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The tale of 4 MPs expenses

by Whaleoil on March 4, 2010

Mangrove NashThis is a tale about four MPs expenses. It makes for an interesting comaprison between constituency MPs and scum List MPs, and between one party with a sense of entitlement and  one without the necessity to pick the taxpayers pocket excessively.

Two MP are constituency MPs and their expenses in the last release were $12,328 and $10,969 respectively.

Two MPs are scum List MPs and their expenses are $29,703 and $26,110 respectively

What the hell are they doing to rack that much up? Why the differences? Perhaps the list MPs are Ministers? Maybe they live in different parts of the country?

The answer is perhaps not surprising but it sure is telling.

Electorate MPs: Foss 12,328, Tremain 10,969
List MPs: Barker 29,703, Nash 26,110!

Silent P BarkerNormal rules by the socialists, some are more equal than others. Preveious expense releases show the same pattern.

They all live in the same region travel on the same flights and about the same distance from Napier Airport. None are Ministers. Their expenses should be roughly the same. the only one with any excuse to be a little higher is Craig Foss being the Chair of the Finance Committee.

Turns out that some pigs really are more equal then others.

Thanks to Guido (I am but a child before his brilliance) for the idea,

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  • MIKMS

    to be fair Barker’s can be explained away in a small part by the fact he is an assistant Speaker But Nash a first term MP has absolutely no excuse, these MPs should have had expense bills certainly less than 15,000 and preferably around the 8,000 mark for Nash

  • Grizz

    “Barker is assistant speaker”

    Yes, but how does that make any difference. His duties are only necessary when parliament is sitting when he would/should otherwise be in Wellington anyway. I cannot see how this would accumulate substantially higher expenses anyway.

    As a list MP without electorate expenses, you would expenses to be less than their Hawkes Bay couterparts with an electorate to take care of.

  • Scanner

    What a crock of shit, the only one that seems to deliver value for the exorbitant amount of money spent seems to be Peter “The Pretender” Dunne, at $416 that’s about all of them should cost to run based on the output of the place.
    Great to see the black mofo in third place, he doesn’t seem to have problem chewing his way through the white mofos coin.
    As for Fool Goof he should be charged with fraud for pretending to be a party leader and chewing his way through $89k, I guess it costs plenty to wrap buses in BS messages.

  • Jamastic

    List MPs should all live in Wellington anyway.

  • http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/ Inventory2

    How can Nash, one of the lowest ranked Labour back-benchers justify an accomodation figure (in Wellington) of $9630? Does he stay at the Intercontinental? Mind you, Carmel Sepuloni is worse ($9778). Heck, even Chris “Koru Club” Carter only spends $5333 on his Wellington lodgings.

  • Chris

    Nash, Stuart 9,630 0 9,159 7,321 26,110

    These figures are for THREE months!!!!
    See the first amount is for accommodation in Wellington. that means he is paying $802.50 per week. Where is he staying?

  • jabba

    I think you should leave Nash alone. It must cost a fair bit of coin to maintain the metro look .. he is the new Winston re hair do’s and suits

  • http://nominister.blogspot.com Barnsley Bill

    And he is a weapons grade rooter by all accounts.
    A red blooded male in the labour caucus is rarer than unicorn tattoos (very rare, the only one I have ever seen is on Camerons arm, if you can call it an arm).
    We should all be encouraging mangrove. He is an oppressed minority within labour and I for one do not begrudge him his expenses.

  • Naylor

    Oh that Stuart Nash is doing well. Got a hot PR girlfriend in Auckland who will be managing his profile. Perhaps it’s all the flights to/from Auckland/Napier/Wellington to ensure he fulfills his social duties. But $26k is scandalous indeed. Perhaps he’s trying to quash those rumours that he’s a leader in waiting and quietly lobbying all the right Labour fractions. No truth to that.

  • Grizz

    What is worse. Phil Heatly charging $10 worth of MacDonalds on his Ministerial Credit Card or the taxpayer flying Stuart Nash to Auckland for a root?

  • Grizz

    “Turns out that some pigs really are more equal then others”

    Nah, it just turns out that there are some pigs who can fly.

  • Sara

    With all due respect to those that have commented, the purpose of a List MP is to act in a roving capacity representing their respective party. A constituent MP is designated to a region – their electorate. It is obvious a constituent MP would have less expenses as they are confined to a certain geographical area. List MP’s aren’t and therefore travel the country, therefore clock up more expenses. That’s the theory of how the two roles should operate. Having an additional role (assistant speaker) is irrelevant as those costs would be recorded against that budget, not a List or Constiutent MP’s budget. Not defending any of these people, just outlining the system.

