Bill English MP
National Party Deputy Leader

8 April 2008

King says one copy of ‘illegal’ brochure to be included in cap

National Party Deputy Leader Bill English says Annette King has told Parliament that Labour will include the 20 cent cost of one Labour Party brochure in its election spending after the Electoral Commission ruled it was an election ad.

“It stretches credibility to suggest that Labour went to all the trouble of publishing this election brochure so it could distribute only one copy. But because Annette King said it in Parliament, she must be taken at her word.

“Frankly, I do not know if the public will believe that. Furthermore, in a bid to distance itself from the anti-National parallel campaigns being planned by affiliated unions, Labour has purged evidence of its close relationship with those unions from its website.

“Labour now appears to support the view that groups involved in the administration of a political party can legally register and be allowed to run parallel political attack campaigns – yet at the same time it is trying to disguise its own close links with some of those groups.”

Mr English says Labour is so embarrassed to have become the first party to breach its own self-serving electoral rules that it has produced material from National’s 2005 archives as an example of supposedly illegal election advertising.

“This is truly desperate stuff. The reality is an arrogant Labour Party has been caught out breaking its own rules and it doesn’t like it.

“Labour’s punitive law intentionally set out to curb its critics and screw the scrum for the 2008 election. In the past week that stark reality has been laid in front of New Zealanders.”

For instance:

- Labour won't be prosecuted for breaking the rules but the next offender will be.

- Unions represented on Labour’s ruling council can spend up to $120,000 on anti-National parallel campaigns.

- Authorities haven't investigated potentially illegal billboards put up by Labour support parties the Greens and New Zealand First.

“While everyone else is paralysed because of the legal confusion, there is a parade of taxpayer-funded ads on TV every night promoting Labour’s policies. This is evidence that Labour's anti-democratic law is working just as it intended.”

ENDS

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