Editorial: End of travel perk is just the start

MP Pansy Wong. File photo / Brett Phibbs

It comes as little surprise that Pansy Wong has been cleared of deliberately abusing her Parliamentary travel entitlement. An independent report has concluded that the Botany MP's breach of the rules to the tune of $474 was "largely unintentional and inadvertent".

Her resignation from Cabinet cost the administration a conscientious and respected minister and there should be room for her to return. But her fall from grace sparked what should have happened long ago: an end to the perk by which MPs - and ex-MPs elected before 1999 - enjoyed subsidised private travel.

PM John Key asked the Speaker to abolish the perk on the grounds that it undermined public confidence in the institution of Parliament. That much has been obvious for the two years that this newspaper has been calling for an end to the entitlement; it has seemed steadily more obscene as economic conditions worsened and as MPs helped themselves ever more brazenly to their entitlements.

Act leader Rodney Hide, a vociferous self-described perkbuster, took his girlfriend to Hawaii and the UK; his fellow Act MP Sir Roger Douglas went around the world to see the grandkids and brushed aside questions about it; and gross use of the perk was in large part to blame for the demise of Labour's Chris Carter.

More remains to be done. As ordinary Kiwis battle through the economic downturn, they do not take kindly to MPs' coyness about the entire system. We support the call by Green MP Metiria Turei who wants an independent review of all MPs' expenses and allowances.

No one expects every coffee and sandwich to be receipted and annotated. But Parliament has some way to go before it measures up to the standard of accountability required for the spending of public money in times like these.