Wednesday, June 9, 2010

MPs’ credit card crunch

You know that Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”? We could be in for some very interesting times when nearly seven years’ worth of parliamentary credit-card spending is released tomorrow. There won’t be details in the newspapers until Friday, I’m guessing, dunno about radio and TV.

This email below was sent to all media and politicians’ advisors by the Department of Internal Affairs:
Media Advisory – Official Information Act Request Release of Ministerial Credit Card expenses: April 2003 – February 2010
Ministerial credit card expense information, for the period stated, will be released to all requestors, by the Department of Internal Affairs from 9.00am on Thursday 10 June. The information being released is in response to Official Information Act requests from various media.
The material will be issued in hard copy format only and will be delivered to OIA requestors in the Press Gallery. All requestors will receive the same complete set of material, covering the period stated, irrespective of the parameters of their request. In fairness to all requestors, we cannot make exceptions to the scheduled delivery time.
ends
Gee. I think I just scooped Scoop, Kiwiblog, Stuff and the Herald. Or maybe they didn’t think it was very, ah, interesting.

UPDATE: I posted at 2.11 p.m. Stuff published the story, with proper added reporting, at 4.27 p.m. Well done, Fairfax! Still nothing from Scoop or the Herald.
UPDATE 2: the Herald published the same PA story at 4.45 p.m. This is why I always go to Stuff first for news.
UPDATE3: Shane Jones walks the plank first. Honestly, who would have thunk it?

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