Couples spend-up as ex-MPs fly high on taxpayer
Former MPs and their spouses claimed over $700,000 in taxpayerfunded travel in the last year, with couples among the big spenders.
The Parliamentary Service’s 2015-16 annual report has revealed the latest figures for claims on international and domestic travel as part of a discontinued perk.
Former Speaker and Labour MP Sir Kerry Burke was the biggest spender among MPs, totting up $16,147 courtesy of the taxpayer. Former Prime Minister Jim Bolger and former Labour minister Michael Bassett were among other former parliamentarians to spend over $10,000.
A number of couples took advantage of the perk.
Former Speaker Sir Lockwood Smith, New Zealand’s High Commissioner in Britain, and his wife, Lady Alexandra, claimed $21,338, while former prime minister Dame Jenny Shipley and her husband, Sir Burton, spent $20,908 on their travels. However, the topspending couple was former National minister John Luxton and his wife Mary Scholtens, who claimed $25,126.
Former National MP Pansy Wong, who resigned from Cabinet in 2010 after using her travel entitlement to pay for parts of her husband Sammy’s private business trip to China, was the lowest spender among former MPs who made a claim - she only spent $132.
The total spending for 2015-16, including fringe benefit taxes, was $1.06 million - a slight decrease on the $1.12 million spent the previous financial year.
The travel perk for former MPs and their spouses - since phased out - pays up to 90 per cent of the cheapest return business class flight to London each year, depending on the length of service. They also get up to 12 domestic return flights a year paid by taxpayers, but they cannot claim for private business travel.
Prime Minister John Key ruled out a wholesale review of MPs’ perks in 2015, saying they were ‘‘pretty well-established’’ and part of the package that had been offered to former MPs.
‘‘... it’s really worth remembering that essentially we’ve come in New Zealand, not just in terms of MPs’ salaries but actually in the private sector as well, from a situation where people used to receive less cash and more benefits,’’ RNZ reported Key as saying.
‘‘We of course could just take those benefits off former and old MPs but we’d be doing that retrospectively; they would argue very strongly, and do, that we’d be taking away some of their entitled income because they were paid less as a result of it.