by frog
The Herald on Sunday ran a story this week claiming a ‘conspiracy of silence’ over MP expenses.
Granny Sunday didn’t mention that the newspaper demanded an enormous amount of information and demanded it within 24 hours.
It also didn’t mention that the Green Party at least forwarded all 9 MPs’ pecuniary interest statements that cover some of the information requested.
Since this is an issue of transparency, the full list of questions is here:
* What is the address of your primary place of residence? Please detail who owns the property, and describe the size and nature of any payments you (or any individual or organisations associated with you) make in regard to that property (whether rent, mortgage payment or other) that are claimed back in accordance with funding entitlements for the House of Representatives and its members.
* Where applicable and different from the above, what is the address of the primary place or residence of your spouse or partner, and immediate family?
* What is the address of your place of residence when in Wellington? Please detail who owns the property, and describe the size and nature of any payments you (or any individual or organisations associated with you) make in regard to that property (whether rent, mortgage payment or other) that are claimed back in accordance with funding entitlements for the House of Representatives and its members.
* What properties do you own, either personally or in conjunction with another person or organisation? Please list them by address, whether they are residential, commercial, mixed or other, with a description of the ownership arrangement.
* If you have a spouse or partner, what properties does that person own, either personally or in conjunction with another person or organisation? Please list them by address; whether they are residential, commercial, mixed or other; and provide a description of the ownership arrangement.
* Please list the properties in which you have an ownership interest through a company, trust or personalised superannuation scheme? Please detail their addresses; whether they are residential, commercial, mixed or other; and provide a description of the ownership arrangement.
* How much of the $24,000 a year maximum Wellington accommodation expense reimbursement did you claim in the past financial year? Please detail the form or forms of accommodation this was applied to (eg private renting, hotel, mortgage interest); and the address of the property or properties to which it was applied.
* How many nights did you spend in Wellington in the past financial year?
* How much of the $24,000 a year maximum Wellington accommodation expense reimbursement do you expect to claim in this financial year? Please detail the form or forms of accommodation this has been applied to (eg private renting, hotel, mortgage interest); and the address of the property or properties to which it has been applied.
* How many nights do you expect to spend in Wellington in this financial year?
* What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your domestic travel in the past financial year? To what destinations other than Wellington and your primary place of residence did you travel, and when?
* What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your spouse or partner’s domestic travel in the past financial year? To what destinations other than Wellington and your primary place of residence did your spouse or partner travel, and when?
* What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your international travel in the past financial year? To what destinations outside New Zealand did you travel, and when?
* What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your spouse or partner’s international travel in the past financial year? To what destinations outside New Zealand did your spouse or partner travel, and when?
* What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your taxi travel in the past financial year?
* On how many occasions did you use a taxi in the past financial year, paid for or claimed back from the Parliamentary Service?
* What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your use of rental vehicles in the past financial year?
* On how many occasions did you use rental vehicles in the past financial year, paid for or claimed back from the Parliamentary Service?
* If you used a private vehicle or vehicles, what was the dollar value of mileage claimed from the Parliamentary Service?
* What was the total mileage (in kilometres) in the past financial year, paid for or claimed back from the Parliamentary Service?
* Would you support the removal of the Parliamentary Service exclusion from the Official Information Act? Why, or why not?
* What items costing $500 (incl GST) or more did you purchase in the past year in the pursuit of Parliamentary business? Please supply a list of these items, and their costs.
Where to start?
It is a big request and an important issue that was never going to be resolved in a day.
Some of the information requested is already available to the public, some should be made available and some should remain private (e.g. MPs home address).
It is an area where Parliamentarians can do better, but the Herald on Sunday approach was never going to foster a substantive debate.
The Greens are working on how to make more of their spending available to public scrutiny – it’s just not something they could organise in 24 hours to suit the Herald on Sunday. But stay tuned
The Green’s open government policy supports greater transparency. It includes looking at how the OIA, for example, can be applied to Parliamentary Service:
Bring parliamentary services under the OIA — including how parties spend public money and who they hire can be seen by all, with an exemption to protect communication between constituents and Mps and to protect opposition parties from government intervention.
Lastly, the Green Party provided the Herald on Sunday with pecuniary interest statements from all 9 MPs ahead of their regular publication. In the interests of transparency, those statements are available here.
