Dialogue: Pity more of us didn't hear that little voice

By JOHN ROUGHAN

When arid scholars write about the functions of Parliament they nearly always miss a most important one. The morality play.

Parliament is Shortland Street for real. When a member faces one of the common dilemmas of life it resonates in people, bringing in the letters and radio calls, though many, who probably duck moral dilemmas in their own lives, complain that MPs should get on with more important things.

In Parliament, unlike the theatre, real people face real personal choices in the public eye, and there can be real consequences for them if the audience is not satisfied at the end.

Unlike a playwright, Parliament resolves moral questions more or less democratically.

Should people going about public (or company) business retain air points for personal use? (Do you? Can you justify it?)

Can you do your job objectively if it may have implications for the work of your spouse? Is it fair to assume others cannot?

And what should be done with Phillida Bunkle? If you could commute from Waikanae and were told you were entitled to an allowance intended for those who needed a bed in Wellington on a few nights a week, would you take it? I'd like to think the people elected to Parliament are the types who wouldn't.

Morality is not as heavy a word as it seems. As one given to arguing the virtues of providing profitable services to voluntary consumers, I long ago grew accustomed to charges of moral deficiency - and weary of hearing of the moral superiority of the welfare state.

So it was richly amusing to read Sandra Coney in the Sunday Star-Times on the subject of the allowance paid to Phillida Bunkle. Coney castigated Herald parliamentary reporter Audrey Young for suggesting that while the payments had been ruled legitimate, their "morality" (Coney's quotes) remained in question. What kind of journalistic standard is that, she demanded.

A valid and very important standard, I would suggest. Morality might be defined as what one ought to do, as distinct from what one is allowed to do.

It might be a surprise to Ms Bunkle, Ms Coney and many others that not everybody in this country regards a claim on the public purse as morally neutral, a matter merely of rules and entitlements. Hope springs eternal that people might treat public funds as a limited commodity and take only what they feel they need and deserve.

It would be helpful if members of Parliament gave that example. Their performance in the national morality play is as important as much of the legislation they pass.

Two MPs, Ms Bunkle and Marian Hobbs, were banished from the ministry for accepting out-of-town allowances while they were claiming residence in Wellington Central for the 1999 election.

Since then, their allowance claims have been cleared by the Auditor-General, who ruled they had acted reasonably on the advice of Parliament's officials.

But he added that MPs should be aware of the risk that any allowances they claim might be regarded by the public as "inappropriate." That, in weak, tentative official speak, is the point.

Upon her rehabilitation this week, Ms Hobbs confessed that she had had some conscience qualms in receiving the allowance after gravitating from Christchurch to Wellington. Even when officers at Parliament assured her she was still within the rules, she says, "I just worried about it. I thought: 'Oh gee, I'm not quite sure this is kosher'."

That will do me. Moral lapses are not a hanging offence. She at least observes a higher standard than the letter of the law, even if she did not act on it or admit her misgivings publicly until she was reinstated. But somehow we knew all along.

As a minister Ms Hobbs has been honest to a fault. When she didn't know an answer to a question, she said so. When confused, she made it obvious.

Before coming to Parliament she ran a school where you admitted your weaknesses to find support. Now she is in an older school where weaknesses are exploited by the Opposition and jeered from the press gallery.

But what of Ms Bunkle, whose fate awaits a verdict on her electoral residency? Did the thought cross her mind, "Oh gee, I'm not quite sure this is kosher"? Everything she has said so far suggests that if it is within the rules, that is the end of the story for her, just as it is for Coney.

It is a classic clash of morality and legality, one that everybody faces periodically, reminiscent of the case a few years ago of two Northland circuit judges accused of claiming allowances for nights when they had driven back home.

One, Robert Hesketh, felt guilty, pleaded guilty and was duly found guilty. The other, Martin Beattie, did not feel guilty and, therefore, in law applying in the case he was not guilty. As far as he was concerned he was entitled to the allowance, legally and morally.

There is a moral outlook that makes no distinction between law and morality. It holds that if something is permitted there is no reason not to do it. Conversely, if something is against the law it is deeply, morally wrong to do it.

The welfare state was founded on that sort of principle. You paid higher taxes and were supposed to take every benefit you could. It fiercely discouraged people from asking whether their circumstances really needed or deserved the assistance. If it was available it was practically your civic duty to take it.

And there was a certain convoluted morality behind that. Everybody ought to take everything they could, otherwise those who did so might feel bad.

The system quickly bred a society that stopped questioning and rationing the claims on itself, and eventually governments found the courage to stop universal benefits and to try to restrict social welfare to genuine need.

But morality is slower to adjust. It is not entirely clear that even the present Government observes an ethic higher than the rules of entitlement. The fate of Phillida Bunkle may give us a clue.