Perk flights add $140,000 over three months

Speaker Lockwood Smith. File photo / Mark Mitchell

MPs' so-called travel perks, such as international trips and free travel for partners, added about $140,000 to the bill for air flights in the last quarter.

The full figures for MPs' travel and accommodation costs were released yesterday after Speaker Lockwood Smith was forced to back down from his initial decision to stop including some of the travel costs of MPs in the regular quarterly release of expenses.

Those were the travel costs which were taken into account as part of an MP's total remuneration package, rather than seen as work expenses.

They included all use of rebates on international travel, 45 per cent of all domestic travel by partners, travel by MPs' children and 5 per cent of an MP's own travel costs.

The total air travel bill for the July 1 to September 30 quarter, including official parliamentary travel, was $854,788. In the earlier release, which excluded the perk travel, it was $716,024.

Labour leader Phil Goff and Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei both welcomed the Speaker's change of heart. They had defied his decision the day before by releasing their party's full expenses.

Dr Smith will continue to release the full set of expenses but stood by the reason he had given when he made his initial decision that MPs had effectively paid for the perks through salary deductions.

"People think these things are perks that are costing the taxpayer more. In fact a number of them aren't."

He said there was a difference between usual expenses and those which were deducted from MPs' salaries when the Remuneration Authority was setting base rates.

"That has been determined to be private by Inland Revenue, the Remuneration Authority has in its independent wisdom deducted them from our salaries and in my view that should be treated differently from items which are an additional expense to the taxpayer. But clearly it has created problems and it is better to simply revert back to the previous format."

He said the risk of confusion caused by parties releasing their own expenses also pushed him into reversing his decision.

"Once I had party leaders making their own decisions about what was the right information to release, I couldn't allow that because there was a risk of political game playing there."

The difference in total costs for most individual MPs after the perk travel was included ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending how often their partners travelled and how many children they had.

It stretched up to $10,000 for those MPs who had used the rebate for significant trips. They included Sir Roger Douglas, who took two trips using his rebate. Sir Roger last year used his 90 per cent rebate to visit family in Britain.

But this time he said the trips were work trips - including a trip to Britain in July to meet Lord Nigel Lawson and to speak to a policy think tank about reducing Government deficits and reforming public services.

He also went to Australia, where he was a speaker at the Australia New Zealand School of Government conference.

Labour's Clayton Cosgrove, Ross Robertson and George Hawkins went to China together to meet provincial government representatives.

BEFORE AND AFTER

What each party's total costs were in the original release and the new release (includes the international travel rebates, where used, 45 per cent of spouse travel, 5 per cent of MPs' domestic travel and children's travel).

Act (5 MPs)
Before: $39,246
After: $48,199

Green Party (nine MPs)
Before: $135,700
After: $147,207

Labour
Before: $692,873
After: $754,878

Maori Party
Before: $80,256
After: $85,513

National
Before: $594,153
After: $641,612

* does not include ministerial costs.