One law for all on pledge cards

For the past year, National has been screaming about Labour's use of its Parliamentary Services budget to fund its pledge cards. But it turns out they did exactly the same thing back in 2002, and published a pledge list of their own, at election time, funded from their leader's budget.

So, will they pay that money back? Or is it "one law for all, for everyone but National"?

I've said before that there are serious issues with the use of Parliamentary Services funding around election time. While material may comply with the rules and avoid explicitly soliciting for votes, funds or members (and Labour's pledge card did none of these things), against the backdrop of an election campaign, it cannot be viewed as anything other than electioneering (and should therefore be authorised and declared as an election expense). Which means that regardless of who pays how much back, the rules are going to have to change - either to outlaw the use of the Parliamentary Services budget in the leadup to an election (which both hands an enormous advantage to a sitting government, and invites desperate, last-minute advertising splurges as the election approaches), or to admit that everything politicians do is inherently part of the battle for votes, and stop being so precious about it.

(This of course does not let Labour off the hook for their real crime - refusing to declare the pledge cards as election expenditure, despite being told to by the Electoral Office. But sadly, the time-limit for prosecution has expired, and there is nothing we can do about it now, other than fix the law to allow serious investigations in the future).