Matt McCarten: The biggest bludgers are in our Parliament

Sir Roger Douglas is defensive about his $44,000 in expenses. Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

Our MPs would have been embarrassed when details of their expenses were published on Friday, as the result of this newspaper's campaign for transparency.

I particularly enjoyed the defensiveness of Sir Roger Douglas when sprung about running up $44,000 of our hard-earned taxes on overseas holidays.

The best excuse he could come up with was that he was entitled to it as a previous trade-off for wage increases when he was first an MP.

What Sir Roger doesn't disclose is that MPs were once linked to the salary of a school deputy principal. They manipulated ways to inflate their salary package - rubber-stamped by the Remuneration Authority - to disguise their deception. And now an MP's package is triple what it was.

You'd think that Sir Roger's sense of entitlement to our taxes would have been satisfied once his cronies awarded him a knighthood. After all, other retirees are expected to be grateful for a gold watch when they toddle off.

Obviously different rules apply to Lord Roger of Manurewa.

Not only is he receiving the gold-plated pension as a former MP, he is also collecting the ordinary superannuation the rest of us get. But he does better than double-dip, because he is also receiving a full perk-laden list MP package of nearly $180,000 a year.

It's ironic, I think, that Sir Roger vigorously opposed MMP on the basis that list MPs would be hacks, collecting big salaries with no responsibilities. He is now a caricature of the welfare gluttony he once railed against.

It seems to me, any objective analysis would anoint Sir Roger the biggest bludger in Parliament.

His parliamentary pension, superannuation pension, list MP's salary, knighthood and free business-class trips to London to visit his grown children must make him the taxpayer-funded, piggy-in-the-trough extraordinaire.

I can't wait for perk-buster Rodney Hide to demand a full investigation of this great swindle. After all, Sir Roger didn't get his retirement job as an Act list MP on his own merits - he rode in on someone else's canary coat tails.

Some of the other MPs' expenses are dubious as well. They only get away with it because they make their own rules about their entitlements. For example, how is it that MPs can buy a house in Wellington and expect the taxpayer to pay the mortgage interest? MPs' allowances require no receipts and are paid as lump sum amounts - effectively a tax-dodge that no ordinary citizen would get away with.

And the mere fact an MP's spouse has unlimited travel to and from anywhere in New Zealand would not be tolerated by any other employer.

It is well-known that some of these spouses carry out private business using this entitlement. Add in the unlimited taxi chits, phone calls and gold-plated superannuation, and it adds up to a very healthy remuneration package they wouldn't receive in a comparable, private-sector job. Don't believe me? Then explain to me what a list MP actually does.

But Parliament has always been an elitist club where MPs set their own rules and their own realities. Until they disclose all the details of their remuneration package - including perks, staff and support - taxpayers will never get the transparency to which we are entitled.

We are their employer, and it is a cheek that our parliamentary employees believe they can set their own disclosure rules. But the old hands in Parliament are well-versed at hiding the way that they rort us.

Sir Roger's old nemesis, Jim Anderton, collects a bigger salary and a support budget of about $200,000 a year as a party leader, even though he's a parliamentary party of one and has told what's left of his party members to join the Labour Party. He's a Labour MP in every sense and, in my opinion, only remains a separate entity on paper so he can claim more of our tax money.

Many would have been offended by this week's published MP expenses - but these are only the tip of the iceberg. This disclosure is a step in the right direction, but the sad truth is that we have a long way to go to discover the full extent of this thievery.