Brownlee shouldn't be surprised

BY TRACY WATKINS

OPINION: New leader of the House Gerry Brownlee is outraged by the media's coverage of the $400,000 boost to electorate allowances signed off by Cabinet, the bulk of which is going to the Maori Party and National's own MPs.

Mr Brownlee, who does high dudgeon well, is railing that the deal was well signalled in National's coalition agreement with the Maori Party. He also cites a 2007 report by independent watchdog John Goulter as according the deal legitimacy.

He is right on both counts. But a lot of water has passed under the bridge since November. Not least of which being an accelerating economic downturn labelled "The Great Recession" and the new order of restraint.

That this fact has impressed itself upon the new Government in other ways seems clear: Finance Minister Bill English is actively considering by how much to trim the Government's contribution to the superannuation fund; government departments are being told to cut their coat to suit their cloth; State-Owned Enterprises Minister Simon Power has summoned SOE bosses to his office to rap them over the knuckles for poor performance; and participants at the Government's recent jobs summit were fed a no-frills lunch out of plain cardboard boxes.

A generous interpretation would be to hail the sudden largesse toward MPs as a useful job-creation scheme, since the money is to pay for extra staff in their electorates. But are we belt-tightening or aren't we?

There may never be a "right" time to throw an extra dollop of cash the way of MPs but there are arguably better times to do so than in the current environment.

As for the Goulter report, it is worth making a couple of points.

First, the report is some two years old. And it fell somewhat short of being accorded holy-grail status by Parliament at the time. The bulk of the report dealt with the lack of accountability and transparency surrounding MPs' perks. Not surprisingly, the bulk of it received lip service. To be fair, that probably did not come as much of a surprise to Mr Goulter either. In one chapter, he was quietly puzzled by the fate of previous reports recommending greater accountability and wondered what may have happened to them. Short answer? Binned probably.

Mr Goulter's recommendation that the Maori constituency MPs get more money than the rest was a fair one - but, not to put too fine a point on it, it was only one of dozens of recommendations made in his report.

Let's pick a few:

* Charging an independent advisory board with a watchdog role over the mess that the system governing spending by MPs has become. Mr Goulter recommended that this body might be made up of people with commercial acumen and those with experience of systems that are transparent and accountable - one of them being, say, a senior Treasury boffin. People who aren't MPs, in other words.

There has been no word of an independent advisory body being established.

* Addressing low pay rates among some parliamentary staffers, overworked library staff in particular.

The election appears to have strengthened the negotiating arm of ministerial advisers and press secretaries, so maybe it is time for the librarians to have a crack.

* Reviewing the lucrative perk for former MPs that allows them to continue to travel the country (and the world) on the taxpayer once they leave Parliament.

This is an ancient bugbear. In response to public disquiet, the travel perk for former MPs (worth the equivalent to some of a yearly round-trip to London flying business class) was scrapped from 1999, meaning only those elected at or before the 1999 election receive it.

There was an apparent effort to address the Goulter recommendation during the course of the last Parliament, when the travel entitlement of MPs elected prior to 1999 was frozen at the level at which they would have qualified by 2005. But in a determination dated October 28 (about two weeks before the last election), outgoing Speaker Margaret Wilson appears to have revoked the freeze, meaning it was back to the status quo prior to the Goulter report.

OTHER of Mr Goulter's recommendations were more warmly received at the time. Such as an increase in the accommodation allowance for out-of-town MPs, which rose from $20,000 to $24,000 within months of the report's release. That's a rise of $76 a week - more than most people get in annual pay rises. It's certainly more than the average worker will get out of tax cuts next month.

Of course MPs are in the unique position of being able to turn a blind eye to any recommendation they so wish to. They have exercised that privilege over the years in respect of those who have called for material relating to MPs and their use of parliamentary and taxpayer funds to be brought under the Official Information Act. When asked about this the other day, Mr Brownlee made it clear it was not a priority.

As for the argument that the Maori electorates (two of them held by Labour MPs, four by the Maori Party) are vast (as are those of the four National MPs who benefited to the tune of an extra $40,000 a year from the deal), fair enough, but again, timing is everything.

Is now really the right time to be awarding MPs a generous lift in entitlements, when businesses everywhere are cutting costs?

Of course, the argument that MPs with big electorates are disadvantaged over list MPs and others with smaller electorates is a hardy old annual.

Some of those arguments were run past Mr Goulter, for instance the one about MPs being out of pocket from miserly mileage allowances. He gave that one short shrift on the grounds that their allowances were in line with Automobile Association recommendations.

Finally, although there is bound to be a personal toll, the extra travel can't be said to extract a financial toll. MPs get free flights, a mileage allowance and accommodation paid for to ensure they are not out of pocket.

Of course an extra staff member would serve a useful democratic purpose. But it's not hard to figure out why Labour never implemented the Goulter recommendation - even if it quietly agrees with the move and, by some accounts, did not raise a murmur of protest when the issue was raised at a business meeting.

It would have smacked too much of self-interest to boost allowances for seats held, in the main, by its own MPs. In other words, it would never have got away with it.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Mr Brownlee shouldn't be too surprised at the reaction.

- © Fairfax NZ News