The days of cosy silence are over

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OPINION: Surely the remaining fig leaf surrounding MPs' protestations over their use of public money has been blown away by now?

For years they have argued against applying the Official Information Act to the tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding that they divvy up between each other annually.

They base their argument on the flimsy pretext that there are enough checks and balances in place to ensure it is not misspent. There must be much hearty knee-slapping about that one within the Parliamentary Service Commission – otherwise known as a cosy club for MPs who meet regularly to consider the rules governing themselves.

The latest scandal surrounding the use of ministerial credit card spending reveals the extent to which those sorts of checks and balances can be corrupted by the power imbalance between MPs and the officials charged with policing them. MPs spend, officials invariably pull out the rubber stamp – though, to their credit, not without numerous entreaties to play by the rules along the way.

Which brings us to the really scary thing. The checks and balances that apply to ministerial spending are actually quite robust compared with those that apply to spending under the cloak of the Parliamentary Service – the body which administers MPs' travel and accommodation expenses and doles out largesse in the form of about $41 million in state funding to political parties each year.

There we have only the word of our MPs that any checks exist at all. Because unlike Ministerial Services, MPs have consistently refused to expose Parliamentary Service records to the Official Information Act. It remains one of the rare exceptions to the provisions of the act, a privilege MPs voted themselves some decades ago and which they have been unflinching in their support of since.

For list MP Shane Jones, the release of ministerial credit card receipts under the OIA on Thursday has killed any hope among his supporters in caucus that he will one day lead the party.

It is a hefty price to pay for the guilty pleasure of watching porn movies from the comfort of his hotel room. Labour would say in his defence that he repaid the money later. But it is inexplicable that he would book it to the taxpayer in the first place.

Quite apart from the fact that his credit card receipts were a public record, they had to pass through the hands of staff within not only his office, but those within Ministerial Services as well. To the average voter, it might seem preposterous that it never occurred to him just how damaging those receipts would prove if made public.

It might seem equally preposterous that some of his colleagues failed to twig that massages, flowers to one's partner, golf clubs, a $450 minibar bill and $155 bottles of Bollie might be almost as difficult to justify. But to understand why is to understand the balance that exists between ministers, MPs and the public service.

A former National minister once recounted his embarrassment in his first days on the job at pulling up at a departmental office in his Crown limo to be greeted by a lineup of overawed staff. Just the words "the minister is here" was enough to send the average public service office into a flap, he marvelled. Obeisance might be too strong a word, but the system is almost feudal compared with how most modern businesses think these days.

And while many MPs (that former Nat, for instance) resist succumbing to the culture of entitlement it engenders, some don't. Those who don't slap $1500 meals and $100 bottles of wine on the credit card, blithely uncaring about how it may look to the rest of us.

Is such spending ever justified? Of course. Ministers move in heady circles, particularly those plying the international circuit. They are often called on to entertain their overseas counterparts and other official guests in the country's interests.

No-one thinks they should wheel those guests down to Burger King for lunch. But if the average punter has no problem drawing a line between business and pleasure, the view from a minister's office is apparently altogether more hazy.

And so the taxpayer forks out $600-plus for Chris Carter and his partner to catch up with a retired British Labour MP and old mate Jonathan Hunt, no questions asked.

Meanwhile, Fisheries Minister Phil Heatley and the rest of his National cohorts must be feeling decidedly out of sorts. Because the original OIA for National ministers dealt with only a year's worth of receipts, it was a relatively easy task for journalists to pick out questionable spending.

The size of this week's OIA dump for Labour ministers meant it was impossible to give each file more than a cursory skim. Dinners, booze bills and lavish trips abroad were so commonplace that by mid-morning on the day the documents arrived, only the most exceptional spending was published.

In that respect, Prime Minister John Key is probably right when he insists he has demanded higher standards of his ministers. He has certainly called time on the practice of ministers taking their partners and spouses overseas with them on the taxpayer – which, this week's documents reveal, was standard practice.

Nice for the MPs and nice for their partners too. But somewhat out of step with the rest of the working world.

Even the disgraced Mr Jones might have reason to feel robbed. He was by no means the only minister to clock up pay-per-view movies on his credit card, but he was certainly the only one to 'fess up that they were pornographic.

That is unlikely to save him, however. Demotion is his likely reward. He has already laid out the criteria under which he might decide to go altogether – he intimated on Thursday that he would go if he felt the affair had damaged him so badly there was little point in staying. For a man of his ambition, it would seem those criteria have already been met. The Harvard-educated star from Maoridom was impatient enough with the hierarchal world of politics as it was. It is hard to see him staying on now his wings have been permanently clipped.

But his legacy is already written – there is almost certain to be a cleanup of ministerial credit card use. Mr Key is signalling quarterly disclosures. That will quickly curb any inclination toward excess.

Which provides an even more powerful reason for the same sunlight to be applied to spending across the board.

- © Fairfax NZ News