Thursday, May 17, 2012



An interesting question

Why are we paying for Murray McCully to stay in hotels in Auckland?

According to his latest Ministerial credit card receipts [PDF, p. 12], we paid for McCully to spend two nights at the Heritage Hotel in Auckland. The expense is justified as "accommodation during RWC". This would be entirely uncontentious, except for one thing: McCully represents an Auckland electorate, and I am informed he is on the electoral roll there. Which means he has a home of his own to go to in Auckland. So again, why the hotel?

As rorts go, its a small one; its not as if he's being paid tens of thousands of dollars a year to live in his own home in Wellington. But its still unacceptable. Ministers are given credit cards to cover actual, reasonable and necessary expenses - not because they feel like spending a night of luxury on the taxpayer, or just can't be arsed driving home.