Labour MP David Parker says the Government "reluctantly agreed" to demands from the Greens to include funding for a 'green' school, after the party held $3 billion in funding to ransom.
Green Party co-leader James Shaw has since offered a series of apologies for backing the $11.7 million funding for Taranaki Green School - part loan, part grant - since the school is private, and funding private schools with taxpayer money is against Green Party policy.
Parker, who's on the committee which approved the funding, told The AM Show on Friday it was a "Green project, pushed by them" and he didn't want to put other projects at risk.
"You don't risk a big package over one relatively - well, it's still a significant amount of money - but in the scheme of things, a small percentage of the total package."
While most projects included in the funding - an effort to keep Kiwis employed and the economy ticking over post-COVID - come from Government agencies, Parker said this one showed there was "some politics involved" in decision-making.
National's Simon Bridges, appearing alongside Parker on The AM Show, said the slow drip-feed of news has gone "from bad to worse to appalling" for the Greens.
"I thought it might be over in the weekend, but every day there's been more. There's been leaking - it's either from these guys or New Zealand First, I don't know which."
Parker said his office got the email from Shaw which told ministers he wouldn't sign any funding off "until the Green School in Taranaki is incorporated", but he wasn't the source of the leak to media.
Bridges said when he last sat around the Cabinet table with former Finance Ministers Sir Bill English and Steven Joyce, they would "agonise about things like this", and accused the current Government of "chucking around money and horse-trading" while borrowing billions of dollars to pay for it all.
Parker said if National was running the country, they'd be doing the same thing.
He also said National should stop calling for Shaw's resignation, and instead "take care of their own rolling door policy". National is onto its third leader of the year, Bridges being rolled by Todd Muller who quit just weeks later, making way for Judith Collins.
