Public & the purse strings

John Carter

The mysterious organisation at the centre of the election spending scandal is set for big change, but that may not yet extend to the public finding out more about what it is doing.

For more than 20 years the Parliamentary Service has operated largely below the public's radar screen - administering budgets worth tens of millions of dollars and answering only to the Speaker, who acts on advice dished out by a low-profile, all-party commission of MPs.

The arrangement has sprouted scandals before, but rarely has there been such public scrutiny of the service's practices as that seen after Auditor-General Kevin Brady's report into advertising spending by political parties before last year's election.

Now the service's failings in paying out more than $1 million of unlawful expenditure have been laid bare, and serious questions are being asked about how it will conduct its duties in years to come.

Mr Brady criticised the service for misinterpreting the law, failing to exercise judgment over the material it made payments for, and giving MPs insufficient guidance over what was acceptable.

But MPs also had to shoulder some of the blame for the "disturbing" nature and extent of their unlawful advertising.

One of the first key discussions about what might change will be held next Wednesday at the meeting of the secretive Parliamentary Service Commission.

Speaker Margaret Wilson will ask the commission to agree to an external review of the statutory arrangements around the Parliamentary Service, the commission and the Speaker.

The commission, made up of MPs from across all parties in Parliament, meets monthly but its talks are not open to the public and its agenda is not routinely available to media.

It is involved in advising the Speaker on what services should be provided to MPs, and recommends criteria governing funding entitlements.

Big decisions can be made within the commission - but the public wouldn't know and MPs are largely happy about that.

Equally, most MPs are happy with the fact that the Parliamentary Service is not subject to the Official Information Act despite the authors of a major review in 1999 recommending it should be.

So although major changes to the way in which Parliamentary Service operates are likely, greater transparency might not be among them.

National's long-time representative on the Parliamentary Service Commission, John Carter, does not think the OIA should apply to Parliamentary Service.

"I don't support that, and never have," he said this week.

"We have to be able to operate and set some rules within ourselves."

The Parliamentary Service is the gatekeeper of sensitive information about MPs, including their phone, travel and accommodation records, any difficulties they might be having with staff including harassment, and possibly some details of personal relationships.

Leaks from the service are rare.

The 1999 report that recommended the service be opened up to the OIA also recognised that some pieces of information would still need to be protected.

The authors of the report noted that "unfavourable public perceptions appear inevitable wherever members of Parliament are involved in determining the benefits they receive".

One of the authors of that report, former Labour minister Stan Rodger, said this week he still thinks there is a case for the service to subject to the OIA.

"I would have thought so, but I don't know whether it's going to come," he said when contacted by the Herald.

"You would have to draw up a careful set of rules, so that constituency privacy was protected. But that would be achievable."

Rodger said the level of transparency around the service is better than it used to be.

One of the changes in the past year has been the decision to put monthly budget updates on parties' spending on the Speaker's website.

The information gives the overall taxpayer-funded budget for the year of each party, and shows how much of it each party has spent so far.

But it is still not known what the money is being spent on - there is no breakdown available of how much of the budget might have been spent on advertising or staff salaries.

In another twist, the document, which is effectively the Bible for MPs when it comes to what they can and can't do, is confidential.

The Members' Handbook of Services issued by Parliamentary Service spells out clearly what entitlements MPs have and how they should be used.

It covers everything from travel to advertising and support staff.

Ironically, one of the six principles in the 2005 handbook is "transparency".

Asked why the handbook is confidential, Speaker Margaret Wilson said the Parliamentary Service Commission has "decided not to make it available, when I asked for their view".

On the issue of broader transparency, the Speaker said she did not think that would have prevented the election spending debacle.

The problem is not transparency, but "it is a problem of legislating the relationship between Parliamentary Service, the Parliamentary Service Commission and the Speaker".

She said there is actually "a lot of transparency", and pointed to the Auditor-General's report released this week as evidence.

National's Carter also doubts that transparency around Parliamentary Service was an issue in the spending saga.