Sue Bradford, Catherine Delahunty, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Kennedy Graham, Kevin Hague, Keith Locke, Sue Kedgley, Russel Norman, Metiria Turei.
Published in Parliament by frog on Wed, May 27th, 2009
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“What was the cost to the Parliamentary Service of your domestic travel in the past financial year? To what destinations other than Wellington and your primary place of residence did you travel, and when?”
A question that should be asked of all Green party MP’s who attended the racist march on Monday last.
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Racist: Hmmmm according to the dicktionary of big bro…. Anything not white?
BTW, the racist march had members from all sorts of races and was open to anyone prepared to march.
Guess you can put another click on your meal ticket expense return for posting to Frog Blog?
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And those people marched at their own expense (save the hundreds of dole and dpb bludgers).
The question I asked was who paid for the Green party MP to fly to Auckland and attend a march that demanded racist representation on our elected super city council.
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And who pays you to post to Frog Blog? You do realise that being an employee means that if you talk about the by election in Mt Albert that your time will need to go on an election expenses return?
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psst Scott, We pay him! It comes out of our entertainment budget.
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http://www.elections.org.nz/files/7_Green_Party_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand_donation_return_2008.pdf
Home addresses were required to be publicly released under the Electoral Finance Act. The Greens even did so … mostly.
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Yes, that was one of the sillier parts of that law Graeme.
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Well put, Frog.
I’ll lay the responsibility for the short time-frame demanded by the Herald on the well-known failing of journalists – that the majority of them have never done any of the jobs that they write about/analyse/criticise, thus they have no idea just how much work is involved in producing research from source, or that there might be ethical problems with answering some of the questions they have demanded answers to.
Graeme -
if you had ever had someone in public domain post a threat to you or your family members, you might realise just how silly your post above is.
It is not a right of the public to know the personal circumstances of any figure whose private life might be discussed in the media.
This is simple ethics, perhaps you missed the lecture when you went through law school?
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Well, according to merriam-weber (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism):
This protest was to promote differential treatment of one ethnic group over another, that is discrimination, therefore BB is entirly correct that this protest was racist under definition 2. Additionally, many of the individual members were racist under both definition 2 and 1. Not dissimilar to the entire maori party, green party policy, and many of the posters here.
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Of course. MPs should be able to keep their home addresses private. My concern is the Green Party doesn’t think this, and passed – and continue to support – a law which required the opposite.
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Come on guys, it was a simple question.
Who paid for the Green MP’s to fly to Auckland so they could grandstand at the racist march on Monday?
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Just quietly Bro, have you no idea about the arrangements made by the Green MPs when the fly and how that differes from MPs from the other parties, no idea at all ?
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Here are a couple of initial observations on the MP Pecuniary Interests Register.
Re Nat MP Chris Tremain and Act MP Roger Douglas.
[Likely plenty more to be said about Roger's long list of interests later, but early days and perfunctory analysis so far].
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I think that while the fact that the Green Party is by far the most principled party wasn’t recognised in the article – probably because the journalist wanted to sell more papers by making the article have cross-partisan appeal, the overall point made in the article is very much in line with the Green social responsibility and appropriate governance policies.
We should seriously think about drastically dropping the amount that MPs are paid (including the levels of expenses, as well as the salary). Setting MPs pay to the ‘average wage’ (perhaps the median NZ salary) would be appropriate. The Remuneration Authority justifies these high expenditures by saying that they need to attract the ‘best people’. However, what sort of MP is only in Parliament because of how much they get paid? If MPs weren’t paid well, maybe Act and National would be short on candidates, but the Greens would be unaffected. It would serve as a filter to keep out candidates who don’t care about principles, and only want to be rich, and lead to better governance for New Zealand. If we started floating seriously floating this sort of policy, it would probably be popular with the public, and it would be hard for NACT to say no to, after running on a campaign of ‘cutting costs’, without revealing themselves as hollow men.
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You have a strange definition of “different treatment” when all Auckland Maori want is a few seats in proportion to their population. That’s pretty consistent treatment, and a much fairer outcome in a city where Maori representation has ranged from non-existent to anemic.
As for the short deadline- I agree, some of that information would’ve been hard to find within 24 hours for every MP given how busy they are. That said, last year’s information should already be available for parliamentary expenses by now, so I hope that was submitted.