  • pdm

    Given that Craig Foss lives about 50/60ks. from Napier Airport and Barker is 12/15ks away Barkers expenses are amazing.

    Does he still drive the red bus around – not the Max The Tax One but the one he used to have parked in Heretaunga Street east.

  • http://nominister.blogspot.com Barnsley Bill

    Sara, with all due respect. That is nonsense. They are lobby fodder. They should move to Wellington upon being confirmed as a list MP. Thye know where the job is before they start and name me another job that lets you live where you want but is based in a specific place. They are troughing it up at our expense. All listers.

  • Sarah Conner

    Comments are closed in the ‘interesting names’ section so I’ll ask my question here. When is the Whale going to rail against the two policemen who shot and killed Halatau Naitoko and have ‘permenant name supression’?

  • AdyBombs

    How the fuck can Labour justify nearly $20k per MP where as the government are below $15K per MP. Labour’s total is not too far short of the entire rest of Parliament put together. It’s a bloody pisstake.

  • thedeityformerlyknownasnigel6888

    The total numbers are instructive too. How many labour MPs are there again, I could have sworn there were less than National, why are they so much more expensive?

    What an interesting question. And yet so few of them have electorate responsibilities. What DO they do with all those allowances?

    Those nice green MPs seem quite expensive too don’t they?

  • MIKMS

    actually @sara many list MPs are not roving , many are failed electorate MPs who still are meant (at least according to many of them and their profile and parliamentary descriptions) to be working for the specific regions that they were engaging in before they lost or failed to claim/reclaim a seat. very few are roviing and those that are shouldn’t if they campaigned for a specific seat such as Hon. Mr Barker

  • Harpoon

    Commenters here do go on alarming.

    On accommodation:
    MPs can claim up to $24,000 per annum. That’s it. No more. Figures for the quarter for different MPs are bound to differ because of the dates on which they pay their bills. Also, it appears that MPs are allowed to consolidate their expenses over several months, instead of being bound to claim at the same time as every expense.

    On differences between Labour and National MPs:
    Would it be reasonable to assume that Nat backbenchers, none of whom are Party Spokespersons on anything, are less likely to need to travel around the country?

    On ‘scum’:
    Cam, since you regard all list MPs as scum, I know you’ll be delighted to call all of the following List MPs scum:
    David Carter, Chris Finlayson, Steven Joyce, Georgina Te Heuheu, Kate Wilkinson, Tim Groser, Jackie Blue, Tau Henare, Nicky Wagner, Katrina Shanks, Cam Calder, Aaron Gilmore, Melissa Lee, Hekie Parata, Michael Woodhouse, Paul Quinn, and Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi

  • Grizz

    Unfortunately this list does not always compare apples with apples. You will note that many National MPs, 2 Maori and 2 ACT MPs do not claim for housing. This will be because they are ministers and receive Ministerial housing. Also many Minister’s expenses will be included in Ministerial budgets and not parliamentary expenses. This gives the illusion that Government MPs are cheap compared to opposition MPs. On the other hand, it is unlikely they are double dipping, now that Bill English has been put right. A better comparison is to look at back bench MPs. On that Note, it does appear that Stuart Nash has his snout in the trough.

  • MIKMS

    you forget that that many of them just happen to be ministers…they are entitled to as leaders in our country and because of their jobs…though yes the remainder are probably acting less than ideal but of course remember MPs cannot do the same as most NZers and grab the cheapie 49$ flights , they have to fork out for the 7-10x costing flexible ones because of work, and rightly.

  • Grizz

    @Harpoon

    David Carter has one of the highest electorate majorities in the house. It Seems Northlanders love him (or hate Shane Jones). That said, he is still scum.

  • old timer

    grizz,the northland mp is John “hone” Carter.
    David Carter is port hills in canterbury.

  • crabby

    white motherfuckers!

  • giblet

    This morning’s NZ Herlad leads with a front page story of former MP/Minister/Children’s Commissioner Roger McLay being charge with numerous fraud offences invloving his travel perk as a former MP.

    It got me thinking that as an occupational group, MP’s and former MP’s must statistically be the most corrupt thieving group in the country.

    When you figure that at any one time there are only 120 MP’s, but consider how many have been caught out defrauding the taxpayer – Donna Awatere, Philida Bunkle, the taxi-chit MP thief with name suppression, the ex-MP with current name suppression charge with pokie fraud. And these are just the ones charged. What about the ones that arw within the rules – Heatley’s, Brownlee, Carter, Hide and his girlfriend, Douglas and his wife, who are not facing criminal charges.

    It seems that no matter the Party affiliation, MP’s should not be allowed to manage their own expenses. Maybe they should be bulk funded and when they use up all their funding they have to either reign and stay at home, or get to work at their own expense (like the rest of us have to do).