Wanted: office share for West Coast MP
“I had a look at a couple (of offices) in Motueka, but they were outside my budget ... I have a real estate agent keeping their eyes open.”
National MP Maureen Pugh is on the lookout for a shared office space in Tasman District.
Fourmonths afterthe election, Pugh, who ousted long-standing Labour MP Damien O’Connor from his West Coast-Tasman seat, does not yet have a Tasman office.
“I had a look at a couple in Motueka, but they were outside my budget,” the West Coast-based Pugh said.
While O’Connor hung out his shingle in Motueka, Greymouth and Westport, Pugh has just one office, in Hokitika.
“I have a real estate agent keeping their eyes open,” she said. “I’m hoping I could share [an office] with someone.”
In the meantime, the MP is considering the most efficient way to cater to her electorate, which at almost 33,000sq km is the largest general electorate in the country. With the help of staff, she plans to make appointments and hold mobile clinics around Tasman.
“I want to be a lot more mobile, instead of expecting people to come to me,” Pugh
West Coast-Tasman MP Maureen Pugh
said. “It doesn’t matter where you put an office – you’re never going to be accessible to everyone, [and] it didn’t make sense to rent an office which would be empty a lot of the time.”
Renting community halls and buildings was also a way to put money into the pockets of the communities she represented, she said.
The West Coast-Tasman MP said most of the contact she had from her constituents was by email or phone.
Pugh said her allocated non-staff budget of $96,647 would be spent on reaching her constituents.
This amount is allocated for the costs of running an office, advertising, travel and training costs.
Parliamentary Services said the amount of funding MPs received was different for electorate and list MPs, and MPs who held a ministerial portfolio.
The rules for this funding were set out in the Speaker’s directions for each parliamentary term.
A large constituency such as West Coast-Tasman can have up to three offices.
The annual non-staff allocation for O’Connor’s last parliamentary term was $90,351.
Pugh won the West Coast-Tasman seat by 1017 votes from O’Connor, who had held the seat since 2011.