Comments on: More on Expenses

By: UpandComer

UpandComer — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:37:42 +0000

One of the primary reasons there was all the controversy in England was because MPs were paid fuck all. A backbencher in England only gets paid a salary of $67 thousand pounds. That is because of the same remonstrations as we are seeing in this case. Due to this lower managment salary, which the UK public STILL thought exorbitant, and I suspect most of the public would too, MPs were forced to top up their earnings through expenses claims, at least initially. Of course they rorted the system horribly and grossly as necessity turned to moat-making abuse, but their system of ridiculously low salaries calibrated to the public’s ridiculous sensitivities, combined with lump sum expenses led to the abuse. New Zealand’s system is not the same as Englands. I’m sorry, but the beat up here does not provide a sufficient rationale for having Bill English living on the street and cycling the length of the country to get to work. Bill English gets 8000 to 10000 majorities evey year in Southland, we understand the worth of the man. He is very often in his electorate offices in Gore and Balclutha, and he spends a good amount of time every year in Dipton, during the year, and during school holidays with his kids, as well as travelling through the small towns of Southland, from Mossburn to Riverton looking after his constituents. He’s been doing this for 20 years, working very hard. Of course with a full diary form 8am till 11 pm every day as deputy prime minister and finance minister he has to spend less time in his electorate, what the hell do you expect? Bill has gone out of his way to do the cheapest thing possible for the taxpayer, he is elgible for a ministerial house, and he could rent out HIS property for much more then $1k a week, yet he has the house he paid for with his own money in a family trust, that is not in his wife’s name, but with her as the sole trustee, saving the taxpayer money. There is no scandal here. I repeat, no scandal. As has been said, the accom supplement is so people from small towns in NZ are able to have a role in our democracy. Southland is one of the biggest electorates in the country. It shows ignorance as to the requirements of high ministerial positions to claim he should live in Dipton permanently and commute. When he’s the Deputy PM!!?? I don’t know but I think someone over-estimates the abilities of skype. Again I reiterate he has done the cheapest thing he could do. If you are going to apply the principle that MP’s should not be eligible for anything accomodation wise, then tell the kid from Benmore or Kaikoura to give up on being PM one day, because he hasn’t got a dogs show. You could also abolish the concept of cabinet, because never mind the demands of a portfolio, the buggers should be in their electorate all day every day… MP’s from small towns are absolutely entitled to an accomodation supplement because otherwise all of their salary would in fact be spent on travel and accomodation, so anyone not from wellington would not survive as an MP.

By: Deep Throat

Deep Throat — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:14:55 +0000

English is just another socialist trougher … Labour, National, Greens, ACT, all of them have the same sense of entitlement and big mid finger to the public as soon as they’re entrenched in Wellington and latched onto the public teat.

By: tvb

tvb — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:26:33 +0000

Bill English is domiciled in Wellington and has been for some time. His children go to school there, his wife has a full-time job in Wellington, he has a full time job in WEllington, he spends most of the week there and he owns a house in Wellington. He has a second house in his electorate which he might spend a few days a year in. He probably has some sort of electorate office there. For housing purposes he should be considered a Wellington MP and receive no allowance for his Wellington housing like all other Wellington Ministers – Chris Finlayson. He could be paid a special allowance for his electorate house up-keep, lawns etc.

By: burt

burt — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:33:26 +0000

village idiot

He is entitled – that is the problem. The rules were written by MP’s for MP’s – what more would you expect.

By: burt

burt — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:32:37 +0000

Hang on hang on hang on just a wee minute here. Are you guys telling me that Bill lives in the same house as his spouse?

Is that the only difference between National & Labour – National are easy targets because we don’t need to be all PC about their actual living arrangements.

By: village idiot

village idiot — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:16:18 +0000

Bill English – entitled to that money!

That’s a bit rich!

By: david

david — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:16:08 +0000

C’mon manolo, get with the 21st century. What a man’s wife owns is no longer automatically his!

By: Manolo

Manolo — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:04:26 +0000

“We should not accept bludging from Natasha Fuller or Phool Ure and we should not accept ot from Bill English, Sue Bradford or Helen Clark.”

Spot on.

The legality of the “entitlement” has nothing to do with the principles at work here. English should know better and refuse to claim the money by the mere fact the house belongs to him (well, legally to his wife or family trust).

These people are all bludgers. They may operate at different levels of society (from idlers to the very Minister of Finance), but bludgers nonetheless.

By: burt

burt — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:04:05 +0000

david

You are wasting your time. The Green party were silent everytime Labour did something fishy. It’s OK when Labour do it and that was also different because they were all about spending as much tax payers money as possible rather than being prudent with it.

By: david

david — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:57:51 +0000

oops to continue

… the normal deputy PM’s house costs multiples of the allowance provided to English, to maintain and operate
… presumably Dr Cullen resided in a ministerial House of significant cost
… Who stayed in Wellington to mind the shop when Helen was away? clue — small, mean and went to Christs College.

…. and BTW, has anyone seen MC in the flesh recently? Could it be that he is tripping around the world on his subsidised travel perk?

