Tapu Misa: The perkbuster who turned poacher

Some people pray for divine guidance. Rodney Hide looks in the mirror every morning and asks himself the hard questions.

Would taxpayers mind picking up his girlfriend's $25,000 travel bill so she can be with him when he traipses around the world?

Of course not, his mirror tells him.

Taxpayers would want him to be happy and fulfilled. Taxpayers would be totally sympathetic to his needing to maintain his relationship at their expense, even if it costs nearly as much as some of them make in a year, and even though he makes more than enough money to pay for it himself.

Because he works hard, he's entitled. Because he's worth it.

Maybe the mirror should have reminded Hide that he had built his reputation on being a "perkbuster", that he was part of a Government that had preached restraint in tough economic times, that the Prime Minister had already given an undertaking that his ministers would be paying for their partners' overseas travel out of their own pockets, and that getting around that public directive, with the PM's blessing, by using a taxpayer-funded perk for MPs that he had campaigned against, would reek of - oh, I don't know, hypocrisy?

But after all, this was the same mirror that told Rodney that he looked good in canary yellow.

When Mike Hosking on Close Up asked him whether the girlfriend, squash player Louise Crome, had benefited taxpayers, Hide replied: "She benefited me, and I'd like to say that from the point of view of me ... giving value as an MP and as a minister, I don't want any taxpayer to feel they're missing out."

And yet, strangely, I have a feeling that taxpayers struggling to hold together relationships in the face of long hours (yes, they work hard, too) and a considerably lower wage might well feel some resentment at all the fun Hide and his girlfriend had at their expense.

Still, it might all be worth it if this newfound sensitivity leads Hide to back policies which might save other at-risk relationships, like, for example, a rise in the minimum wage. (Though I'm not holding my breath.) Hide insists he's still against the perk, which pays for 90 per cent of the cost of travel for the partners of long-serving MPs.

But this won't stop him using it again, because "I'm not prepared to be a martyr".

And this is the problem. Hide may have lost any claim to the moral high ground, alongside his fellow crusader against wasteful public spending, Roger Douglas, but he's playing by the rules, which, conveniently for him, no one seems to be in any hurry to change.

And while it falls into the "not a good look" basket, Hide is being entirely consistent. He's more the user-pays, corporatist kind of guy, who thinks nothing of using his position as Local Government Minister to fundraise for his own party.

Martyrdom, on the other hand, implies service and duty.

It requires the setting aside of self-interest for a greater good. Which, let's face it, is something of a rarity these days, if the examples of politicians here and overseas are anything to go by.

Last week's findings by the Auditor General into Finance Minister Bill English's accommodation allowance, for example, hasn't quite succeeded in shaking off the impression of parliamentarians organising their affairs to take advantage of the system.

It's one thing to get an accommodation allowance to live in your own house.

It's another to claim the higher ministerial allowance, as Bill English did, on the basis that he had no pecuniary interest in the family trust which owns the $1.2 million house that he and his family live in, even though the title is in his wife's name.

English was able to claim the ministerial accommodation allowance after changing the trust deed so that he was no longer a beneficiary. He insists that this was a coincidence, and that the change was because of personal circumstances which he wouldn't divulge.

The Auditor General found that English wasn't entitled to the ministerial allowance (which he has since paid back) because he did in fact have "an indirect financial interest in his family trust, because of his relationship with the likely beneficiaries". But he wasn't to blame because the rules were confusing and he'd received incorrect advice on how they applied to him.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the fallout from the MPs' expenses scandal continues. As well as a report into MPs' expenses, due out next week, an inquiry into the expenses system in the House of Lords is expected to result in peers having their allowances slashed, and some having to give up lucrative consultancy jobs.

Any peers with a paid non-parliamentary consultancy will now be forced to name all the companies that benefit from their advice.

All in an effort to rebuild public confidence in Westminster. Things are not as bad here, but we could do with a similar clean-out.

As the inquiry chairman, Lord Eames, told the Independent: "The phenomenon of 'peers for hire' is not acceptable. Membership of the House of Lords should be a privilege and a duty, not a source of profit."