Rort

In Australia it is. This morning I outlined the HSU boss Michael Williamson who was on $350000 per year.

It turns out he is being investigated for a series of other rorts to feather his own nest.

A separate audit being prepared by Ian Temby QC is expected to be damaging to Mr Williamson, who stood down in October after a series of revelations in The Sydney Morning Herald that he had milked the union through the abuse of credit cards and IT contracts worth $1 million a year granted to his company, United Edge.

That’s IT covered. What about crony board positions? Not a rort but he is probably earning more than most of his members in board positions on top of his salary.

Mr Williamson’s union-appointed positions include directorships – currently suspended – at state government-related entities, First State Super, State Government Employees (SGE) Credit Union and State Water Corporation, a $34,000 a year position he was appointed to by former NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal just before Labor lost office.
Mr Williamson’s union-appointed boardroom roles add more than $100,000 a year to his reported $350,000 a year as general secretary of the HSU.

Then he has what must be the highest paid secretary in the world. Maybe she provides “additional services” as well as secretarial services, and it is not a rort, just a long term arrangement that is cheaper than paying for hookers on the union credit card.

The Temby report is said to contain revelations that a further $400,000 a year has been flowing from the HSU to a company owned by his wife Julie for ”secretarial services”.

Huge money flows to unions every year in New Zealand.Does it flow to the union bosses who are the 1%?

MP travel expenses have ballooned last quarter:

The domestic travel and accommodation costs of MPs and ministers totalled $3.7 million from October to December – 51 per cent higher than for the same quarter in 2010 when it was $2.4 million. It equates to an average of an extra $10,000 on travel for each MP over the three month period.

The figures do not include accommodation costs for MPs’ bases in Wellington.

The sharp spike in travel was likely caused by the election campaign and the Rugby World Cup.

MPs have unlimited domestic travel, including for campaigning and personal use as well as work-related.

Yep it is outrageous that representatives are able to extort the taxpayer to fund their election campaigning.

Have a look at these three examples from the latest figures:

Trevor Mallard, Katrina Shanks, Charles Chauvel and Gareth Hughes…all are Wellington based MPs. There should be precious little excuse, particularly for electorate MPs like Mallard for excessive

It certainly looks like Labour’s campaign strategist was taking the piss on travel and using the taxpayers funds to cart his carcass around the country. Gareth Hughes is a terrible spender, enjoying large amounts of air travel for dubious purpose.

Phil Goff claims the cuppa in Epsom is a ‘rort’.

Well that’s interesting given that the Labour candidate in Wigram is being illegally supported and endorsed by Jim Anderton, the outgoing leader of another party.

The hypocrisy abounds…

Epsom a rort?

Nah, just MMP politics. Funny how the biggest supporters of MMP are crying the loudest.

We all know where the big money is in the referendum debate, from the unions and Labour and the Greens. We now also know that taxpayer money is being used to campaign for MMP. PResumably Jordan also stores his sign in his parliamentary office.

This is a photo of Jordan King. Taken on Lambton Quay on Wednesday.  Jordan works for Maryan Street at Parliament.  No need for him to hold Labour signs this election Maryan clearly wants her staff working with the Keep MMP vested interests.

It shows the folly of National ignoring the referendum. Labour, the Greens and the unions are thinking nothing of using their resources, their staff and taxpayer funded staff to campaign to keep a system that long terms helps them.

Labour continues to use taxpayer funds to lie to the population.

There “Not for Sale” flyers are still being distributed.

An astute reader noticed that the fifth bullet point says:

Winston Raymond Peters, 65, pensioner of St Mary’s Bay has decided to campaign using Social Media. At least he won’t be spending taxpayer dollars this election telling us lies.

Since he is going to use social media it is appropriate that he has a parody account as well, some wag has set that up and is tweeting madly making the official Twitter account look like a bunch of old senile numpties are running it….oh wait!

Hon Dr Lockwood Smith

Speaker of the House of Representatives

By blog and email

Re: Parliamentary Services Funding benefiting MPs or Parties

Dear Dr Smith,

Some MPs and some political parties own electorate offices that are rented to Parliamentary Services. This appears to be in clear breach of Parliamentary Services Rules.

There are several problems with this:

1. Political Parties are able to amass a large property portfolio, gaining the benefits of capital gains over time, funding political operations at the expense of tax payers.
2. Individual MPs owning their own offices receive benefits of capital gains from properties rented to Parliamentary Services.
3. Individual MPs owning their own properties to Parliamentary Services at greatly reduced rentals to enable them to have an office that is substantially larger or in a better location than what their rule following competitors have.

In all cases I can provide specific examples on my blog if you require them.

Please could you inform me of whether this is legal, or whether it is acceptable under Parliamentary Services rules? If it is not could you please inform me of the action you intend to take against, or if you chose not to take action the action I can take.

