Turei Metiria: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Turei Metiria: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:657;Page:6034] 
11.  
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister responsible for Ministerial Services 
: Can he confirm that under his proposed new rules Government Ministers will be given a lump sum of up to $37500 a year to pay for accommodation in Wellington and will Ministers be able to pocket any of the public money they do not spend? 
Hon JOHN KEY (Minister responsible for Ministerial Services) 
: 
 In respect of the first part of the question yes but the member should note that the payment is expected to cover all the costs associated with ministerial accommodation such as rent power and other expenses. In relation to the second part of her question the member should note that the advice I received from Ministerial Services is that the average value of the current provision for ministerial accommodation is $48295 per annum so the scenario that she proposes is most unlikely as the new rates do not in most cases cover the full costs. 
Metiria Turei 
: Can the Minister guarantee to the House and to the public that none of his Ministers will pocket the extra money provided in the lump-sum payment that they do not use on their accommodation? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No more so than I can guarantee that that member who is bulk funded for $14700 for other costs does not pocket some of that. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am calling Metiria Turei; please show some courtesy to a colleague. 
Metiria Turei 
: Will the Minister then support a full review an independent review of Ministers’ and MPs’ allowances including the $14000 MPs’ expenses allowance— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Metiria Turei 
:—including the unlimited Ministers’ credit card allowance— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member must have seen that I am on my feet and she kept going on and ignored me. She cannot ask the Prime Minister about matters to do with members’ allowances because they are not matters the Prime Minister is responsible for; they are matters to do with the Parliamentary Service and the Prime Minister is not responsible for them. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I agree with you on that but the Prime Minister in response to the supplementary question from Metiria Turei brought that specific matter to the House’s attention by saying he could not comment or could not guarantee anything regarding members of Parliament’s allowances. At the point that he brought that material into the question time it became debatable and I think her question is within order because of the Prime Minister’s answer. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have to confess that that is a very good point of order from the Hon Darren Hughes. I will hear the Hon Gerry Brownlee speak to it. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Mr Speaker I do not think that you can rule suddenly that because an answer refers to something that is outside someone’s responsibility it makes that person responsible for it. Ministers routinely answer questions about justice matters where they will use examples of situations that clearly they have no responsibility for but that serve to articulate the utter hypocrisy of the— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I do not need to hear further on this; I think that has given me time. I thank the honourable member. His point of order was very good until the last bit which was unhelpful. He will not carry on down that vein any further. In respect of this matter an interesting issue was raised by the Hon Darren Hughes. Had the Prime Minister raised matters that were not specifically related to the primary question then it would have expanded the area that he could be questioned on but the Hon Gerry Brownlee is quite right in saying it does not extend the matters the Prime Minister can be questioned on to areas outside the Prime Minister’s responsibility. One cannot question a Minister or the Prime Minister on areas outside their responsibility. It was a very interesting point of order but I must rule as I did previously that the questions must relate to the Prime Minister’s area of responsibility. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is a slightly different point of order. The question did not ask whether the Prime Minister would initiate a review which he clearly cannot do as it is outside his area of responsibility. It asked whether he would support one. The Parliamentary Service Commission is made up of representatives from political parties; therefore in the Prime Minister’s capacity as the leader of a political party he would be in a position to support such a review if a review were initiated. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No no—a nice try but the Prime Minister cannot be questioned on matters to do with his leadership of any political party. 
Metiria Turei 
: Does the Prime Minister know that low-income workers need to prove evidence of their actual housing costs in order to receive a supplement through Working for Families; is it not reasonable that his Ministers do the same? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No I do not think that it is for this reason: if the member wants to go and fully read the report—I am not sure whether she has—she will find that the best people to conduct this review were those in the Ministerial Services who had at their disposal all the information. I think that by any measure the report is very fair and balanced and lays out the information. If the member goes to option 4 she will see that that option which is broadly the option we have adopted quite clearly points out that the current administration costs are $220000. The administration costs under option 4 would be cut to a maximum of $90000 and potentially to less than that. So we have looked to try to put in place a system that will be the least administratively expensive. Ministers are being given $37500 and they are free to pay rent free to buy a house and free to take a number of options as to how they house themselves. In the end that option will be administratively the simplest cleanest and cheapest way of doing that. The member will know because I am sure that she has looked closely at this issue that the $14700 each of us gets as a member of Parliament could also be if we wanted it to be a claims system. But that would require an army of bureaucrats to go and look at every single invoice. All I can tell the member is that if we look at the average here we can see that the sum of $48250 will go down to $37500 and that the vast bulk of Ministers will lose on this deal. 
Metiria Turei 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister has once again raised the issue of MPs as opposed to Ministers and their allowances and housing costs. I seek your advice Mr Speaker on the extent to which a supplementary question of mine which included a reference to MPs’ expenses and allowances and the content of that question could be out of order given that that matter has been raised twice now by the Minister himself—a matter for which he has no responsibility. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think that it is a very simple matter. The Prime Minister in trying to be helpful to the questioner used an example that he believed the questioner might be familiar with. It was similar: a simple payment being made versus a claims system being used. The use of that as a helpful example does not mean that the Prime Minister has expanded the area where the member can question him. The member cannot question the Prime Minister over matters to do with members’ allowances. If she wants to raise questions about that she can see the Speaker but she cannot do that through oral questions. 
Metiria Turei 
: If the Prime Minister is using as an excuse for lump-sum payments that can be pocketed the cost of dealing with receipts for actual costs from Ministers does he then agree that low-income workers who currently need to prove their actual costs would benefit and the Government itself would benefit from the savings in those administration costs if they too were provided with a lump-sum payment that they too could pocket as a supplement to Working for Families just like the system he is proposing for his Ministers? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will let the Prime Minister judge his responsibility there. 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: I have a deal for the member. She should ask what the average is for the housing supplement paid to low-income New Zealanders. She should then go and poll those people collectively to ask them whether they are prepared to accept a 25 percent reduction in what they receive on average in return for no administration costs and see the response that she gets. 
Metiria Turei 
: Why does the Prime Minister—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have called Metiria Turei. I apologise to the honourable member but I ask the front-benchers to— 
Metiria Turei 
: Why does the Prime Minister not stop making excuses for the whitewash review that he has conducted after issues around ministerial housing allowances were raised after this disclosure of MPs’ expenses and simply agree to a proper independent review of all ministerial and MPs’ allowances— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have already made it clear that the honourable member cannot question the Prime Minister about MPs’ expenses. If the member persists in that I will sit her down and cease her questioning. 
Metiria Turei 
: Why does the Prime Minister not simply support an independent review of all relevant allowances by an independent body at arm’s length from Ministerial Services so that the public can gain some confidence that the rules by which Ministers are using their allowances are clear and transparent and that Ministers are not pocketing public money that they are not entitled to? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: All I can say to the member is firstly I sought a review in relation to ministerial housing. The status quo was a cost to the Crown of $2.377 million. By the way that was the status quo that that member when the Greens gave some support to the previous Labour Government thought was OK. Secondly this Government has taken some action and has essentially asked Ministers to reduce their spending by 25 percent. From the way that I look at it that is a hang of a lot more than any other Government has ever done.