Quite frankly, it's all getting a bit much. We're all tightening our belts, we're making decisions about where we're spending our money, what we're spending it on. The rates keep rising, insurance levies keep going up, the cost of everything is through the roof. And for many, many people, there's not a lot of disposable left at the end of the day. Even people who are earning pretty good salaries are suddenly finding there's not as much left at the end of the pay cycle as there used to be.  

Meanwhile, our House of Representatives are seeing the members gouging the taxpayer for every last cent they can get out of us. Louise Upston is claiming the full $1,000 a week ministerial housing allowance, which she's perfectly entitled to. It's designed to support MPs based outside Wellington with the cost of maintaining two homes. And you understand that. When you become a Member of Parliament, your business is in Wellington, but you might be representing the people of Timaru. You have a home there, a family there. So where are you going to live while you're in Wellington? Your employer should pay your expenses given you're required to be there. So the employer does. It offers an allowance to MPs who are not from Wellington to live there. That is us, the taxpayer. So, fair enough.  

But Louise Upston owns an apartment in Wellington and according to the register of financial interests, which all MPs have to fill out, there's no mortgage on it. Again, good for her. She's paid off the mortgage on that apartment and presumably her home. But what costs does she then have to claim? There are none. She owns the apartment outright. So she's claiming a cost she's legally entitled to, but should she be? She said at the time, it's an entitlement, I'm well within the rules, I can do it. Louise Upston's case unfortunately came just a week after she reduced the eligibility of homeowners to claim the accommodation supplement payment. She said we want to target support for the accommodation supplement to those who need it most. They are renters, they're not people who are using taxpayer support to increase their own asset. Hello! Are we looking in the mirror?  

She's not the only one, of course. Labour's Kieran McAnulty, Jan Tinetti, they have properties in Wellington, although they may still have a mortgage. New Zealand First's Andy Foster's doing it. He was the mayor of bloody Wellington and now he's claiming an accommodation allowance for a home in Wellington. Then we find the MPs in the parties, the different political parties, and again, all of them are doing it. Yeah, we wonder why they don't work together more often. Oh, they do, when it comes to their perks and allowances. We find the MPs in parties that own commercial property, which they rent to Parliamentary Service to operate as their own electorate offices. So they own the building, they say to Parliamentary Service, have we got a deal for you? We'll rent this and you pay for it because it's our electorate office. They defend this by saying the offices are rented at below market rates, and again, everybody does it.  

And then there's the superannuation. Chris Hipkins has defended using a generous taxpayer funded private super scheme to buy his family's holiday home by saying it's my money, I can do what I like with it. And it is, he can. But Heather du Plessis-Allan this morning interviewed Chris Hipkins, and I think outlined in an excellent manner just how it looks. 

HDPA: None of us are getting $60 to $70,000 popped into our superannuation funds every year by our employer, in your case the taxpayer, which we're then able to withdraw and buy a beach house with. This is the ruling class who has a different set of standards from everybody else. It's not right, is it? 

HIPKINS: The superannuation provisions that Members of Parliament get are generous superannuation provisions compared to what other members of the public get. I'll absolutely agree with that. 

HDPA: Do you need to change it? 

HIPKINS: Well, look, I think Members of Parliament are in a unique role. When people put their hands up to be Members of Parliament, in many cases they're basically leaving behind jobs that they cannot go back to. And we've just talked about an example of that now. When someone puts their hand up to be an MP, it closes off a lot of future potential job opportunities for them. So for many people when they put their hand up to be MPs, it will be the last job that they do. 

He was referring to Rakesh Naidoo, who is no longer working for Police now that he's put up his hand to be a Labour list MP. But we're told that the reason why backbenchers and MPs have diverged so far from other public servants like police, teachers, nurses – all of the salaries used to be around about the same in the 80s, MPs, police, nurses, teachers. Oh, it's very, very different now. We're told that the reason we're paying so much money is not because they can't get a job when they leave, but because they're so special and their talents are so unique that the private sector would snap them up in a heartbeat. And that is why we give them $177,600 for a backbencher, a learner MP, $320,600 for a Cabinet Minister, and $510,300 for a Prime Minister. Plus the expenses, the living accommodation, office expenses, travel allowances, plus the superannuation. With the superannuation, they get $2.50 for every dollar that the MPs put in from us. The contribution's capped at 20% of an ordinary MP's salary, which works out at $36,240 for every MP as of July 1st when the new rates kick in.  

So what's it to be? We can't do that. I mean, sure, if you're in a private super scheme of your own with different terms, you can take it out and do what you want with it. But dumb shmucks like you and me who are locked into KiwiSaver are limited to what we can do. We can't buy a second property with ours until we're 65, but hey. Are MPs of every colour and hue —apart perhaps from the Greens who seem to be able to maintain a shaky kind of moral high ground— just having a laugh? Everything is completely legal. Completely legal, but is it right?  

We're told we have to pay them that much to prevent the private sector from snapping them up. But really, where else would most of those people get that sort of money? Very few of them would and do once they leave Parliament – that's why they keep snuffling back to the trough, looking at Stuart Nash and Michael Wood. They tried it in the public, in the private sector, wasn't nearly as good as working as an MP, so back they come. We're told that they're such brilliant stellar talents that we have to pay them that much, but then Chris Hipkins says they can't get a job elsewhere. Yeah, they can. What they do is they use their political nous and contacts to set themselves up as lobbyists or working for companies as lobbyists in other parts of the world. Once a Minister leaves office, they can't just pop up as a lobbyist because they've got all kinds of insider knowledge – it's like insider trading. Not here. Kiri Allan started her consultancy business two weeks after resigning as Justice Minister and she was still an MP.  

So while they're doing this job that nobody really wants to do, they're getting paid very well to do it. They're getting good expenses to do it. They're getting a healthy superannuation fund that we are paying them we're paying for everything, but we're paying the super fund as well. Plus, they're building up knowledge and contacts, insider info that they can then sell, either as individuals setting themselves up as lobbyists or to companies that act as lobbyists. It's all legal, but is it right? We're funding all this. I mean, would you do the job? You've heard about the perks, you've heard about the expenses. You'd have to be prepared to be hated by at least half of the population and probably half of your caucus if you're hard working and you've got ambition. There'd be a few people who wouldn't like that. So I mean, you know what the gig is. It's a hard job. 

Is this what we have to pay for democracy to be sustained? It's legally right, but is it morally right to be claiming these sorts of expenses when you just don't need to? And at a time where you're wagging your finger at other people and telling them they need to tighten their belts and oh, we can't just be giving accommodation supplements away to everybody. They can't use it to build their asset. Yeah, but you can.