Politics
At all costs
by Jane Clifton
For a brief period there, Wellington began to sound like one of the most dangerous places in the world. In the space of a few days, a French rugby star was mugged by five Wellington thugs, the mayor had to hire around-the-clock bodyguards after a threat on her life, and a city councillor
was judged so menacing that security guards and police were called to evict him from a meeting. (And that’s tactfully to say nothing of the risk of being hit on by a Minister of the Crown, if one was an attractive visiting Asian businesswoman.)
If life was getting this tough for the famous and well-paid, how were less pampered Wellingtonians and tourists getting on?
With the Americans withdrawing from Iraq, would they soon need to come here to protect us from ourselves?
There was a short-lived moral panic about whether the Events Capital was Absolutely Positively lawless … till sheer naffness and embarrassment overtrumped
all fears. It turned out that (a) the French rugby star had either been mugged by the complimentary fruit bowl in his hotel or stumbled into the corrective fist of a fellow team member; (b) the mayor’s hit man was just some
mouthy git; and (c) the stroppy councillor evicted himself, and has continued to evict himself in high dudgeon from subsequent council meetings, because for reasons he is unable to articulate lucidly, he finds it gratifying.
The northerly and the Cuba St bucket fountain remain decidedly hazardous, but really, it’s just business as usual for Wellington’s elite.
And as a remorseless parade of expenses made public under the Official Information Act have revealed, it’s very well remunerated business as usual. To come
to Wellington in an official capacity is to be extremely well looked after. Here’s a list issued this week of what the Government won’t pay for, in respect of its MPs, ministers and officials (meaning, “Won’t pay for any more, but has possibly paid for in the past – not that we’re admitting it”): hairdos, groceries, family meals, presents for staff, gym membership, booze, Cabinet
morning teas and lunches and – somewhat bafflingly – wine for wine auctions (apparently, there had been a tendency to claim for the Bellamy’s-labelled wine
MPs are sometimes asked to contribute for fund-raisers).
At least in this country it goes without saying that the taxpayer will not fund the cleaning of one’s moat, the feeding of one’s dog and the furnishing of one’s pied-à-terre with antiques, as has happened in the UK. But they can have their Wellington utilities bills paid, plus Sky TV, cleaning, gardening and – never mind the carbon footprint – firewood.
The tendency of MPs’ perks – and perceived perks – to expand over the decades has at last caused a bit of throat-clearing in the Beehive. The Government was embarrassed at the revelation last month that its travel bill of more than $700,000 for its first three months of office was more than twice what Labour had spent for the corresponding period the year before. Given the song and dance National made about nixing the previous Government’s indulgence of free fruit for ministers’ offices, at a cost of around $20,000 a year, this looked like serious trotters-in-the-trough hypocrisy.
Sure, this travel snapshot caught Labour in election-fighting, stay-at-home mode, and National in new-broom, let’s-get-upto-speed mode. But John Key has been forced to lay down a few new restrictions
among them: no flying first class unless it is absolutely necessary (ie, you’ll miss your meeting with Gordon Brown), and no taking spouses with you unless you/
they pay their own way (meaning, by implication, that taking one’s beloved might be terribly therapeutic
for domestic harmony, but is of absolutely no benefit to the taxpayer).
There’s also to be shrinkage in ministers’ travelling entourages. There has been a quiet, but on occasions bloody, crackdown on teams of officials attending
overseas conferences, which some departments have been in the habit of doing in their tens.
But it’s not those trips that show up in the newspaper with eye-catching numbers of noughts in them. It’s the ministerial travel that voters care about. And if there’s one thing voters like even better than a red-hot poker up the nose, it’s the thought that an MP travelling overseas might be having a nice time, especially during a recession.
To be fair, people in any job who are required to travel for work will tell you – business travel is a slog. It quickly ceases to be fun. And anyone who thinks it’s glamorous has obviously never travelled on a plane. Not even the fizz in first class can compensate you for the delays, customs queues and interminable transit
stopovers.
However, we are the most remote country in the world from the trade and foreign policy hubs. We do need to travel.
There’s no benefit in keeping the foreign or trade minister home. And we need the PM to put himself about the world stage. But, aside from the odd international
conference on something important to us, like whaling and carbon emissions, few other ministers really need to go overseas. Sure, they need information about how other countries have handled various tricky portfolio issues, but there is such a thing as the telephone, and the internet. And they’d as well meet their counterparts by webcam conference as trek expensively abroad to do so.
More embarrassing still for the Government was the news that, while line-by-line state spending cuts affected social worker numbers and educational programmes, they barely grazed the hem of the garment of the Government itself. Parliamentary Services, Ministerial Services and the Prime Minister’s Department made such minimal cuts compared with all other departments that the Treasury waxed rather
snide. It noted ministers themselves had “accentuated” cost pressures, so that perhaps a budget freeze on them would be in order?
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