Could you please also address the issue of whether an office on a prominent site rented by parliamentary services at below market rates needs to account for the difference in the market rate and the rate paid in the MP’s electoral return. If this is not your responsibility can you please inform me and I will forward this email to the Electoral Commission.

Yours faithfully

Cameron Slater
Whaleoil

I got this reply from the Electoral Commission today:

Dear Mr Slater

Thank you for your e-mail of 20 July 2011 laying a complaint that a Labour Party flyer was recently distributed to electors in the Henderson area.

The Electoral Commission is currently considering the complaint and will write to you further once we have concluded our consideration of the matter.

Yours sincerely

Kristina Temel
Electoral Commission

After being referred to the Police for prosecution by the Electoral Commission for their Stop Asset Sales flyer that was mailed to households Labour promised to desist from sending out illegal brochures.

“Labour has advised the commission that it will abide by the commission’s interpretation of the legislation. It has withdrawn the pamphlet from circulation, along with another similar publication. Between now and the election, it will apply a wide interpretation of the phrase ‘election advertisement’, and include formal promoter statements in the terms recommended by the commission on all such material.”

After my post yesterday asking for examples of rule breaking to be sent in I can now confirm that Labour, contrary to their promise to the Electoral Commission has continued to send out their illegal brochures.

These brochures were received today in his mailbox in West Auckland. My tipster writes:

Labour Party brochure without authorisation

Labour party brochure without authorisation

As you can see this brochure carries no authorisation statement as required by law, and also carries the Parliamentary Crest to show that the taxpayers have footed the bill.

Labour has deliberately lied to the media, to the Electoral Commission and to the New Zealand public. They issued their press statement promising to stop sending out illegal brochures on 9 July. The brochure was delivered yesterday 20 July, some 11 days later. This cannot be a mistake, it has to be a deliberate flouting of the rules.

I will now lay another complaint with the Electoral Commission about Labour’s continued breaking of electoral law.

Labout twice used a pledge card to advertise their promises, they twice used the taxpayer to fund it, though they really stepped out of line in 2005 and spent over $800,000 of taxpayers money. The VRWC mounted a campaign and even made a song to make them pay it back.

After they got caught though Labour retrospectively validated their spending in a particularly egregious piece of legislating. They passed the legislation so that Darnton v. Clark wouldn’t proceed. At the time I blogged at how appalling this would be and how the fox being in charge of the hen house was simply leading to the corrupting of politics and state funding of election campaigns by stealth. Their bill was effectively the creation of public funding of political parties by stealth:

The bill extends until 2009 the current laws which allow MPs to use parliamentary funds for “communications” – such as advertisements and pamphlets – as long as they do not explicitly tout for votes, donations or party memberships.

However, it goes further than current law – effectively authorising public funds to be used for publications such as Labour’s 2005 pledge card, which the Auditor-General deemed to break the rules for parliamentary funded advertisements at the last election.

At that time National opposed the bill but upon entering government had Simon Power do a deal with the devil to extend the rules in 2009. This was an appalling mistake on National’s part, one they are suffering the consequences of now.

You have to give Labour credit though. When they re-wrote the law books to validate what was once illegal they had the fore-thought to predict they would again be in opposition and so wrote the rules so they could back a truck up and fill it with our cash for them to spend on their advertising. Then they pushed for bi-partisan agreement and got their tame Nat, Simon Power, to help them.

This election has seen a broke Labour really stretch the rules. They are essentially running Pledge Card 3.0, the scale is vast. Yesterday I blogged about their latest mailout to the country which is funded by Parliamentary Services. Like their online ads it is authorised by Rick Barker and carries the Parliamentary seal in a small format which is against the rules. Not only that though, the brochure asks voter to go to their new website which is alternatively authorised by Chris Flat the party general secretary. Labour do this because parliamentary services isn’t paying for the website, the party is.

David Farrar has likewise noticed the sheer scale of what Labour are attempting. Quite simply they are broke and they think they can pick the taxpayers pockets to fund their election campaign.

So, Labour is spending vast amounts of tax payer money on brochures and on online ads that are designed to send people to a campaign website asking them to vote Labour. Of course the politicians wrote the rules so it is unlikely that this breaches the intent of the law but it certainly breaches the spirit. They are using public funds to campaign and they are doing it all before August 26 before the tap gets turned off.

Given that this is their second mail out to the country and they are plastering their online ads all over high traffic sites it is highly likely that the spending far exceeds the $800,000 that Labour stole from us in 2005. They are probably well over $1million spent.

I ask readers to send me examples of Labour advertising via email tot he tipline with details of dates and location. For each piece I receive I will lay a complaint with either the Speaker or the Electoral Commission or both if warranted. This egregious theft of public moneys for party political broadcasts must end.