Written By: - Date published: 8:04 am, September 27th, 2009 - 4 comments
Things must be getting decidedly trippy for Deputy PM Bill English about now, and not in a good way. While his glorious leader is off overseas playing the Jester Statesman, back home Bill’s future is looking gloomier by the day. With the Auditor General looking into English‘s Krishna-like claims of being able to exist in …
Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 40 comments
Bill English is not holding up well to the persistent questions put to him in Parliament about shuffling around his financial appearance to rort the taxpayer by claiming $1000 a week in housing allowances. Today, Bill English was stuttering his way through questions put to him by Pete Hodgson. And English again refused to publicly …
Written By: - Date published: 6:42 pm, September 10th, 2009 - 45 comments
More questions about English’s ministerial housing allowance rort in the House today: Key wasn’t in the House to answer the questions and normally English would have answered on his behalf but, instead, National pulled one of it’s favourite tricks - using the Government’s power to assign questions to an idiot who didn’t know the answers (Brownlee) rather …
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, September 8th, 2009 - 46 comments
And by any other name it smells as bad. John Key has annouced a reform of the rules for ministerial accommodation allowance. A fixed, automatic allowance will now be paid to all out of Wellington ministers of $37,500 a year for their Wellington accomodation (or $30,000 if they own the house), slightly less than the highest spending ministers …
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, August 9th, 2009 - 76 comments
Yesterday, John Armstrong talked about the Auditor-General’s 2001 report into eligibility for a Wellington accommodation allowance: the then Auditor-General David MacDonald scrutinised allowances after two ministers – Labour’s Marian Hobbs and the Alliance’s Phillida Bunkle – got into serious strife for claiming out-of-Wellington expenses when they had made Wellington their place of residence by virtue …
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, August 6th, 2009 - 70 comments
Over at Red Alert, Trevor Mallard has posted a form that all MPs wanting an out-of-town allowance must fill out. It asks MPs to list their residential address, and asks “Is this residence the place you would normally go to when you are not on parliamentary business?’ If Bill English put down his Dipton farm …
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