Yesterday the travel expenses of MPs were released. I blogged about the differences in travel between scum List MPs and real MPs. After that the tipline ran hot pointing out to me a reason why one scum List MP has such a massive travel bill.
By way comparison Maryan Street lives in Nelson, as does Nick Smith. For domestic travel Maryan Street spent $15,032 for the first quarter of this year and Nick Smith spent $8150 from Ministerial Services (travel for work as a minister) and $6079 from Parliamentary Services (travel for spouses and children). This is astonishing that two MPs from the same area have such different spending for domestic travel. One a minister of the crown and a vastly higher work load than a scum List MP has actually spent less on domestic travel than the scum list MP.
This is highlighted even more when you compare two scum List MPs, David Shearer and Maryan Street. My Little Pony, Jacinda Ardern lives in Auckland and her travel bill was almost identical to Maryan Street’s. David Shearer, a real MP from Auckland, spent just $5145 on domestic air travel.
Hmmmm….something isn’t right here. I decided to look at all the figures available for Maryan Street.
Jan 1 – 30 June 2009 (6 months) – $34,842
1 July – 30 Sep 2009 – $21,663
1 Oct – 31 Dec 2009 – $10,950
1 Jan -31 March 2010 – $15,032
Total (15 months) – $82,487
I then looked at Air New Zealand’s website to check how much a return airfare between Wellington and Nelson is. A flexi-plus airfare at popular business travel times is between $166 and $201 one way. I’ve averaged it out to arrive at a figure of $367.00 for a return flight. That means that Maryan Street has used 224 return flights against her account for 15 months. Or an average of 15 flights per month. Except the figures don’t show the real travel when looking at averages.
Jan 1 – 30 June – 15.8 flights per month
1 July – 30 Sep 2009 – 19.6 flights per month
1 Oct – 31 Dec 2009 – 9.9 flights per month
1 Jan -31 March 2010 – 13.6 flights per month
Now most MPs I know fly to Wellington on Monday night and return Thursday night and only when parliament is sitting but let’s be generous and assume 1 return flight per week even for weeks when parliament isn’t sitting. That should mean that over 15 months Maryan Street by travelling at the absolute minimum would have had just 60 flights instead of the 224 flights she has racked up against her Parliamentary Services account. Even is she travels twice a week that only gets us to 120 flights. There are about 450 days in 15 months so Maryan Street is charging return flights to Nelson to her account almost every second day. Surely not?
Miss Clark’s former chief press secretary, Kathryn Street, has left for fulltime university study.
Maryan Street’s wife Kathryn Street is studying full-time at University. Good for her. I wonder though if she is studying at Victoria University? There doesn’t seem to be any Universities in Nelson and the closest would be Victoria University. Nice to have a partner who can pay for the commute, means you can stay in your own house instead of doing what every other student from Nelson would have to do and live in Wellington.
This is seriously taking great liberties with the intent of parliamentary travel for spouses and I would hazard a suggestion that this in fact should be called a rort. The taxpayers are coughing up about half of Maryan Street’s travel bill so that her wife can attend university. I certainly don’t think that is on. Remember too that Maryan Street is a scum List MP so there is zero reason for her to commute anyway. The troughing must end.
