Shame
June 30th, 2007 at 9:06 am by David FarrarToday is the end of the financial year for Government.
The NZ First Party has not paid back even a single cent of their $157,934 illegal expenditure. Shame on them.
Winston Peters and his party have made excuse after excuse to delay and avoid accountability. They want to talk to lawyers, they want to consider options, someone is overseas etc etc.
United Future have paid about $50,000 of the original $71,867. I have some sympathy for their position as a very small party, but the honourable thing to do would be to borrow the difference from a bank, not leave the debt partially unpaid at the end of the financial year.
No tag for this post.
June 30th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Is the timing of the financial year really that important? It was the date Labour set for themselves – why would/should it apply to others?
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
But this is what politics has come to in the Labour era – just pretend what you didn’t do was wrong, and just by doing that you’ll fool enough people to get by.
It’s a sorry state of affair, that’s for sure.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Yes Labour are masters of delusion , very clever as they have a strong manipulation manifesto. Everyone who challenges them is deemed an obnoxious igmoramus .Winston Peter’s is a political leach who is arrogant and above the law of the land – just like his mentor – Hulun Klark . It was 18 degrees today and I got sun burnt . Go figure ?
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Those pills you take make you more sensitive to sunlight D4J!
Peter’s is a two faced fraud…his w(h)ine box claims lose all validity when viewed along side his fragrant disregard for the AG’s audit. Populist theiving scum.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Graeme – if they were paying interest on the amount, then repayment date would not matter. But in the absence of interest, repayment by the financial year end seems most appropriate.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Only plebes pay interest on Govt money, only plebes loose their jobs for stealing. Don’t forget the retrospective validation, they did nothing wrong!
Vote:July 1st, 2007 at 8:39 am
“Retrospective Validation” covered overspending. But did it cover theft of Taxpayer’s money.
Paying back money that has been over spent during an election, constitutes a breach of the Electoral Act.
Does the Validating Bill over ride the Electoral Act? Does it over ride Crimes Act regarding theft of public money.
Were the Members of Parliament, people in the Service of the Crown, guilty of advantaging themselves to the disadvantage of us taxpayers
by passing laws to protect themselves from the full wrath of the Law/
My view is that they did.
Vote:July 1st, 2007 at 10:58 am
Frank – the validation did not cover overspending – it covered mis-spending, but it categorically has no effect on criminality (indeed, any affect on the criminal liability of any person was excluded from the scope of the law).
You’re kinda right about the paying back of money being illegal, but it’s not actually the Labour Party that breaches that section, but the people who *donated* to its big whip ’round.
Feel free to lay a complaint with the Electoral Commission…
Vote:July 1st, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Graeme: any thoughts on _
The purposes of The Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation Act are to—
(a) validate expenditure under Vote Parliamentary Service that may have been outside the scope or purpose of an appropriation or other enactment;
However this needs to be read in conjunction with Section 6 – Act does not affect criminal liability
Nothing in this Act affects the criminal liability of any person.
So how did this Act come before Parliament?
If it was a private members bill, it would have had to have been drawn out of the hat. it wasn’t.
So who instigated that this Act be drawn up and put before Parliament? Who drew it up? Solicitor-General? Crown Law? It effectively blew the Bernard Darnton v Helen Clark pending High Court case out of the water.
So justice was not seen to be done.
Vote:July 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 am
Perhaps they should be stopped at airports like other outstanding government debtors and not be allowed to travel until the outstyanding amount is paid.
Or perhaps seize property like cars as is done for those who have not paid their parking fines.
Probably neither of these is legal, but the one certainty is that Winston will cause large sums of public money to be spent on the legal contest that he wants. That money would finance a number of his so keenly desired hip operatios for his party faithfull. Funny old world we live in isn’t it?
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