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“You have a strange definition of “different treatment” when all Auckland Maori want is a few seats in proportion to their population”
Then Auckland Maori need to get off their backsides and vote.
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“You have a strange definition of “different treatment” when all Auckland Maori want is a few seats in proportion to their population”
Does this meant that we should divide the council makeup into Maori seats, Asian seats and European seats?
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Ari,
Having different votes based on race is very much differential treatment. Esspecially where thie entails dedicated seats.
It is up to maori to vote for someone whom represents their interests, this doesint necasarily have to be maori; the whole idea that someone from a group better represents their interests is idiotic. more than half (its a skewed distribution) the NZ population has IQ’s under 100! lets make it law that atleast half of all parlimentry seats must go to politicians with IQ’s under 100! Cause they will really know how to benefit thier group! The green party looks after maori interests more than the maori party despite being mostly white and middle class. Can the green party not do good by maori? I remmember meyt saying that the maori party didint trust the greens cause they wernt maori and therefore couldint have maori interests at heart! In all truth even the policies of labour would have benefited maori more than those of the maori party or greens, the nats would have aswel as racism like this only hurts both parties.
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What will be next – in proportion to their population?
Should we provide them with Health, Education and Welfare Budgets – in proportion to their population?
Should we provide them with Housing – in proportion to their population?
What else, besides places at the table of governance, should we provide them with – in proportion to their population?
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Listening to Maori “leaders”, it would appear that Maori aren’t even capable of voting for people they like. They’re not capable of standing. Do Maori leaders really think that little of Maori people? They think thei own people are mentally defective?
And why do they let some blow hard talk for all “Maori”? If some blow hard claimed to talk for all “Europeans”, we’d tell the pompous git to f**k off.
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>>but the Greens would be unaffected
Don’t see the Green MPs giving away all their salary, do you? Actually,, there is only one MP that does that, and that is John Key. Most Nats and ACT would earn far more in the private sector. They’re taking a pay cut to be in parliament. Meanwhile, Labour is made up of teachers – this is the highest earning job they’ve ever had, or likely to have.
The Green MPs could voluntarily do what you suggest now, but they don’t. They don’t because they don’t really believe we should all be equal in terms of reward.
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Not really. Given the population situation there are many seats in politics that are de-facto “pakeha seats”, if you will. By adding a few Maori seats we assure the election of a fair minimum of Maori candidates and give Maori candidates a chace to prove to Maori voters that they can be successful and can win- the key ingredient missing from them making it on their own.
In short, we avoid a chicken-and-the-egg problem where Maori are never represented fairly on Auckland councils.
There’s this blind insistence that positive discrimination is necessarily bad- I disagree. Positive discrimination can only be said to be bad where it distorts the representativeness of our democracy- and nobody is proposing getting anywhere near that point.
If we make no allowances on race, what we’re really saying is that we want to suppress any and all differences of opinion that correlate to race. That’s not treating people equally, that’s suppressing minority viewpoints.
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>>Green MP’s to fly to Auckland
Indeed. You notice they don’t take the train, either. And why not? Because it’s inconvenient.
Perhaps they should cycle next time. Or just not go. Do their bit to lead by example and save the planet.
As if.
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>>Maori candidates a chace to prove to Maori voters that they can be successful and can win
Nothing stopping them doing so now.
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I can see you’ve been checking political donations- the Green MPs actually funnel back large proportions of their salaries into the Party to inform debate without costing the public more than any other MP. So, yes, they’re giving it away, just not to charity.
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Except the perception that they can’t because they’re Maori. Chicken and egg.
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>>large proportions of their salaries into the Party
10% is not large. I funnel a lot more than that back into my own business.
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>>Except the perception that they can’t because they’re Maori.
That’s paternalistic nonsense. When I was on the Marae last, I didn’t detect any feeling Maori couldn’t do anything they wanted to do. Quite the opposite, in fact.
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Off Topic
I urge all Greens to vote for Sue B this weekend…..
GO SUE!!!!
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I never knew you were such a closet fan of Sue B, BB.
I think Metiria has it pretty much wrapped up.
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Go Sue! Big tick for Bradford!
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jarbury said: I never knew you were such a closet fan of Sue B, BB.
