Kiwibank have dropped their interest rates - a clear indication that smiling and waving and voting yourself some more housing money has not been good enough to keep the recovery on track in NZ.
Red Alert
Posts Tagged ‘perks’
$985/week tax cut
Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 20th, 2010If you have earnings of $1m / annum you get – according to the government – a tax cut of $985 per week.
How can that be fair.
Register of Pecuniary Interests
Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 19th, 2010The Register of Pecuniary Interests was published yesterday.
Most important are the assets which are hidden in trusts and behind nominee companies.
My view is while we have made some progress towards transparency we have a way to go yet. Especially important for Ministers who make decisions on a regular basis that might be seen to benefit them or their families.
John Key on wages
Posted by Chris Hipkins on May 4th, 2010In May last year John Key made these comments on wage growth:
“We will be looking at wage moderation across the state sector at all angles…Clearly the more pressures there are on wages the more difficult it will be for departmental managers to keep current staffing levels…restraint is going to be necessary right across the public sector.”
So is John Key living up to his own standards, or is this just a rule for everyone else? Consider these facts:
- As of June 2009 the number of staff working in the Beehive earning over $100,000 a year had doubled since the same time in 2008 when Labour was in government
- 16 ministerial staff received a pay rise in 2009, yet Key is refusing to release any information about them
Why does John Key think that those working in ministerial offices should be subject to different standards to those working in the rest of the public sector? Or does he just believe that there should be one rule for himself and another for everyone else?
Note: I haven’t asked Key to provide any information that would identify individual staff. I’ve simply asked what % increase the staff got and what salary bands they were in. Perhaps Key just thinks the answer is too embarrassing?
You can’t just smile and wave John – managing interest conflicts is your job
Posted by Trevor Mallard on April 6th, 2010Over the last week while being questioned by Russell Norman John Key has asserted that whether or not a conflict of interest exists is a matter for a Minister to decide.
Well bad news John it isn’t. There is a process and you are responsible both for that process working properly and detailed arrangements for managing conflicts that flow from it.
The case in point, if the facts as alleged by Norman are accurate, is a pretty clear cut one. David Carter as a farmer in Canterbury has a case currently before Ecan to increase his water rights and therefore the value of his land. He takes part in the Cabinet debate and decision to scrap Ecan and short circuit the system for the decision relating to his farm. About as obvious a conflict as one could get and certainly well over the perceived conflict test.
Why do we have rules – the Cabinet Office Manual puts it pretty well:-
And how does the system work in practise:-
the management of any conflicts that are identified is agreed between the Prime Minister and the Minister concerned, with advice as required from the Cabinet Office.
So John you can’t just smile and wave and say it is up to your Ministers. The Cabinet Office, the rules and their implementation has one person responsible to parliament – it is you.
Will Key ever answer questions?
Posted by Chris Hipkins on February 9th, 2010Parliament resumes today after the summer recess. Hopefully that will prompt John Key to finally stump up with answers to the Written Parliamentary Questions I put to him before Christmas. I asked him 67 questions late last year. In all cases he said he couldn’t give me an answer within the 6 days required by the written questions system, but he assured me I’d get the information as soon as possible.
It’s now 8 weeks since I asked the questions, but alas no answers have arrived. The questions were legitimate questions asking him to account for the spending of his ministers at a time when they were telling us all to tighten our belts.
We saw last year that National Ministers do not practice what they preach on fiscal responsibility and the public deserves to know what they are spending, e.g. the Bill English rort to finance his family home and the last minute changes to let ministers use self-drive cars meant to help them serve their electorates in Wellington.
Labour answered these types of questions when asked by a National Opposition so what is Key hiding?
Here is a quick summary of the topics that I asked Key about:
- Pay rises for staff working in Ministerial offices (remember other public servants have a wage freeze)
- Use of VIP cars during National’s first year in office
- Refurbishment costs for ministerial offices
- Spending on gifts, beer, wine and spirits by ministers
- Purchase of self-drive vehicles and related issues
- Issues relating to Key’s changes to ministerial housing allowances
John Key talks a lot about transparency and accountability but it is all talk. The reality is neither he nor his ministers think that the rules that apply to others apply to them. Key’s ongoing refusal to answer basic written parliamentary questions just proves that.
