Parliamentary funding
January 19th, 2012 at 7:00 am by David FarrarVernon Small at Stuff reports:
Labour is slashing its parliamentary staff numbers, after its poor election result sliced an estimated $700,000 off its funding.
As part of the cost-cutting the number of press secretaries working for the 34 MPs has been cut from five to three; one fewer than the press team that works exclusively for Prime Minister John Key.
There will also be likely job losses in other areas, but these are yet to be finalised, as Labour looks for savings to cover what is understood to be a 20 per cent fall in funding from $3.5m before the election to about $2.8m now.
My sympathies go out to those who lose their jobs. One of the things I hated about working at Parliament was seeing some good friends lose their jobs after elections or leadership changes.
I’ve run the numbers through Excel to calculate funding changes. Each party gets funded a certain amount for its leaders office and research unit. This is based on how many MPs you have, and how many are not Ministers. I call this the central funding.
Also each MP gets individual funding depending on if they are an electorate MP, List MP, or their electorate is over a certain size. The current funding is:
- Leadership – $100,000/party and $64,320/MP
- Party/Research – $22,000/MP not in the Executive
- MP – $105,192/seat over 20k sq kms or if Maori seat over 10k sq kms
- MP – $64,260/other electorate seats
- MP – $40,932/List MP
In theory the MPs funding is for them to spend, but in reality the party leadership can also direct how that is spent, and it can all be pooled together. So for example Trevor Mallard can exceed his $64,260 if the Labour Leadership agree to cover it, but vice versa if Trevor spends say $20,000 under his budget then that Labour Leadership can spend it on say policy brochures or staff.
The total funding per party (including MPs funding) is:
- National $7,166,76o (was $6,957,704)
- Labour $5,103,512 (was 6,061,724)
- Greens $1,881,016 (was $1,245,268)
- NZ First $1,118,016
- Maori $504,965 (was $724,260)
- Mana $291,512
- ACT $186,260 (was $630,948)
- United Future $186,260 (was $186,260)
- Total $16,438,812 (was $16,056,744)
That’s a $950,000 drop for Labour, which does hurt. Greens gain $650,000 and NZ First gains $1.1m.
The average funding per MP can be interesting:
- Mana $291,512
- ACT/United $186,260
- Maori $168,321
- Labour 150,103
- NZ First $139,752
- Greens $134,395
- National $121,471
National is lower as there is no leadership funding for MPs who are Ministers. Mana does very nicely thank you very much.
Note that while political staff are hired out of the funding, each MP is also entitled to two (list) or three (electorate) executive assistants to work in their parliamentary and out of parliament offices.
Related posts:
- Parliamentary Funding
- Parliamentary Party Funding
- Parliamentary Party Funding
- Parliamentary Demographics
January 19th, 2012 at 7:22 am
Could you give any reason why Mana gets so much funding? with the same number of MP’s in Parliament as ACT and United, why does Mana get 50% more funding?
The only reason that could be justified is geographical. The electorate Hone represents is a much larger one than Epsom or Ohariu Belmont?
[DPF: Hone gets more money in two areas. He gets around $40k more for having a large seat and around $65K more for not being a Minister]
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 7:23 am
So you have sympathy for those that told lies, twisted the truth and supported a NZ losing team. Cuts don’t go far enough. and no doubt the money tree will expand as it always does down there. 650K for the wreckers of NZ just so they can stop mining and Kiwi’s being wealthier.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 7:50 am
Sympathy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They knew who and what they were signing on for…………..its all fun and games until someone looses an eye.
Press secrataries???? Typing up lies and disinformation, the less the better.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 7:54 am
V2
Yes indeed. Get rid of the whole bloody lot of them. That should improve the clarity of communication about 1000%.
Its ridiculous that we waste this amount of taxpayer money on bullshit and mis-information. It does no good at all for taxpayers. Not required for gummint to function thankyou.
The fact that Hone bin Ahatfield gets c. $300k pretty well sums up the rort for what it is.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 7:55 am
“Typing up lies and disinformation, the less the better.”
Yeah it’s not like this government would distort the truth. Make sure you keep that eye patch firmly in place.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:10 am
I wonder what press secretaries do for the economy, has the ring of excess baggage to me.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:15 am
This is state funding for political parties but they hide it under a formula that keeps the public quiet and does not frighten the horses. The Labour Party is always pushing the envelope on the purposes this money is spent and will keep pushing the envelope until they get their goal of state funding.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:17 am
Relevance to the post ross? Comprehension failure? Fuckwit.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:24 am
DPF – areb you serious about job losses when the number of MPs go down….?
they all know the rules surely – or are they that stupid.
If you work for a bunch of smart MPs then youll likely keep your job – but if you work for idiots then be aware.
Labour numbers went down as everyone expected they would – so less money.
Maori went down because the problem of tribal egos over-rode common sense – so less money
national went up because they didnt piss off as many voters as all the others – so more money.
etc, etc.
Its no different to working for a company run by morons – sooner or later it will comew home to roost in the form of lost jobs.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:47 am
It can only be good if socialist Labour has less people to advance their dreadful cause. The fewer, the better.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 9:28 am
DPF – nice post. But you quoted in the comment about Key’s press secretaries, but then didn’t elaborate. National also get funding for each Minister, as presumably do United and ACT. That’s legitimate, a Ministerial office needs some staff, and clearly an opposition doesn’t need those same staff as they’re not running anything. But it is definitely one of the advantages of incumbency – between the Ministerial funding and the ability to direct Departments to do things you can generate a lot of leverage for your spending. As Labour did with a range of advertising from Departments near elections.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 9:36 am
Winston First gets its grubby hands on $1,100,000 of taxpayer dime to be a total irrelevance for three years. Jesus wept.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 11:30 am
I think its time to limit the availability of a “Leaders” budget to parties that have at least 3-5 MP’s.
It’s a disgrace that United Future, Act and Mana each with a solitary MP, are granted a Leaders allowance.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Funnily enough Chris2, those are the parties that need it most.
Smaller parties have scant resources by comparison to larger parties. But all parties must still decide how they will vote on particular Bills proposed by the Government and (in the case of Member’s Bill) MPs.
In major parties the research units are generally very large, perhaps a dozen people. A party like the Greens or NZ First might have two or three. Parties like ACT, Mana, United and the Maori Party may only have one. The simple reason is that they get so little from the research allocation (which DPF mentions as being $22k) they need to use a large proportion of that Leader’s budget just to emply one researcher.
That one researcher is then expected to analyse all legislation proposed by the Government, and report to MPs. They are then often called on to suggest amendments to the Minister’s office (if they are a Confidence and Supply partner), or draft amendments by way of Supplementary Order Paper to propse in the Committee stage of teh Bill (if they are in Opposition).
Larger parties have huge budgets to employ these staff (40 MPs X $22k = $880,000), and those staff will often divide up the portfolios so that one person does Health, another Education etc etc.
That’s as it should be, but i’d suggest taking the Leader’s budget off smaller parties (meaning they wouldn’t be able to employ anyone to analyse legislation) is the complete wrong approach.
[I should mention that these research staff do a heck of a lot more than just analysing legislation, the above is just an example of one of the negative impacts of cutting this funding]
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Is this funding ‘per annum’ or for the full 3 year period ? I have a feeling that this is an annual cost to us.
Vote: