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The Beehive and Parliament - Source: ONE News -
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Representative democracy costs money.
Let's be clear about that from the start. If we don't offer MPs a reasonably generous pay package we will be ruled only by the power hungry, the stupid and the rich. And not necessarily in that order. Pay peanuts, get monkeys, as they say. And I for one don't want monkeys steering the ship. It's easy to slam MPs - and some are worthy, don't get me wrong, but most are well-intended and pretty sharp.
There's also a level of complexity in this issue. For a start, we want local MPs keeping in touch with local voters. They're expected to be at the local bowling club do... at the school sports day... at the gallery opening... and so on. That means flying in and out of Wellington quite a bit.
Look at Chris Carter, whose spending as a Minister has been the focus of media attention in the past few days. His portfolios included education and ethnic affairs. Is it a good thing for the Minister of Education to get around every school to understand local issues? Isn't it par for the course that the Ethnic Affairs Minister gets invited to every cultural day going? Would we rather MPs sat in Wellington in their offices getting captured by officials and cut off from voters?
MPs are suffering from a gap that has grown up in the past decade or two; while most of us have seen double-time become time-and-a-half or nothing, days in lieu evaporate and other perks negotiated away, MPs have retained their privileges. So we feel hard done by in comparison.
But look at it from the other side. Isn't work-life balance something we all pine for? Maybe private companies in this country should do more in that regard, rather than us pushing for parliament to do less.
This isn't as simple as it looks.
It's only logical that if we value public service and the decisions made on behalf of the nation, then our leaders should be amongst the best paid in our society. We expect a lot from them, so they should be well paid in return.
But what MPs must realise is that such an argument works in reverse as well; because they are so well paid and cared for, we have every right to have high expectations. At the very least, we should be able to expect complete transparency into how they spend our tax dollars.
In many ways we do.
The Official Information Act allows us to probe into all kinds of government spending and I've been doing a bit of that over at Pundit recently. The exception is parliament, including MPs' expenses. And the move this week, thanks in large part to pressure by Act and the Greens, to release a quarterly declaration of MPs' expenses simply isn't enough. We need to know not just what is spent, but how it is spent.
A complete overhaul is now the only way to reassure the public, after this week's shenanigans. National's quick-fire look at housing costs won't cut it.
Having said that, there will need to be some boundaries put around whatever new level of accountability to choose. Do we really want MPs wasting our tax dollars justifying every phone call and each paper clip?
