Editorial: MPs set poor example with byelection rort

Opinion

The Herald has been asking questions lately about the expenses that MPs have charged to the public purse for coming to Auckland during the campaign for the Mt Albert byelection. The costs may seem trifling as a proportion of the public accounts but this is a period of economic difficulty and these costs were needless.

What did Labour's candidate stand to gain by the presence of out-of-town luminaries such as Trevor Mallard, Parekura Horomia and Pete Hodgson or of Iain Lees-Galloway, the rookie MP for Palmerston North? What did National's gain from Simon Bridges, Chris Tremain, Chris Auchinvole and others who flew in? Melissa Lee could have used more support from some Auckland-based figures, particularly the Prime Minister, who should have been with her at the end.

Many taxpayers are tightening their belts at present. Business is hard, employment uncertain. Wage increases are not coming, tax cuts have been cancelled, companies and households are looking for savings to reduce debt and live within their incomes. Government departments are under a directive to reduce costs wherever possible and do more with less.

At times such as this, we should be able to expect Parliament to lead by example. The parade at Mt Albert shows that hope to be forlorn. A byelection in Auckland needs little outside participation at the best of times. Leaders of both main parties live in the region, as does the leader of Act. Labour has two other front-bench MPs from Auckland. National had 11 ministers living here.

And this was not a byelection that would change the Government in any way. The result was never in doubt. Mt Albert has been a Labour seat for the lifetime of successive incumbents. Yet it seems not to have occurred to the parties that deploying MPs from around the country for this byelection would be an unconscionable waste of money.

That fact probably would have occurred to them had they been spending party funds, as they know they should have been. The sad truth is that the byelection trips were not only needless, they were devious. The MPs from out of town who appeared on Mt Albert's streets were supposedly in Auckland on other business. That is what their expenses claim.

National, Labour and the Green Party all refused to give the Herald details of the official engagements in Auckland that allowed their MPs to make a foray to Mt Albert. The Parliamentary Service, the bureau through which members' expenses are paid, asks no such questions. It accepts their word.

On the strength of a meeting that might be associated with their parliamentary work, they can claim hotel bills, taxis and rental cars as well as their taxpayer-funded flights, and leave themselves plenty of time for byelection duty. This is public financing of election campaigns by stealth.

It happens on a much larger scale at general elections. Senior politicians travel far and wide to help candidates in close electorate contests. The practice is unfair to parties that are not in Parliament and to independent candidates, as well as to the taxpayers, who have never sanctioned this sort of spending.

Those who excuse it argue that it would be too difficult to scrutinise election-time expenses as closely as the Herald has tried to do. But this subject concerns people who award themselves the title of "honourable". It should be enough for parties to make clear to them that the line between parliamentary work and election canvassing must not be blurred.

Parties will not make that line clear because it saves them money at taxpayers' expense. It is a rort, and when it happens while the rest of us are watching our pennies, it is doubly a disgrace.