The tap gets turned off for Peter Dunne

It hasn't been a great few weeks for Peter Dunne, leader of the now non-recognised United Future Party. He has today been stripped of the allocation of funding accorded to political parties; Hamish Rutherford and Vernon Small report, via the Dom-Post website:

Speaker David Carter has ruled that UnitedFuture cannot keep more than $100,000 in party funding, and its leader Peter Dunne will be treated as an independent MP in Parliament.
Carter said he would revisit the matter if UnitedFuture re-registered as a party.
UnitedFuture was de-registered as a party after it acknowledged it could not be sure it had the required 500 members.
Carter gave the party time to rectify the matter, but he said today it was going to take longer than the six to eight weeks originally offered.
Carter said the matter was still with the Electoral Commission.
The Commission was independent and he did not want to influence its decision.
But the time it would take for UnitedFuture's re-registration to be resolved had the potential to disrupt the business of the House. Carter's ruling would take effect today and would not be backdated.
He said as Speaker he had to balance two interests; that it was not tenable for a party to be funded if it was not registered, but that a party's representation expressed at a general election should not be interfered with lightly. 

David Carter's decision on this matter ties in nicely with a decision released today by Auditor-General Lyn Provost; read on:

Earlier today the Auditor-General said it was up to the Speaker to determine whether UnitedFuture should lose Parliamentary funding because of doubts over its membership.  

Despite the complaints of bias against David Carter, we reckon that he has played this with a pretty straight bat. The Speaker noted today that this situation is not expressly covered by Standing Orders, hence is earlier interim ruling in Peter Dunne's favour. 

Given however that there is now likely to be a considerable time delay before United Future is re-registered by the Electoral Commission, Carter's ruling today is a sensible and definitive one. He has asked that the situation regarding United Future be addressed in an upcoming review of Standing Orders.

Parliament must be a lonely place for the MP for Ohariu now. He has lost his ministerial warrant, and he has lost his status as a political party leader, now being treated as an independent MP. After 29 years of loyal service, we wonder if his heart will still be in it.