KEY POINTS:
The Speaker's tour party, criticised as being a "last hurrah" for four retiring MPs, leaves today for Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Four of the five MPs on the tour are retiring from politics at the election.
They are the Speaker herself, Margaret Wilson, Labour MP Marian Hobbs and National MPs Katherine Rich and Brian Connell.
The fifth member of the delegation is New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown.
When details of the trip were reported last month, Ms Hobbs agreed it was a "last hurrah" for the retiring MPs.
However, party leaders argued it made no sense to send MPs who would be needed for campaigning in the lead-up to the election.
Ms Wilson clearly had to go, because it is a Speaker's tour.
Ms Hobbs also got into trouble for not knowing what the trip was for.
"I don't know too much about the purpose. I think it's about MMP. I'm not sure," she said last month.
Ms Wilson said the purpose of the trip was to build on parliamentary relationships by extending understanding of other Parliament's electoral systems.
The delegation also planned to increase knowledge about New Zealand in the host countries while exploring opportunities for economic and cultural exchanges.
Ms Wilson said cultural links already existed as a result of migrants and refugees from Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary coming to New Zealand.
New Zealand has a working holiday scheme with the Czech Republic.
The delegation would lend its support to working holiday agreements with Poland and Hungary.
In Hungary, the MPs would visit Varpalota to support a New Zealand company at a ground breaking ceremony for a new plant.
The investment by Fletcher Building, through its subsidiary AHI Roofing, was the largest New Zealand investment of its kind in Hungary, and New Zealand's largest investment in a manufacturing facility in Europe for many years, Ms Wilson said.
In Warsaw, the delegation would visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and lay a wreath. Ms Wilson said she would lay a wreath and speak at an Anzac Day ceremony at the Prague War Cemetery.
Meetings had been confirmed with the President and the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, the President of Hungary and the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
The MPs would meet the speakers of the Parliaments in each country, as well as select committees including those dealing with foreign affairs, constitutional and judicial matters, employment and labour issues.
They would meet parliamentary friendship groups in Poland and the Czech Republic and would explore establishing such a group in Hungary.
Meetings with the mayor and governor of Varpalota and Prague's deputy mayor also had been scheduled.
The MPs would go to Krakow to the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The delegation returns on May 2.
Other retiring MPs making swansong trips are Labour MP Dover Samuels and Green MP Nandor Tanczos _ to an International Parliamentary Union conference in South Africa _ and National MP Mark Blumsky, to Europe for a two-week seminar on inter-government relations.
- NZPA
