The scandal over NZ political parties use of parliamentary resources in the 2005 continues. Now the Auditor General has investigated the misuse of funds and its confidential report appears to label spending by most of the parties as unlawful - see articles in the Sunday-Star Times and the Dominion Post. Hopefully all the parties will be made to pay the money back. At the top of the list is Labour's $446,000 spent on the electioneering pledge card and the Green Party's $20,000 on its election newsletter Green Times. But this is merely the very tip of the iceberg. As the article say, at least $14m is available to the parties to misuse.
In the 2004-05 financial year, the following amounts were given by the state:
Labour - $5.3m
National - $3.6m
NZ First - $1.6m
Greens - $1m
Act - $1m
United Future - $0.99m
Progressives - $0.245m
Maori - $0.181m
And $10m is available for travel and $3.5m for communications