Helen Clark flier arrives - and you paid for it.

With a parliamentary crest, but without an authorisation statement, Helen is sending out her propaganda. I have resided for over six months at my current address in the Mt Albert electorate (Helen Clark is the local MP) and for six months have received nothing from her. And today was the first piece of party political mail through the letterbox since the announcement of the election date.

It is 32 days to the election and Helen decides to send us a letter - a "survey". What an amazing coincidence that the local MP decides to use parliamentary service funded party political leaflets 32 days out from an election.

On the head of the survey form (It's on the reverse side of a single sheet double-sided A4) is "www.labour.org.nz" One of the questions is "Have you used the Labour website?". At the bottom of the survey it says "The information collected in this survey will be used by Helen Clark to assist her in her role as a Member of Parliament." No, it is to help her in her role as the leader of the Labour Party - that is quite clear from the website question and the others which are based on the Labour Party's main election campaign policies. What an astounding coincidence. 6 months - nothing - 32 days from the election - propaganda-arama.

This is the sort of thing that makes a mockery of Labour's flawed Electoral Finance Act and is an all too common game that incumbent politicians play that brings them all into disrepute. They all complain about it - and they all do it.

Quite frankly, it is not fair. It is unjust that the sitting MP can pump out party campaign literature - paid for by parliamentary services - barely a month out from an election under the utterly spurious guise of "As your local MP..." Every candidate is restricted in what they can spend and how they spend it, yet the sitting MP is able to muster all the additional resources of the parliamentary cheque book to circumvent the limits. This on its own may not quite meet some people's threshold for 'buying an election' as such, but it is a shabby and brazen rort nonetheless. How many other parties/MPs are doing this if the PM thinks she can get away with it?

This is a prime example of exactly the sort of abuse the EFA should have stamped out. If the EFA lets the PM do this (and I don't know if it is legal or not), then what on Earth was it supposed to prevent?



Oh, and the website (the question about the Labour Party political website that the local MP has so thoughtfully included in her survey) has been raised on a blog [UPDATE: (sorry - I cannot find it now!) some kind anon commenter has found it: The Inquiring Mind] - it has scans of a Listener article saying an American firm has been responsible for its website.