KEY POINTS:
The hard word has been put on top public servants over taxpayer-funded air miles, but high-flying MPs aren't about to have their wings clipped.
Guidelines reiterating that civil servants should give up airpoints earned while on work business have been outlined in a new report from the auditor-general. However, self-styled perk-buster Act leader Rodney Hide says MPs, after much to-ing and fro-ing, are still free to use theirs.
It is estimated MPs earn, on average, enough airpoints during a three-year term to "pay" for a trip to Europe. In the 2005-06 year, $9.85 million was set aside for domestic air and land travel and international air travel for current and former MPs, their spouses or partners and children. Hide says he has used his points in the past to upgrade parliamentary trips overseas, as have other MPs.
However, Controlling Sensitive Expenditure, a "good practice" guideline for public entities, makes it clear that if receiving "prizes" (including airpoints) from loyalty reward schemes could be conceived as inappropriate, then they should be declined. "Sensitive expenditure" is spending that could be seen to give some private benefit - such as overseas travel, accommodation and hospitality spending - to a staff member.
Because public sector leaders and senior managers "set the tone at the top", they needed general guidelines on when such spending could be made, Auditor-General Kevin Brady says in the guideline's foreword.
Airpoints are earned by the person named on the ticket, regardless of who pays for the flight, and it is general policy that any points earned by public servants during their work become the property of their employer and are used to offset future departmental travel. It is "expected" that unused airpoints either remain the property of the department when a staff member leaves or are sold back to the individual at market rates.
Similar recommendations are written into the Public Service Code of Conduct, which states public servants should ensure that loyalty programme perks are kept separate from work-related purchasing decisions. But MPs - who, along with their spouses and often their children, get free domestic airfares and subsidised international travel, and are automatically members of Air New Zealand's airpoints programme - continue to flout the rules.
Rodney Hide, describing the issue as "vexed", said it came to a head six years ago when the Parliamentary Services Commission abandoned previous policy and agreed to let outgoing MPs keep their airpoints. Two months later, after an outcry from the Greens, the decision was reversed, and MPs were asked to sign a form waiving the perk. However, in February last year, commission members agreed it was impossible to determine where MPs earned their airpoints, and there was another u-turn. While MPs were expected to use airpoints for work-related travel, whether they did or not was up to the individual, Hide said.
"Technically, it is recommended you use your airpoints as much as possible to save the taxpayer money. But to be honest, that has fallen somewhat into abeyance because it was never enforceable and it was [the late Green MP] Rod Donald who had always pushed it. No one else was much interested. If someone decides not to play along, you can't do a lot about it... an MP can't have a boss, in a sense - it's the electorate - so there are problems of accountability when it comes to allowances because there's no one actually standing over them." Hide had used his airpoints in the past to upgrade on international flights and to cover a work-related trip to Berlin and Belfast last year.
Rose Hart from the office of the Speaker said members of the Parliamentary Services Commission last year agreed that the previous system - where airpoints were supposed to be surrendered - was unmanageable and not enforceable.
"They are encouraged to use them on parliamentary business, but they no longer have to surrender them when they leave. It is almost impossible to determine where MPs earn airpoints these days, or whether they are earned in a public or private capacity. You can get them when you buy a domestic appliance, or you pay your rates, or insurance. Air travel is only one way."
Hart said individuals' airpoints could not be given away and expired within four to five years. MPs, like everyone else, can decline them.
Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons was furious when told by the Herald on Sunday that the waiver no longer applied.
She was unaware that it was among the changes made last year regarding parliamentary travel and was "still under the impression" that they had to be given back. All Greens had pledged to give up their airpoints when they left Parliament.
"I think it is incredibly important people paid by taxpayers are not turning work to private profit," she said.
