Lockwood Smith in MP expenses backdown

Speaker Lockwood Smith. File photo / Mark Mitchell

Speaker Lockwood Smith has caved in to pressure to release MPs' spending on their travel perks after political parties rebelled against his initial stance by releasing their own expenses.

Today Dr Smith re-issued the last quarter's expense disclosure with the cost of MPs' travel perks included again.

He said he would continue to include the costs of that travel in the future.

In a statement he said he had released the full set of expenses because of confusion created by the decision of some parties to release their own expenses.

Dr Smith had decided last week that he would subtract any spending by individual MPs on their international travel discounts - ranging from 25 per cent to 90 per cent depending on length of service. He had also subtracted 45 per cent of the travel costs by MPs' partners and five per cent of the MPs' own domestic travel costs - the proportion of which is considered to be personal travel, rather than Parliamentary related.

Although he argued it was because MPs had effectively paid for the perks themselves by forfeiting a higher salary to get them, it was the MPs who rebelled against his decision to stop releasing the expenses.

The Greens and Labour released their own full expenses yesterday and National and other parties were expected to follow suit.

Dr Smith had expressed concern that MPs were effectively giving up almost $10,000 of their base salary because of the perk but were too nervous to use it because of public scrutiny. He said he would now continue to release expenses as before, but would consider more fully the link between MPs entitlements - which he decides on - and their base salary which is decided by the Remuneration Authority.