Last week I wrote about Speaker Lockwood Smith rolling back transparency on MPs expenses, by making travel spending secret again. John Key came out against the move — which looked like easy image grooming on his part, taking the popular position safe in the knowledge that the Speaker can do as he pleases.
Well, Labour and the Greens have called Key’s bluff:
Labour releases MPs’ expenses
Labour leader Phil Goff has released full details of his MPs’ expenses for July, August and September, ignoring Speaker Lockwood Smith’s decision to withhold the information.
The total is $741,568.
“I believe that MP expenses should be transparent and made public. I do not agree that some costs should be withheld. We all need to be accountable for the expenses we incur as we do our jobs as MPs,” said Mr Goff in a Labour press release.
Here’s Labour’s announcement, here’s the Greens. Here’s John Key dithering:
National leader John Key said Cabinet had yesterday unanimously agreed to do the same, making it likely National would follow suit. However, he wanted to discuss it with his caucus first.
National will need to do the same eventually of course, but once again Key is exposing the fact that he’s a follower, not a leader…
Update: The Speaker has backed down, he has “released the full set of expenses because of confusion created by the decision of some parties to release their own expenses”. What “confusion” was that Lockwood?
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