National amendment to remove exemption for MPs

One of the hopefully many amendments National will be putting up to the Electoral Finance Bill is to remove the clause which will exempt MPs taxpayer budgets from being counted as election expenses.

Under the bill, as drafted, a pamphlet or newspaper advertisement promoting their policy commitments run by a party just before the election would count as an election expense, but if they fund it from their parliamentary budget then it would almost certainly be exempt – even though the wording would be identical.

This drives a stake through the integrity of electoral law as even resembling a level playing field.

That clause will allow the Labour Parliamentary Party to spend $1 to $2 million in the final week of the election, and not have one cent of it count as an election expense.