By: david

david — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:53:40 +0000

The envious ones might also like to consider the following:
… The house “normally” provided to the Deputy PM is currently occupied by the Governor General.
… The Deputy PM has more reason to stay in Wellington than almost any other MP regardless of his Electoral requirements
…

By: david

david — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:48:46 +0000

Toad, Breath thru your nose for a minute, the blood pressure and respiration rate might approach normal.
Have you consideed the possibility thet Bill English is neither a trustee nor a beneficiary of the Trust?
Presumably in that case he has no pecuniary interest in it and was not obliged to declare anything because there was nothing to declare.

By: burt

burt — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:44:40 +0000

toad

Fair enough, pity the Green party never pulled their support for confidence & supply over issues of integrity and openness though. Easy to say you were against it after the event but where was the formal resistence during…

But lets move on – now we have this disclosure stuff starting to happen there is no need to sit quietly waiting for it all to pass before saying ‘not happy’.

Edit: “The Greens did not support Labour in defending…” – But they did not vote against it either.

By: toad

toad — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:39:30 +0000

burt said: I assume the rules as supported under one side of the house must be applicable to the other side of the house and I assume the Green party will remain silent in it’s support like they did under Labour.

burt, the Greens have always advocated more open Government, and it was a Green initiative that led to these expenses being publicly declared last week for the first time.

If you are referring to the Auditor-General’s report re the misuse of Parliamentary expenses in electioneering, the Greens very quickly accepted they had made a mistake and undertook to repay the money concerned. Labour, by contrast, attempted to defend their expenditure, thereby opening themselves up to months on end of being labeled “corrupt” in Parliament by national. I suspect that, more than anything else (apart, perhaps from Winston Peters) is the reason Labour lost the last election. The Greens did not support Labour in defending that expenditure, and I think considered at the time they were being very stupid in doing so.

By: burt

burt — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:20:05 +0000

toad

Does anyone have any plausible explanation for this, other than that his declaration was economical in its substance? No-one’s come up with one yet.

I think declarations can be amended at will and no charges will be laid if they are wrong. Well that’s the way it seems for Labour-led govt partners anyway. I assume the rules as supported under one side of the house must be applicable to the other side of the house and I assume the Green party will remain silent in it’s support like they did under Labour.

Or have you guys grown some sack since then ?

By: burt

burt — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:17:19 +0000

DPF

Bill seems to have made a bit of a pill of himself over this. Surely it’s not too much to ask a wellington based MP to pay for their own family home from their own salary….

However – lets get it all out in the open. How many other MP’s who have interests in trusts which lease property to parliamentary services are in the same situation as English but the arms length provided by the structures they use hides it from us?

By: Kent Parker

Kent Parker — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:59:26 +0000

The other problem I have is the wording of the explanation: “It’s within the rules”. This is actually the worst bit, which means that now we have a moral license to ignore any pleas the government makes about lessening the impact of the recession for employees or other businesses by applying any voluntary recommendations that the government comes up.

Anyway, too late, the mistake has been made, and when English later reconsiders and rectifies this anomaly, that will get a lot less press than this has.

By: toad

toad — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:32:39 +0000

joe90 said# So family trust assets don’t have to be declared as a pecuniary interest?.

[DPF: No - only the existence of the trust]

The thing that concerns me most is that in English’s case neither the Family Trust or the property in Wellington appear in his return of pecuniary interests.

1 Company directorships and controlling interests
Resolution Farms Limited – farming
6 Real property
Family home, Dipton
Farm, Dipton
7 Superannuation schemes
Government Superannuation Fund (Parliamentary Scheme)

You can’t have it both ways, Bill.

Does anyone have any plausible explanation for this, other than that his declaration was economical in its substance? No-one’s come up with one yet.

[DPF: I don't know. I suggest you email his office and ask]

By: OldNews

OldNews — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:48:24 +0000

Unlike most commenting on this – I have no problem with Bill English getting accomodation support. He’s the MP for Clutha-Southland. He’s required to live in Wellington for work. He needs to get his accomodation provided.
But I do think getting twice the MPs amount isn’t right.
I agree with DPF that he could move out of his house and live in a Ministerial house (either one owned by the Govt or rented by DIA) and this would be cleaner and probably better for him financially. But I understand why he doesn’t do that. For him it’s better to keep stability for the family. And good on him, too many poltiicians take family forgranted.
BUT there needs to be a trade off here. He has chosen not to use a Ministerial house but to live in a house owned by his family trust. Fine. The trade off for this is he should get the out of Wellington MPs allowance and that’s all. If he wants more – he should take Farrar’s advice. If he wants stability he should take the MPs rate.
He’s a smart guy and a good political operator – odds are he’ll voluntarily do this before Question Time tomorrow.
(Also Key needs to be careful about the $700 per week cap. English has been getting over $900 per week).

By: Kent Parker

Kent Parker — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:31:14 +0000

Further to the comment about Bill English’s arrangement being murky: it is similar to a DPB recipient claiming that they are not actually living with the people they are living with and therefore claiming the DPB as a solo parent.