows a key flaw in the Electoral Act – there is no mechanism to reliably check that a party has not missed out items on their expenses return, which should be included.

Anyway Labour spent $2,351,788 against their limit of $2,380,000. But then add on the $824,524 of electioneering paid for by the taxpayer, and you find they have exceeded their limit by a massive $796,312. That is a 33.5% over-spend.

Incidentally, before you ask, even if you include National’s GST error (legally it does not count as an electoral expense as it is funded under the Broadcasting Act, not the Electoral Act) and National’s $11,912 of (refunded) taxpayer funds, their total expenditure is a miniscule 0.55% over the limit.

So did the over-spending affect the election result? Was it a stolen election?

One way to look at it is whether the additional $796,312 (worth remembering that Labour’s spending limit and broadcasting allocation were $340,000 higher than National, so in fact they spent $1.12 million more than National) was responsible for that 2% margin. Did it get 22,753 people to vote Labour instead of National? Well if the overspend was targeted that is $35 per vote.

The other way to look at it, is what would have happened if National had broken the rules to the same extent as Labour, and could have spent an extra $800,000. My God that would pay for a hell of a lot of billboards and taxathon pamphlets etc etc.

Either way you look at it, it is near impossible to dismiss the possibility, that the $796,312 of excess advertising materially affected the election result. A 33% overspend is not trivial – it is enormous, and at least half was deliberate and done in contravention of three official warnings prior to the election.