"If you don't know something is happening, you don't know to look," he said.

Carter is concerned that if more information was publicly available from Parliamentary Service then MPs would run into trouble every day as media and the public formed their own interpretations of what MPs should and shouldn't be doing.

For example, he is a trustee of a vintage railway trust in the Bay of Islands because he is the local MP.

When he attended a fundraising function for it just over a week ago, he claimed mileage for the trip.

"Someone could say, hang on, is that really the role of an MP and start questioning whether I should be claiming that mileage," he said. "If you could look at everything we did, there would be people everywhere interpreting, saying no, that's not right.

"The media would, and the public would just put their spin on it and you'd have a bad story every day."

Asked if there were cases that ought to be exposed, Carter said 99.9 per cent of things he had seen were legitimate.

He is comfortable with the Members' Handbook being confidential, because of his argument that the rules could be interpreted and spin put on them.

At the heart of the spending battle is the question of who is responsible for deciding whether parties' spending is within the law.

Parliamentary Service receives invoices from MPs and parties and pays them, but it doesn't view itself as approving the spending.

MPs and several parties argue differently.

They have said they sought an opinion from service staff before going ahead with some of the advertising which has now been deemed unlawful.

One party leader said he knew of examples where the service had previously refused to pay for items that it did not think were within the law.

This confusion over accountability was at the root of several recommendations this week by Brady for change in the structure around the administration of taxpayer-funding of political parties and MPs.

In his report Brady said the service must be enabled to effectively fulfil its responsibilities as a department responsible for the prudent management of public resources.

"The current framework for administering parliamentary advertising needs to be revised and strengthened," he said.

Speaker Margaret Wilson has responded by calling for the external review of the framework around the Parliamentary Service, and even said it might be time to reconsider whether the Speaker should be responsible for the service.

She has, she said candidly, discovered that the role is "all responsibility and no power".

While the Speaker is clearly keen to get the framework sorted out, the question of whether greater transparency might spring out of this new focus on Parliamentary Service looks to be one for another day.

Margaret Wilson said that when the OIA is next reviewed there will be an opportunity for that to be debated.


The Parliamentary Service

* Employs about 430 staff as well as another 220 people working as out-of-Parliament staff in regions.

* Administers taxpayer money used by political parties and MPs for things like staff and travel, provides support services and looks after Parliament's buildings.

* Was allocated $104 million in this year's budget.

* Answers to the Speaker.

* Is not subject to the Official Information Act.

* Paid out nearly $1.2 million in advertising expenditure found to be unlawful by the Auditor-General.

* Is in for a shake-up after the Auditor-General said he was concerned it didn't satisfy itself before expenditure was incurred that it was within appropriations.


Fixing the rules

A rejig of rules for parties' taxpayer-funded advertising should be widened to include all parliamentary support they receive, says Auditor-General Kevin Brady.

Brady made several recommendations aimed at fixing up the rules around advertising, but also said it was time to run the rule over all the public money MPs received.

"Although my inquiry has examined only advertising expenditure, I would expect the [Parliamentary] Service to establish a process for reviewing all other expenditure on support services for MPs."

That would include such things as MPs' free flights, their stationery, telecommunications and use of staff resources.

Parliament's rules, as they stand, say taxpayer-funded budgets should be used for parliamentary business rather than for party political purposes or electioneering.

Parties say that if Brady's interpretation of the law in relation to advertising is applied across the board, almost none of their activities will qualify for public funding.

But Brady said it was up to MPs and the Parliamentary Service, which administers parties' funds, and the Speaker, who oversees it, to come up with a workable and legal solution.

His recommendations include:

* Clarifying practices so they match the legal framework of appropriations under the Parliamentary Service Act.

* Communicating clear rules to the parties.

* The service vetting parties' material to ensure it complies with the rules.

* The Speaker providing sufficient support to the service so it can do its job.

* The service carrying out a wider review of parties' parliamentary support.

- NZPA