Taxpayers fund family research

Pansy and Sammy Wong. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

Taxpayers helped fund international trips so MP Pansy Wong's husband Sammy could research his family history, it has been revealed.

A high-level report into the National MP's travel expenses released this week shows a breakdown of the couple's overseas trips taken since November 2000.

During March and April 2005 Sammy Wong travelled to Shanghai and "investigated the Wong clan's origins" which cost $5058. As an MP's spouse he was entitled to a rebate of $2529.

In June of that year he searched for family roots in Fuzhou, China, the home town of his parents, where he met relatives. He then travelled to Malaysia to visit friends and former schoolmates in Kuching and family in Sibu. He received a $3011 rebate from the $6022 cost.

And in January 2007, the Wongs flew to San Diego to attend Sammy Wong's brother's funeral. This cost $15,844 and they received a rebate of $11,883.

The report was carried out by former senior public servant Hugh McPhail.

The couple have been cleared of "systemic abuse" of travel allowances and ordered to repay a total of $474.12 for a trip in China that was found to be business-related.

The report shows the couple spent $76,136 on travel and received $54,149 back in rebates.

Otago University political lecturer Bryce Edwards said though the rules might not have been broken, the public would question whether parliamentary expenses being spent on such "utterly non-public service activities" was legitimate.

Edwards called for greater transparency into MPs' perks.

Labour MP Pete Hodgson, who first raised the issue of Pansy Wong's travel, said he would have been "flabbergasted" if his wife went on a subsidised trip investigating her ancestry.

Meanwhile, articles on Lianyungang Supreme Hovercraft's website about Pansy Wong's visits to the company have been removed.

Sammy Wong is a minority shareholder in Lianyungang Supreme Hovercraft, the company at the centre of a Parliamentary Service investigation.

The website had said "Supreme Hovercraft's friend, New Zealand's cabinet minister Pansy Wong, visited our company on 27th December, 2008. This is her second visit to our company following her visit on 22th July this year.

"In the welcoming party organised by the Supreme Hovercraft, Ms Wong encouraged the company staff to be enterprising and go straight forward with her own experience and she wished the company to make a great success as early as possible!"