Ministers splash out on new self-drive cars
Posted by Chris Hipkins on January 5th, 2010In another bold (if not unsurprising) display of hypocrisy, the new National-led government splashed out on a bunch of new self-drive cars upon taking up office. Figures obtained under the Official Information Act show that National purchased 20 new self-drive cars following the election at an average cost of $44,501, a total spend of $890,031.
By comparison in 2005 the then Labour government purchased 15 self-drive cars at an average cost of about $37,500. Between 2006 and the 2008 election, 17 cars were purchased at an average cost of just over $40,000.
So why the significant increase in the average cost of cars? It can’t be because car prices are going up. Stats NZ figures show car prices remained static during that period and demand was lower, so it really should have been a buyer’s market.
It’s yet another example of the National-led government living the high life while they tell hard-working Kiwis to tighten their belts and prepare for more cuts to public services.
I’ve asked John Key more questions about self-drive cars, including the latest change that allows ministers to keep them in Wellington, but alas so far he has refused to answer.
Ministers get pay rises despite freeze
Posted by Chris Hipkins on December 29th, 2009In November 2009 John Key argued that MPs and Ministers need to lead by example when it came to tightening our belts:
“As I said in January when I raised the issue with the [Remuneration] Authority, it is only right that in these changing economic times, as ordinary New Zealanders tighten their belts, MPs and Ministers must also play their part”.
However despite the rhetoric, a few weeks before Christmas, four of his ministers got a pay rise thanks to Key’s new funding regime for ministerial residences, with more of them set to benefit as they enter the new system over the next 12 months.
Based on a comparison of their previous claims and their new allowances, all four of the first ministers to enter the new regime get a tax free pay increase. Pita Sharples gets $173 per week, David Carter $204 per week, and Maurice Williamson $84 per week. It’s harder to calculate the fourth minister, Nathan Guy, because he only recently seems to have started claiming.
All of them are in the same residence that they were in as MPs and in the early part of their ministerial tenures. They previously got a parliamentary allowance based on receipts to a maximum of $24,000. They now get $30,000 with no need for receipts.
Even more ridiculous, if any of them wants to really pump up their allownace all they need to do is move house. Then their new tax-free allowance increases from $30,000 to $37,500, even if they moved into a house that was actually cheaper than their present one!
At a time when John Key and his colleagues have frozen wages for others, it’s a bit rich for them to then grant themselves a new housing allowance that amounts to more than some ordinary Kiwis would earn in a year.
The questions Rodney Hide wouldn’t answer
Posted by Phil Twyford on December 10th, 2009Those of you who were watching the House this afternoon would have seen that the Government blocked my attempt to ask questions about the Minister of Local Government’s travel.
Here are the questions he doesn’t want to answer.
Primary Question:
How much time did he spend in meetings related to his portfolio on his fact-finding mission to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada?
Supplementaries:
- When he said “I didn’t go into this trip lightly. I thought long and hard about it and knew I would have to justify it”, how did he justify spending only 13 and a half hours in meetings related to his portfolio?
- What value did the public get from him spending more time in private arrangements than in meetings related to his portfolio, given he has said “the public can judge whether they get value for money from Rodney Hide MP/Minister”?
- Did he accuse John Key of being a do-nothing Prime Minister before or after his 12 day trip to the UK, Canada and the US during which he spent half as much time in lunches and breakfasts as he did in official ministerial meetings?
Here’s what North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams had to say:
Aucklanders will be fascinated to learn that, according to the official trip diary, Rodney Hide spent around 10 hours on Auckland governance, three and a half hours on regulatory reform, four and a half hours on ACT party policy, one hour in media interviews, and seven and a half hours having breakfast and lunch with his tour party who accompanied him on the trip.
When you break it all down, the trip which is estimated to have cost over $100,000 for the Minister, his companion, and two staff members, bought the taxpayer around 19 hours of official meetings and discussions over 12 days, and Aucklanders can judge for themselves whether they got value for money.
Here is the mayor’s full press release which has Rodney Hide’s report to Cabinet on his trip.
Mayor Williams is not the Minister’s favourite person. (Perhaps less so than me.) Hide was forced to withdraw and apologise in question time after calling the mayor mad.
Update: Hansard is now up.
