Taxpayer foots bill for Hide’s fundraising

12 comments on “Taxpayer foots bill for Hide’s fundraising ”

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1. sean14 1

   27 October 2009 at 12:14 pm

   Michael, your faux outrage is laughable. This is behaviour that goes on on both sides of the aisle – it’s not a case of Labour Good, National Bad as The Standard would like to have us believe, rather it’s a case of Labour and National being as bad as each other.

   On the other hand, perhaps you are willing to guarantee that no Labour Cabinet member ever engaged in the type of behaviour that Rodney Hide is engaging in? Maybe Rick, sorry, Bill Barker could make some calls for you?

   Opening up Parliamentary Services to the OIA would be a good place to start. It seems that the rules around expenditure need an overhaul too, though good luck to the person that thinks they can really stop MPs from troughing it up.
2. Michael Foxglove 2

   27 October 2009 at 12:26 pm

   sean14 – I agree with your last paragraph. Parliament really needs to become a more transparent place.

   But please don’t try and cast me as a Labour defender. I will try to the best of my ability to criticise and praise objectively (keeping in mind I am a leftie nonetheless!)
3. Idiot/Savant 3

   27 October 2009 at 12:49 pm

   Opening up Parliamentary Services to the OIA would be a good place to start. It seems that the rules around expenditure need an overhaul too, though good luck to the person that thinks they can really stop MPs from troughing it up.

   I agree entirely. But I think the chances of getting such a reform passed are low. Sometimes, politicians work very hard to earn their poor public reputation as self-serving pricks.
4. DavidW 4

   27 October 2009 at 1:26 pm

   One can hardly lambast one MoP for mixing politics and business and not be supercritical of those who traipsed to the Mt Albert Electorate during campaigning for the by-election. Highly co-incidental that Rusell (or is it Russel?) Norman had legit business in Auckland so many times and “while I was there thought I’d do a bit of campaigning”

   Same is true of a veritable pantheon of “names” from out-of-town home bases on all sides.

   So is this post being more than a wee bit precious? of course

   Should PS publish details of MP travel (destination, purpose, timing)?

   I really don’t want to know unless there are missing weeks between scheduled meetings overseas. You would have to be a bit weird to presume to judge the “worthwhileness” of every flight taken by every MP although I suspect there are some here who would delight in selectively doing so.

   Who would criticise an MP who made a speech in another centre on a Friday night and stopped over to visit relatives on the Saturday? old friends?, new friends? the party Leader? where would one draw a line?

   anti-spam word – “purposes” HEH
5. Nick 5

   27 October 2009 at 1:39 pm

   Yeah, Hide should have:

   1. Done three ministerial visits.
   2. Drove to airport; fly back Wellington.
   3. Immediately fly back to Christchurch from Wellington on party money.
   4. Fly back to Wellington after the party breakfast.
   5. Immediately fly back to Christchurch to finish his ministerial visits using parliamentary funds.

   Easy.
   • Doug 5.1

     27 October 2009 at 2:24 pm

     That would really help out on the 350 Campaign.
   • Idiot/Savant 5.2

     27 October 2009 at 3:28 pm

     Alternatively, done stuff on different days to avoid mixing his public and personal interests and getting us to pay for his fundraising. But I guess having a sense of ethics and the proper distinction between their roles is just too much to ask of a Minister.
     • DavidW 5.2.1

       27 October 2009 at 4:31 pm

       Idiot …. Are you seriously suggesting that a Minister can partition off his time in whole day lots like that? I suggest you stop and think before you burst into print.

       You could brobably split these kind of joint-purpose travel exercises for MPs into two groups. The proportion you might guess falls into each will depend on how cynical you are.

       The first group will be where an MP has been asked to perform some sort of function, locks it into his diary and then contemplates “what other things can I do while I am there?” There may be local government people to meet or branch offices connected to a Minister’s portfolio etc. or the local party branch might “grab” them while they are in town.

       The second group is where the “private” function is arranged and the MP goes looking for some justification, however slim, to put it on the taxpayers bill. It is not hard for an MOP to appear to be diligently working pretty much anywhere in the Country, or overseas if you are Chris Carter.

       But bearing in mind that they have never before been expected to justify domestic travel to anyone (absences from a sitting of Parliament excepted) I wouldn’t expect that most of them have given a second thought to having a publicly defensible justificatio to hop on a plane.

       I can’t recall excactly who it was and apologise to Jonathon Hunt if it wasn’t him but someone said that they could go to Invercargill for breakfast and Auckland for dinner every day of the week if they chose and it was withinthe rules.

       Perhaps the Rules are at fault rather than anyone who currently operates within them.
6. sean14 6

   27 October 2009 at 3:27 pm

   Fair enough Michael, but if you’re going to call Hide breathtakingly arrogant and corrupt, please at least place the same labels on members of your own side when they do exactly the same thing.
7. Gooner 7

   27 October 2009 at 10:14 pm

   I/S, you don’t deserve the right to comment on any blog when the sycophantic, screeching diatribes you pour out are not subject to any.

   [lprent: Gooner, I hate to say remind you (but you are probably too stupid to realize it) you write on a blog. You’re welcome to put whatever you like about I/S’s posts there (not that anyone will read them). The obnoxious drivel that you put out as posts drives any reasonable person away. But of course that is really what you’re complaining about No-one listens to you, they do to I/S because he actually does some work researching his posts, rather than your practice of divining content from extracted navel fluff. Hell chicken entrils would at least give you a better lunch.

   No Right Turn used to have comments. However mindless morons like yourself made him decide that it wasn’t worth running a comments section. You never had anything useful to say, and he preferred spend his time to write those informative posts (and I think that was by far the best decision possible).

   In the meantime, you are encroaching on my prerogatives. Moderators are the only people allowed to make nasty personal attacks in the comments section. I think I’ll add you to my personal education list to ensure that you understand that quite clearly. ]
   
8. prism 8

   31 October 2009 at 11:29 am

   Good posts! Almost as good as the invigorating diatribes on David Farrer’s where you find lots of personal attacks and brutal generalisations. As Shakespeare didn’t say
   ‘Squabble, squabble, boil, and trouble’.

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