Murray McCully's taxpayer-funded pissups

Today was the last day of Parliament before the election, so naturally the government used it as cover to dump the quarterly Ministerial expenses reports. The media picked up pretty quickly on Tim Groser's $300 dinner of foie gras, (endangered) Chilean Sea Bass, and a $95 bottle of Central Otago pinot noir, perhaps because it was on the first page. meanwhile, I've been wading through Murray McCully's receipts - all 197 pages of them. McCully's a serial offender, with a habit of putting vast quantities of booze on the taxpayer's tab. Sadly, he hasn't changed a bit. Right there at the beginning (on page 6) we have him billing us to drink Absolut Vodka in his lonely hotel room. And it all goes downhill from there...

Ministers have developed several tricks over the last few years to hide dubious expenditure. Last time, they simply "lost" detailed receipts for expensive dinners, perhaps because they knew what we'd think of what they showed. McCully has a new strategy: charging it all to his room. His hotel bills are full of large charges for Hotel restraunts, far more than normal. And we know he's not eating in them, because he frequently presents receipts for boozy delegation dinners on exactly the same day. He's also not dining with his staff, because they're billing their own meals separately.

In one case (p. 24), he racks up more than US$1,000 of "bar/restaurant" charges in a single night, with no explanation to the taxpayer of what its going on.

In another case (in Trinidad), he spends twice as much on booze as he does on his room, but calls it "accommodation expenses".

He's also started dumping his drinking bills on MFAT, as this receipt shows.

The meals that we do see show a large amount of expenditure on alcohol. In Singapore, he has some crab-burgers and $200 of booze, and calls it a delegation "dinner". At Millbrook Resort in Queenstown he catches a quick "lunch" with his PPS: $71 of food, and $172 of wine.

And remember, we're paying for this.

This isn't acceptable. No private business would let its staff drink on expenses like this, and we shouldn't either. If McCully wants a piss-up, he can pay for it out of his $268,500 salary.

(I should note that once again, other Ministers were overwhelmingly responsible in how they spent public money. With the exception of McCully, transparency appears to have significantly improved Ministerial behaviour).

The benefits of transparency

Ministerial expenses were released today, and as usual, I spent an hour trawling through the credit card statements hoping to find evidence of Ministers rorting us. So what did I find?

Nothing. No $1,000 a night luxury hotel rooms. No enormous piss-ups on the taxpayer's tab. No drinking away our money in the middle of the night in a lonely hotel room. And no Ministerial porn. The worst I can find is a $1,000 dinner held by Tim Groser which (as usual) has no detailed receipt (without which its difficult to judge whether he was extravagant or not), and that Todd McClay likes to have a kit-kat bar for breakfast every day.

This is the benefit of transparency: it improves behaviour. If you watch the scum, they stop rorting us. Simple.

Ministerial expenses

So, right after the failure of the Meridian share offer, the government has dumped its Ministerial expenses. Highlights:

• Maurice Williamson's [p 9] $137.50 three-course dinner for one in Dunedin, including a full bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. I guess it just gets lonely down there...
  
• John Key [p 13] spent $110 on very expensive skin-care products, tagged as "NZ skin care for protocol officer". Was it a gift? Because if it wasn't, it seems extravagant. Not to mention odd.
  
• Jonathan Coleman's [p 9] $1500 a night stay at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore (his private secretary was exiled to the servant's quarters at a mere $500 a night). I expect Ministers to stay somewhere reasonable when they travel, but this is simply insane; even the Prime Minister only gets a $500 / night room when he travels. There's also the $93 lunch bill, which doesn't include his minion because they billed for two lunches of their own on the same day.
  
• Murray McCully's boozing. ~$50 on "room service wine" in Cairo. A dinner in Singapore (itemised on his hotel bill) which spent ~NZ$165 on food and ~NZ$135 on beverages. A ~NZ$400 diner in PNG with another ~NZ$280 on booze (classified as "accommodation and meals for MFA and 2 P/S"). A similar pattern in Port Vila, with ~NZ$150 on food, and ~NZ$120 on booze. I don't begrudge a Minister a glas sof wine with their meal, but when its that proprortion of a large dinner bill, it looks like a habit. He's also in the luxury hotel scam, paying ~NZ$1250 for a night in the Grand Papua in Port Moresby.
  
• And then there's Tim Groser. What we have from him is bad enough - foie gras on the taxpayer (so he's the Minister of Animal Cruelty), obviously different minibar expenses hand-labelled "mineral water", and Heinekin with everything. But it's what we don't have that's interesting. Oddly, every time Minister Groser has an expensive meal somewhere, he loses the detailed receipt, and only keeps the till receipt with the costs (which are inevitably over NZ$100 a head). He also misreports trips to posh Parisian restaurants where he spends hundreds of Euro of taxpayers money as "refreshments". No, Tim - "refreshments" is when you go to Starbucks, or buy a coke, or even buy green olives, hummus and (of course) a Heinekin for (presumably) a snacky lunch in the sun. When you spend 250 Euro at a sit-down place at 10pm, its called a "meal", and you give us a fucking full receipt so we can see whether we are getting value for our money, or whether you're just having a giant piss-up at our expense.
  

This is how National spends your money. You can judge at the ballot box whether its a good investment.

Abusing Ministerial office for self advancement

Last week we learned that the Minister of Trade negotiations, Tim Groser, had spent almost $250,000 of taxpayer's money promoting himself for his bid to head the WTO. That bid has now failed, but the entire thing is a perfect example of why the public are distrustful of politicians and their spending: while there are legitimate expenses involved with being a Minister, trying to set yourself up for a post-political career isn't one of them. The expenditure was for personal purposes, not official Ministerial ones. As such, it is outside the appropriation, arguably unlawful, and should be repaid.

And while we're at it, we've been paying Groser $250,000 a year to represent us in international trade negotiations, a job he has been neglecting for his own personal advancement. That needs to stop as well. We pay Ministers and MPs the big money because we expect them to represent us. If they don't want to do that job, they should do the decent thing and resign - not continue to serve in name only so they can spend our money on boosting their own careers.

(Meanwhile, it looks like its time for the quarterly trawl to see which Ministers have been abusing their expense accounts...)