accommodation allowance<\/a>, while living in an apartment he owned, landed him in hot water in 2024 – and he repaid what he had received.<\/p>\nThey were all operating within the rules. Rules that have made something that used to be rare \u2013 claiming the full accommodation allowance \u2013 into something commonplace.<\/p>\n
The MPs who claim less<\/p>\n
Not all MPs take the maximum. Twenty eight non-Wellington MPs haven\u2019t claimed the full allowance in the last year. <\/p>\n
![\"Independent]()
Independent MP Takuta Ferris claimed a fraction of the accommodation allowance he was entitled to over the last year. \u201cMPs should claim what is necessary to do the job” he told the Herald. <\/p>\n
The Herald asked a number of them why they chose not to – two responded.<\/p>\n
Independent MP T\u0101kuta Ferris claimed $7529 for his accommodation and told the Herald the $36,400 entitlement shouldn\u2019t be viewed as a target – especially when many wh\u0101nau are struggling. <\/p>\n
\u201cMPs should claim what is necessary to do the job, not maximise what is available to them\u201d Ferris said.<\/p>\n
\u201dNew Zealanders should expect their MPs to incur costs as needed. Not electively. That view should especially be expected of Government MPs who are out here with their austerity policies.” <\/p>\n
Minister for Biosecurity and ACT MP Andrew Hoggard claimed $21,078, which is less than half of the $52,000 he is entitled to. <\/p>\n
Hoggard explained that since he drives to Wellington, he doesn\u2019t need to store anything there. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just choose to stay in a hotel … its simple – I\u2019m only here for three nights a week generally, so the hotel room provides all that I need without any hassle.\u201d<\/p>\n
How and why the rules changed<\/p>\n
Payments for out of town MPs have a long history. As far back as 1854 when the New Zealand Parliament first sat in Auckland, MPs from outside the then-capital received higher allowances.<\/p>\n
In recent decades, the biggest changes to the rules happened under John Key\u2019s leadership. The Wellington test was changed from an MP\u2019s primary place of residence to their \u201chome base\u201d – the place they normally live when not in Wellington.<\/p>\n
Control of the accommodation allowance was moved from the Speaker\u2019s office to the Independent Remuneration authority, and optional automatic bulk payments for \u201ccontinuous\u201d Wellington accommodation replaced the previous expense-based system.<\/p>\n
In Australia, MPs claim a travel allowance for each night they spend away from their home base. They receive A$322 for each night spent within 30 km of Parliament House in Canberra.<\/p>\n
There are 10 Wellington-based MPs who aren\u2019t eligible for any accommodation allowances. Five of them are electorate MPs – but the other five are list MPs: Nicole McKee, Nicola Willis, Ayesha Verrall, Ginny Andersen and Lan Pham.<\/p>\n
There is nothing in the rules stopping them from doing what Foster did and claiming the allowance, but they haven\u2019t. <\/p>\n
The Prime Minister and Winston Peters live in official residences in Wellington, so they aren\u2019t eligible either.<\/p>\n
In 2009, the Department of Internal Affairs owned six properties for senior ministers to use. This accounts for a small fraction of the change in the number of MPs claiming the full accommodation allowance.<\/p>\n
But the shift has been much larger. In early 2014, 11 MPs claimed the full accommodation allowance. This year 81 did.<\/p>\n
The Herald asked each party currently in Parliament to comment on the increase. <\/p>\n
In addition to Labour and National\u2019s responses above, NZ First stated that political parties have minimal impact on the Remuneration Authority\u2019s rules, adding they would consider \u201csensible and workable changes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori simply stated that four of their MPs claim the full allowance.<\/p>\n
Green Party MP Ricardo Men\u00e9ndez March noted the importance of accommodation allowances in enabling the participation of MPs from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, and the system \u201cshould not be for MPs to receive the allowance on their mortgage-free homes or to build their asset bases\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Knox<\/a> is a scientist turned data-journalist who investigates the stories behind the numbers, and creates interactives for Herald readers to explore them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some MPs have – over time – received enough to buy an apartment outright. More on that below.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62925,5263,69959,13916,138,3276,23552,10712,3105,92472,32896,142014,2070,6871,305,3339,221,4493,100343,7494,300,6368,17318,111,139,4061,69,1118,2682,131832,19764,766,10534,30273,544,131,223,165,2846,8229,52,3608,4276],"class_list":["post-500038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-accommodation","tag-all","tag-allowance","tag-asked","tag-business","tag-chris","tag-claimed","tag-claiming","tag-data","tag-dramatically","tag-editor","tag-entitled","tag-full","tag-has","tag-have","tag-housing","tag-how","tag-increased","tag-knox","tag-less","tag-money","tag-mp","tag-mps","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-number","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-others","tag-perks","tag-received","tag-reports","tag-see","tag-skyrocketed","tag-some","tag-than","tag-the","tag-their","tag-them","tag-they","tag-wellington","tag-were","tag-why"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}