IT IS payback time and Deputy Prime Minister Bill English is caught in the crosshairs of a double Labour “hit squad” over a housing allowance scandal that has seriously damaged his reputation among voters.
Labour has assigned party stalwarts Trevor Mallard and Pete Hodgson to lead the attack following recent media disclosure of English claiming an accommodation allowance of nearly NZ$50,000 (RM125,413) a year to live in his own Wellington home.
That’s more than what many thousands of families struggle to survive on and what’s worse, in his other capacity as Finance Minister English has been preaching financial restraint, urging thrift and self sacrifice on everyone else.
This has included asking for compulsory savings of five and ten per cent in the budgets of government departments that provide services to the taxpayer.
A number of ministers, it has also been revealed, are receiving ministerial accommodation expenses while renting out investment property in Wellington.
Torment is not over: English’s reputation is in tatters All this is legitimate but it smacks of double standards benefiting the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor.
At a time when hundreds of New Zealanders are losing their jobs each week, it just doesn’t seem morally right for an elected politician to manipulate the system for financial gain.
It certainly doesn’t look good for ministers earning more than NZ$200,000 (RM501,652) a year to be able to pad their bank balance with questionable claims while people on the dole are penalised with cuts in their allowance to offset extra money they earn from part-time work.
When it was in the Opposition, National had been relentless in its pursuit of errant Cabinet ministers like David Benson Pope and Winston Peters.
Now it’s English’s turn to squirm as the Labour hit men turn the screws in Parliament and in the local media.
Their aim is not to force him out but to wound him politically, Mallard told the New Zealand Herald.
“This story will last as long as English is a minister,” he said.
NZ has a package of allowances that enable out-of-town MPs attending Parliament in Wellington to claim actual accommodation costs of up to a maximum of NZ$24,000 (RM60,100) a year – about NZ$500 (RM1,251) a week.
English was receiving an out-of-town housing allowance in Opposition because he considers his primary residence to be in Dipton, in his electorate of Clutha, Southland.
However, most of the time he lives in a NZ$1.2mil (RM2.5mil) (home owned by a family trust in Wellington where his wife works as a GP and his children go to school).
When he became a minister last year, he was able to have his Wellington home deemed a ministerial residence and rented back to the government for NZ$700 (RM1,751) a week — NZ$240 (RM600) more than he was getting in Opposition.
The media has been scathing in its criticism of English.
“There can be few sights more unedifying than that of a politician countering accusations of improper behaviour by claiming that his actions are consistent with the letter of the law,” the NZ Herald said in an editorial.
But Prime Minister John Key came to his defence, saying that English had “absolutely complied” with the legal test required for the accommodation allowances he had received.
The scandal has forced the PM to announce cuts in housing allowances for ministers and out-of-town MPs.
Ministers will now get NZ$37,500 (RM93,810) a year housing allowance instead of NZ$48,000 (RM120,278) a year for living in Wellington.
Those living in their own homes in Wellington will get a one off payment of NZ$30,000 (RM75,201) a year, which works out at NZ$577 (RM1,446) a week.
Key says the changes provide more fairness to taxpayers and ministers alike.
“There’s no question some ministers will be out of pocket, that’s true, but they’ll also have greater flexibility,” said Key, who rejects the notion that ministers were claiming the allowance to make money.
Rather, he explains, the allowances are necessary to enable ministers to keep their marriages intact and their families together in Wellington.
To prevent abuse of the new system, only one payment of NZ$37,500 (RM94,046) would be made per property — to prevent ministers sharing the same house making separate claims.
A red-faced English has since paid back the difference between the NZ$700 (RM1,751) a week that Ministerial Services was paying to rent the house owned by his family trust and the NZ$460 (RM1,153) he had been claiming as an out-of-town MP.
He did so because it was “not a good look” even though he insisted he was legally entitled to make such claims.
But his torment is not over yet.
His reputation is in tatters and Labour is still targeting him on three fronts – disclosures regarding his family trust; whether he should have accepted anything at all if Wellington is his primary residence in reality; and whether he should have accepted higher taxpayer funding for rent and cleaning for the same house when he became a minister.
“As the man in charge of the public purse, English is subject to far higher expectations,” the NZ Herald said. “It is time he answered those expectations. The cost to his and the government’s credibility is already far too high.”
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