Time to end the long-haul largesse

Long since finished with politics, 80 former MPs are still claiming generous travel perks.

Each is entitled to taxpayer funding for as much as 90 per cent of a business-class return trip to London and a dozen domestic flights annually. This year’s biggest spender, onetime Labour MP and Speaker of the House Kerry Burke, claimed more than $16,000. He left Parliament in 1990 – 26 years ago.

Nearly 80 spouses are also in on the perk. Together with the former MPs, they brought the 2015/16 bill to $700,000.

Enough of these exorbitant and unjustifiable excursions. These 160 personalities, almost universally of high station in life already, number more than a whole Parliament of their own. Their journeys represent no public service, and yet they continue to ask the public to cover most of the bill.

The spenders include those of all political stripes – selfinterest has no partisan limits – though there is a special irony to see long-time warriors against state spending dipping deeply into the fund. (Former Labour MP Michael Bassett, for instance, was near the top of the table with more than $10,000 in expenses; his wife and fellow historian Judith claimed $9,993.)

Even former Speaker Lockwood Smith, who did far more than most of his predecessors to open up politicians’ spending to scrutiny, stands revealed by the latest figures: he and his wife recouped $21,000 in personal travel costs from the public purse.

It is true, at least, that this festival of post-political wanderlust will eventually come to an end: Only those who entered Parliament before 1999 are eligible for the rebate. But they are plentiful, as the pages of their names in the official expense report suggests. The tap should have been turned off for everyone, not just the newcomers, long ago.

Instead, the rules have been ponderously and repeatedly tweaked, leaving such largesse for old-timers in place, along with other unacceptable gaps.

No-one, for instance, objects to serving MPs being compensated for travel costs – they need to get around their electorates. Yet even there, MPs contrived to keep the decision-making in the hands of the Speaker (one of their own), instead of the independent authority recommended by the Law Commission.

The solitary argument for continuing the perk for bygone MPs is that it was part of the deal when they entered Parliament. ‘‘I think it’s just bad practice generally to go back retrospectively,’’ as Prime Minister John Key puts it.

But this aversion to rewriting the rules is not always so obvious. It didn’t, for instance, stop the Government from passing a retrospective law last November to stem the cost of a large-scale underpayment to beneficiaries.

Moreover, it’s simply risible that the likes of Burke, Bassett and Smith became MPs many decades ago in the hope of jetting around for free now. MPs’ salaries have never been meagre. The understanding that the job is essentially about public service, by contrast, has always been part of the deal.

Those MPs still enjoying a lifetime supply of long-haul flights, on the fumes of their political careers, should be ashamed. The law should be changed – or they should solve the problem themselves, and stop asking the public to pay for their tourism.