Where are you when we need you Rodney?
Just when the Act leader has hung up his perk-buster's cape, news emerges in the Press that four retiring MPs are heading off on a junket to Europe on the Speaker's Tour which is regarded as the Mother of All Junkets around Parliament.
This
one is a two-week romp around Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
Speaker Margaret Wilson herself is retiring after the election but she is not in the same league as the others because it is the Speaker's annual tour.
But to take retiring MPs Labour MP Marian Hobbs, National MP Katherine Rich and, worst of all, suspended National MP Brian Connell - nominated by National - is hard to justify. No wonder Connell has been the best behaved maverick this Parliament has seen.
John Key and Helen Clark tried to justify their nominees this morning.
Key reckons that Rich and Connell were the only MPs "willing and able" to go.
Pull the other one!
Clark says the trip is all about "diplomatic outreach" and improving New Zealand's relationship the expanding Europe.
"In that sense it doesn't really matter who is doing it so long as it is a Member of Parliament....It is not about benefit for MPs; it is about benefit for New Zealand," she says.
Shouldn't it be about both? I have defended such trips in the past because of the benefits they give not just to the country but to the lawmakers.
New Zealand MPs should have a better global perspective on issues of interest and be more aware of New New Zealand's place in the world and what it takes to improve New Zealand's place in it. If this trip doesn't benefit them as MPs in the future, how can it benefit taxpayers? This is just a glorified golden handshake.
I thought MPs had got smarter about MPs junkets after the Herald did a big number in 2001 on a three-week tango led by former Speaker Jonathan Hunt through Brazil Chile and Argentina.
Who else was on that? Labour's Harry Duynhoven, National's John Carter, New Zealand First's Winston Peters and none other than the former perk-buster himself, Rodney Hide.
