Editorial: MPs better get used to public eye on expenses

Parliament is hard on marriages, we hear. We hear it every time an elected member issues a notice of separation. It seems a kindness to say it. But now that it is being said in defence of members' accommodation and travel perks, we should seriously question this easy claim that there is something uniquely inimical to marriage in the parliamentary water.

Speaker Lockwood Smith is refusing to reveal the cost of subsidised trips overseas by MPs and their partners because, he says, it would put too much pressure on their marriages. "I will hold that line very, very forcefully," he said in the Weekend Herald. The disclosure, he said, would make spouses feel they should not go. "It is that simple, and that's wrong."

If it is that simple, maybe it is not wrong. If spouses feel they should not go if the expense becomes publicly known, it is an admission their presence cannot be justified. People in the private sector who travel overseas in the course of their work do not routinely take their partners. There is not much point if the journey is for business rather than pleasure. The presence of partners on MPs' subsidised international trips amounts to an admission that they serve little public purpose beyond giving the couple a generously subsidised escape.

Is Parliament really so poisonous to healthy marriages that the taxpayers ought to provide unusual compensations? It is not the only industry that routinely takes people away from home for several nights a week. Fishing, film-making, commercial travelling and many others are equally or more demanding of time away from home. And most of them are not as visible to the public as Parliament. In that fishbowl there are pressures reinforcing relationships that would seem to balance the pressures threatening them.

Public life carries its own obligations and compensations. One of the primary obligations is to be exemplary and the compensations come in the form of public recognition rather than monetary reward. Exemplary status means that a member sacrifices some privacy. Some of our MPs are learning this lesson the hard way with the increased transparency of their accommodation and travel allowances.

Labour's high-spending traveller and former Education Minister Chris Carter tried to duck media questions for too long last week. He finally faced reporters and later accused them of unusual interest in his travel because his partner, who he said often accompanied him, is the same sex. It was of course the amount of Mr Carter's spending that drew attention. A heterosexual who headed Labour's list would be under just as much pressure to explain the bills.

The retirement travel perks are particularly attractive to MPs, according to Dr Smith, because the subsidy increases with length of service and their salaries do not. Their salaries do increase, of course, if they are good enough to get into a ministerial role in government. If they are not good enough, or are not in a party that can put them in office, their salary should not increase and nor should their retirement travel subsidies.

All their allowances, for accommodation and travel, ought to be no more or less than they need to do their job. The allowances are not compensations for supposedly inadequate salaries. Their alternative earning capabilities, like the threat to their marriages, is a convenient myth in most cases. There is no shortage of applicants for their job and no mention of marital needs when they apply for it.

They can stand far more exposure of personal expenses and now that it has begun, they had better get used to it.