NZPA: The National Party has accused the Electoral Commission of sitting on its hands over the Electoral Finance Act, saying it needs to pursue breaches more vigorously.
The commission last week found Labour to be the first political party to have breached the controversial act, by failing to carry proper party authorisation on its taxpayer-funded booklet titled We're Making a Difference.
The National Party had highlighted the booklet in Parliament, but did not complain or forward the material to the commission.
The commission investigated after the New Zealand Herald newspaper forwarded it along with a range of other party literature.
National's deputy leader Bill English today said the commission should investigate any potential breaches it was made aware of and should source the offending material itself, rather than waiting for someone else to do so.
He said National had highlighted a Green Party billboard in Wellington's Ngaio Gorge and a New Zealand First billboard in Tauranga which did not have correct authorisations, but it appeared nothing was being done about them.
That was despite the commission giving the impression it would investigate issues proactively, by making statements to the media about hiring a media monitoring company to keep tabs on parties' activities and saying it was investigating a Labour campaign song CD despite no complaint being made.
National is understood to have held off lodging complaints as it believed the commission would investigate them itself.
Dr Catt today confirmed the commission was not currently investigating the billboards.
She said if National had a problem with an item it should forward material to the commission to investigate.
A complaint was not necessarily needed, but the offending material was.
"In order for us to act on something we need some information that it was published and we need a copy of it," Dr Catt said.
"We'd need some information on it and I'm definitely not hopping on a plane to Tauranga to go and see it."
Dr Catt said the commission had a copy of the Labour campaign song CD – allowing it to investigate it.
However it was waiting to see what law changes – proposed by Mr English – might be made in the near future in relation to authorisations and whether they would be retrospective.
But a National Party spokesman said even if the amendments were accepted, the law change would not be retrospective.
Dr Catt has said the commission is considering whether a Labour Party balloon constitutes election advertising, and is seeking opinions on an ACT Party booklet, distributed to journalists at a party conference, could be deemed advertising.
Both items were forwarded to it by the Herald.
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