Editorial: Honourable should mean just that

OPINION: So Bill English has been cleared of any wrongdoing in the $900 a week housing allowance saga.

That's great for Mr English. Apparently he was just acting on advice.

But that still doesn't explain how a Member of Parliament could think it was okay to claim $900 a week for housing after declaring his Wellington home, owned by a family trust, as his ministerial home.

Also at issue was that his primary residence was said to be in Dipton, when the family had been living in Wellington for so long.

Mr English paid back $32,000 of the allowance that had been paid for his Wellington home very quickly. Perhaps he did really realise what a bad look it was.

The decision by the auditor-general that Mr English was given the wrong advice follows the case of MP Rick Barker conducting a poll with volunteers using bogus names and not mentioning it was a poll for the Labour Party.

It was done in the interests of impartiality apparently and so the volunteers could protect themselves.

Mr Barker, it just doesn't wash. You are either way too naive – and that's a nice way of putting it – to be an MP making laws for the rest of us or you are trying to fool us.

New Zealand is still a country that expects its MPs to have virtues, and not exploiting the system for all it is worth would be one of them.

Mr English, the auditor-general has found, was acting on bad advice from Ministerial Services when he took the money.

Perhaps MPs should apply the same acid test to their own spending they apply to other advice they get on funding projects. If it seems extreme and over paid, it probably is.

MPs might also argue that they are given approval to take such an allowance. But doesn't commonsense suggest it is perhaps just a wee bit too generous? And at some point, they have to put themselves in the position of the ordinary New Zealander, especially those scrambling to pay their bills.

In the case of Mr Barker, there are also no excuses. For a seasoned MP to try to get away with polling that employs pretence is a shocker. At some point, didn't the alarm bells ring and specifically big fat alarm bells as bothersome as those in cars that go off in the middle of the night?

Polling is a very subjective area already, without further clouding of the waters. Anyone else, Joe Public for instance, would have known what it would look like.

Both Mr English and Mr Barker as a minister and former minister have earned the right to use the term honourable before their names. Sometimes it's not just a label.

- The Marlborough Express

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