I did jarbury, it sticks out like .. well, you know! Big Bro has all but declared his love for Sue time and time again on this and other blogs. With BluePeter expressing his enthusiasm too, perhaps the two of them have ‘strange imaginings’ together. Anyway, they are correct, Sue is worthy of everyones admiration, as is Metiria. For the Greens it just gets better and better!
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BluePeter discovers that the Green MPs plough some of their wages into the party and responds in a terse, bitten kind of way;
10% is not large.
What a plonker.
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>>What a plonker.
Church-goers do it. Businesses do it. Various community groups do it. Do you want a medal, or something?
Greenfly, you pointless plonker, the poster was arguing that MPs should be paid a lot less. Do you agree? Do the Green MPs agree?
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>>With BluePeter expressing his enthusiasm too
I think having Sue as leader would be an outcome we could all heartily applaud!
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BTW:
“Thus this stone-thrower needs to show that he doesn’t also live in a glass house. Therefore Norman should declare whether he has used any taxpayer funds on his campaign, including travel expenses and accommodation claims for his many, many trips to Mt Albert since Helen Clark announced her departure from Parliament. Anything less than this would make his various campaigns against ‘corruption’ seem rather hollow.”
From Liberation Blog.
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“Thus” and “Therefore”
Was it the pomposity that attracted you to this drivel Blue?
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Shoot the messenger, eh. If Russ the Muss likes to give it, he should be transparent in his own dealings.
We all remember the EFA. We did not like it, no sir….
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Ari,
So treating one group of people, defined by lineage and culture, different to another is not differential treatment? Well I never!
I think that positive discrimination can be considered to be bad wherever it is and I would challenge you to put foward one situation where it would benefit society at all. In the case of guarantieed maori seats you induce two main forces; the first is the alteration of maori attitudes, in the first instance this amy contribute to the perception of a need for help and thus weaken maori society and the resolve of individual moari to work and to find such work, In the second instance it creates and expectation of more continuously, and expectation that they have this entitlement based only on their lineage, that they are better than others, even that they are justified in crime (as turia was once fond of stating) (even now both are prevalent among many many maori). The second alteration is of pakeha attitude toward maori, this discrimination creates the perception of maori being helped out unjustly and as such creates a reverse push agaisnt this help such that it is harder for maori to find employment because they are perceived as less worthy as they have not advanced by themselves but as a leech on societys neck. It fosters hatred, it fosters further discrimination, and the attitude alteration in maori only work to further the alterations in pakeha; everyone hurt, noone benefits. Its just racist PC bull.
If you truley want to help maori since maori are over represented in negative statistics then use approaches that help all groups in those statistics. If maori are overrepresented in the poor then measures to aleviate poverty will benefit maori more than others. This approach creates none of this tension. No ethnicity is hurt, all ethnicities benefit, the only ones whom are hurt are those whom make net tax payments.
This bull about a democracy being representive is just that; bull. Though our system woud be better if we used STV in electorates, an individual will vote for whom they want to vote for, presumibly they will vote for the person that they think will best benefit them. If they are racist enough to vote based on race then they might aswel douse themselves in fuel and set themselves on fire. If a maori candidate represents maori and pakeha interests then he/she will be voted for by both, but if he/she represents only maori interests then of course they will not get voted in in mose electorates, even those maori dominated. If a white candidate represents both maori interests and the interests of the community as a whole then i dont belevie that most maori are rasict enough to not vote for him simply because he is white; if this is the case then they deserve to not have their views represented. The idea that having the same proportion of any group in parliment is the same as the interests of that group being looked after is absolute PC bull. We should have the people whom are best suited to the job of governance, but falling short of that we should have the people that most benefit each electorate and the nation as a whole. Just cause a candidate has ovaries or a dark complextion does not mean they can benefit eaither of those groups.
As a side note; I love it how you profess the good of representitve democracy and yet you seem to misunderstand that democracy acts to suppress the viewpoints fo the minority as by its very definition it is through the will of the majority that decisions are made. The minority are discounted where little harm is done in doing so; and there is no reason it should be any other way.
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Not shooting, Blue, just pricking the (over-inflated) balloon of self-importance.
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Hmm lots of viewpoints here. Seems like the government payed for the Green Party
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