Labour wants to renege on pledge card repayment

Labour is set to renege on its commitment to repay the $800,000 it owes the taxpayer. It will refuse to pay if NZ First suceeds in legal action. Hence they are urging NZ First to take legal action.

To understand the extent of this hypocrisy one has to be reminded of Darnton v Clark. This was a lawsuit filed around nine months ago which sought a High Court declaration that the pldge card expenditure was illegal and not an authorised use of Parliamentary Service funds. Labour voted to wipe out this lawsuit (about as constitutionally offensive as one can get is to use your role as an MP to wipe out a lawsuit in which you are personally named as a respondent) through its validating legislation, and refusal to allow an amendment to leave the lawsuit untouched.

So they voted to kill off a lawsuit which would actually have answered the question on whether the Auditor-General was correct or not in his treatment of the pledge card. If Labour had a shred of good faith interest in having a definitive answer, then they would have left the lawsuit alone.

Any sucessful legal action from NZ First, will not mean that the Auditor-General was wrong on everything. The Court for example might find that one pamphlet for NZ First should not have been included. That does not mean Labour’s pledge card is suddenly valid. The AG made decisions on over 100 seperate items of expenditure. One or two may be boundary calls but that in no way means they all are.

If Labour want to avoid paying their $800,000 they they should have voted to not wipe out the Darnton v Clark lawsuit. That would have provided them with the definitive answer. The fact they did vote to wipe it out, suggests that they knew they would lose massively.