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Jetsetting Auckland City councillors have spent nearly $160,000 of public money this year alone on trips to far-flung locations such as Glasgow and Fukuoka.
The council spent a further $42,000 in its first year in office - racking up a total of $202,000 in two years, dwarfing the $92,300 spent by the previous John Banks-led council in an entire three-year term. Before that, just $58,000 was spent on travel during Christine Fletcher's mayoral term.
After fierce public criticism and harsh words in the Town Hall chambers, the council introduced a raft of changes to curb councillors' spending and to hold them accountable for any overseas travel.
In a recent report, chief executive David Rankin reviewed the rules and recommended that:
* All international travel be approved by the council finance committee; and
* Councillors justify the trip in greater detail beforehand and provide cost estimates.
Rankin also questioned the timing and quality of reports once councillors returned to New Zealand.
As an international city, Rankin said, Auckland needed to learn from the mistakes and triumphs of other cities, and he highlighted Brisbane as a benchmark.
Until now, councillors could plan and approve their own travel as part of a committee, and they voted in 2005 to travel business class on flights longer than seven hours.
As one would expect of Auckland's mayor, Dick Hubbard was the most frequent flyer, visiting Cape Town, Fukuoka and Busan this year at a cost of $43,163.
Deputy Mayor Dr Bruce Hucker clocked up the second-highest number of air points in 2006 and spent more than $30,000 on jaunts to Perth, Melbourne, Fukuoka and Glasgow.
When Hucker and another senior councillor, Scott Milne, visited Glasgow in October, the trip cost ratepayers a combined $25,835.
Hucker has also planned to visit China in March as part of an "education and tourism mission". A budget has yet to be set for the trip.
A month-long junket through North America and Europe by senior City Vision councillors Vern Walsh and Penny Sefuiva, plus two council officers, cost $85,000 and raised the ire of homeowners hit by 13.4 per cent rates rises.
Five months after returning from visiting museums, sports stadiums and art galleries, Walsh and Sefuiva produced a 14-page report - amounting to roughly $6000 a page - on what they had learned, which included the idea of introducing parking fees in malls and a hotel beds tax. That trip was the catalyst for Rankin's review of overseas travel policy after a heated council debate in August. Fellow councillors criticised the pair for producing a report that was "padded out", or nothing more than "motherhood and apple pie".
Auckland Regional Council spent $16,200 on travel, North Shore City $25,000 and Waitakere City $39,412 in the 18-month period to April this year.
